Nova Daily - 20 April 2025: Recap Week 15

nova-stone

Apr 20, 2025, 2:57 PM | 6

Hi!

Contemplating on what to write for this week's recap, I decided to go over the list of 28 topics that I started with in Monday's blog. I had begun writing a paragraph on content creators and one with my opinions about the 2024 Botez Invitational. But I don't like these topics enough to give them any more place in my blog than strictly necessary. I can bicker about them on end, but I prefer not to. There's something that I'm not too good at implementing myself, but I think that the world would be a nicer place if most people just abided by this simple line of text:

If you have nothing nice to say, just shut your face.

Commentary

One thing that I do think could be positive is live commentary. I have a few tips to share with regards to this.

1. Don't become the mouthpiece of the engine
This is a big one, because of how often it happens. In a commentary stream the commentator is looking at the game and only suggests the top moves from the engine. No explanation, nothing. Chat provides input, but this is first fed to the engine, and then the commentator says if it's good or bad based on whatever the machine spits out.
This is ridiculous. In essence, the streamer is expendable in their own stream. "Oh no, that lost the forced checkmate sequence!" doesn't constitute a good breakdown of the game. You're not a commentator, you're a prop.

2. Don't try to be perfect
This one is tied to the first one. Good commentary is honest commentary. Mistakes are made. You don't know everything, and it's alright to admit when you're in the dark somewhere. If you're using the engine's assistance to check on something, that's alright, but it's nice if you're transparent about when you do this. Don't try to sound like you're better than you are, because it's a façade you're not able to maintain for forever.

3. Bring your own voice
This is what a lot of commentators actually do right. People like Hikaru Nakamura, Anish Giri, Peter Leko, Yasser Seirawan, Jan Gustafsson, Pia Cramling, Daniel Rensch, Levy Rozman and Anna-Maja Kazarian are all accomplished players who know quite well how the game works. Each of them brings something unique to their commentary sessions. Whether you like them or not is a matter of taste, but at least when I'd be watching them I don't have to perpetually raise this question:

This week in chess

Most of the times I write my blogs within a day, save for some parts of the analysis. This week, for the first time since I started this blog, I've written an entire post about a different topic. It took me a bit longer than my other posts, but I quite liked doing it.

I wanted to write this post anyway, and I decided to see if I could make some bits of the html codes work for this one. I like to think I did alright, but I also submitted it for the Blogger Awards monthly contest so I don't want to receive feedback on it just yet.

Not everything went according to plan this week, but I've still managed to get results.

This week I:

Got 5 points out of 6 games, with two draws and four wins.
Messed up my bullet rating, although I got a new personal peak on 2623.
Did reasonably well on blitz.

My current scores:

Rapid rating: 2207 (+29)
Blitz rating: 2346 (+14)
Bullet rating: 2550 (-54)
Survival: 62 (=)
Puzzle Battle: 1884 (+40)
Puzzles: 3580 (-31)
Repertoire: 4131 moves (=)

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Nova Daily - 20 April 2025: Recap Week 15

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