About retarded stuff as well as being read by too many readers

First, the retarded stuff.

I was like, walking back from my old school today, when I had a conversation with somebody that went something like this:

Wait... legends first.

Legend
--------
Me: Well... me speaking
**: comment tags
B: The other person in the conversation... Let's just stick at Ben shall we... I prefer not to be killed.

*The all important question!*
Me: How much does a potato cost?
B: Less than a toma(e)to *where (e) indicates pronunciation, important later*
Me: How much does a toma(h)to cost? *Bad pronounciation, really (*typo intended*) *
B: More than a potato.
*Persistence!*
Me: So how much does a potato cost?
B: More than a toma(h)to.
*???*
Me: So what's the difference between a toma(e)to and a toma(h)to?
B: Price.

That was the retarded part. It was supposed to serve as an analogy of sorts, or as an intro to the rest of my blogpost, but it's like... too long, and retarded, and hard to use as a model for the rest of my blogpost.

Ok, so I was informed of this disturbing news: that I initiated a style of blogpost called time-constrained posting, where one day I got so bored I decided to type 1000 word in like 20 minutes. This has unfortunately caught on (the HORROR), and I would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused to the world in general. I will also start to advocate for less people reading my blog, as well as taking every single idea with a mountain of salt (pinch of salt might not work :( ).

So what strategies should I employ to keep people of my pseudo-semi-demi-quasi-hidden blog? If you do have strong opinions about this subject, please e-mail any feedback to haveyouhadyourpenquintoday@gmail.com. Please also do remember to buy a kilogram of salt before sending the email. I hereby thank all you readers for your anti-cooperation. Now shoo and never come back again.

Premoving

Yes, this blogpost was inspired by chess.com. And the brilliant idea of play 1 0 games.

So firstly, for those who don't know, 1 0 games means each person gets 1 minute at the start, and per move, he gets 0 seconds increment. In short, the player has to make about 40 moves in one minute. How fun.

The problem is then not how to get into a winning position (just think for 5 seconds a move and you'll thrash... for a while, and then you get into a horrible mess of time trouble), but rather how to get into a winning position fast, and how to win even faster from there.

It sounds like nonsense, but the fact is you can win a Queen+pawns versus approximately equal number of pawns endgame in about 10 seconds usually. (The trick is promoting 2 queens and checking until your opponent cries... and usually times out). So that is joyful to the 1 0 player.

To make the spam even more enjoyable, there is something called premove (terminology from a certain ELO rated 2000+- player) on chess.com. This means that you are allowed to make a move before your opponent makes him, and effectively takes 0 seconds to move, but the drawback is that it sometimes results in you doing stupid stuff. Eg. You have a brilliant tactic where you win a knight. You expect your opponent to minimise losses and play something like Nxh5. Hence, you set your promove to Bxh5. And then he brilliantly sacrifices a queen with something like Qa4. And the premove triggers. And instead your queen hangs.

However, premoves are epically important, like when you're 1 queen 2 rooks, 3 bishops, 4 knights up and have 1 second left (hey its possible!). A person not accustomed to premoves may randomly check about 3 times and run out of time. What a sad way to lose a game.

This is where premove skills come in. And to improve on premoving skills... you guessed it. Premoving puzzles!

I must admit, I totally fail at puzzle creation, but try to bear with me. I try to keep the blogpost interesting, not the puzzles (once again, I admit I fail at creating puzzles). So off to explain the rules.

1) You must move before your opponent's move finishes. Which means you must play a move such that no matter what he does, your move will be winning.
2) You know all of your opponents moves up to 1 move before. Eg.:

e4 ? premove: d4

Then it turns out he played e5. The server recognises you premoved and moves d4 for you. Now the situation becomes
e4 e5 d4 ? Premove: enter your move here.

My point? That you know your opponent's last move at every instance. Hence, a puzzle may have more than one line (but bah! I'm not that skillful).

3) Special puzzles may have special rules. Especially one that says something like: time for one move

What does that mean? It means for example you have 1 move of moving time, which you can use anywhere to RESPOND to your opponent's moves. This also happens when your condition move fails. eg:

1. e4 ? Premove: e5

and your opponent plays e5. Tada! Illegal move. You just wasted your one move of time.

So let's not randomly delay and move on to our first puzzle: a generic endgame: queen+king vs king.

Puzzle 2:

XXXXXXXX
XXXXXXKX
XXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXP
PXXXKXXX
XXXXXXXX

cyan to move and win (is that called cyan?)

Puzzle 3:

RNBXXBXR
PPPRX XPP
XXXXPXKX
XBXXXXXX
XXXXXXPX
XXNPXNXP
PPPXXPXX
XXBKXXXR

cyan to move and win (I'm hoping this works)

Edit: Blah! It doesn't at all. I fail.