A Place to Find Your Footing
A reflection on Jesse Kraai's The Cave of Self-Improvement, retreating into chess, and persevering through hard times.
Posts
23 entries
Essays and field notes from the ongoing work of getting better at chess: practical lessons, Lichess experiments, tournament stories, tools, and the occasional position that refuses to be forgotten.
For complete game scores and move-by-move investigations, visit Games. For the durable material distilled from these posts, visit Guides.
OneZenPanda BOT Needs a Night Shift
An overnight chess bot raises a hardware question: keep Stockfish on a fanless M2 Air, try a cooled Raspberry Pi, or give the panda a Mac mini?
OneZenPanda BOT: Inner Peace, Three Checkmates
After a quiet debut draw, OneZenPanda won three straight games against custom engines. Three replays, two promotions, and the Stockfish configuration behind the panda.
OneZenPanda BOT Has Awakened. Calmly.
Meet Panda Nation's new Stockfish-powered bot: built on a Mac, online on Lichess, and opening its account with a draw against another engine.
Knight Fork Tactics
Understanding how to spot and execute knight forks in your games.
Lichess Tutor Gave Me One Red Box for Speed. Twice.
Lichess Tutor compared 409 of my games with similar-rated players. The result was a very specific report card—and a much better practice plan.
Panda Nation Has Entered the Arena
We created a Lichess team for tournaments, conversation, and anyone who wants to play some chess with the pandas.
Spend the Clock Where It Matters
More thinking time helps when a position contains something worth finding. The practical skill is recognizing that moment.
The Labor Day Tournament Onslaught
Three days, 27 Lichess arenas, 72 tournament games, and a tour of almost every kind of chess available before the weekend was half over.
盤上の一手、人生の一日 — One Move on the Board, One Day in a Life
A bilingual essay about chess, time, irreversible choices, and learning to live with the position we have made.
If You Don't Have a Better Move, Move
A lesson from Magic, adapted for chess: when further calculation stops improving the decision, stop paying the clock.
A Small Fix for Lichess Mobile
I found a blank checkbox in Lichess mobile, traced the invisible widget behind it, and contributed a tested fix that was merged upstream.
The Question Mark Is Part of the Rating
Why a Lichess rating stays provisional, how Glicko-2 differs from Chess.com and FIDE, and what competitive games teach us about matchmaking numbers.
What Is Left on the Board
A Dan Heisman quote before a classical tournament reframes trades as positions to evaluate, not receipts to total.
Why I Play With Increment
Increment does more than add time: it changes which chess skills a game rewards.
Two First Games on Lichess
Hikaru Nakamura's first game on his TSMFTXH account and my first game as ThreeSadPandas.
The Pawn Cannot Move Backward
A small pawn move near a castled king can create a weakness that lasts for the rest of the game.
The Hardest Chess Book Is Your Own Games
Consuming chess instruction is easy. Returning to the exact reasons you lost is where study becomes personal.
The Game I Lost Before the Mouse Slip
A queen disappeared with one bad click, but the useful mistake had already happened.
The Fifth Sticky Note
I built a four-step blunder check, hung a rook anyway, and discovered the question my system was missing.
Play the Board, Not the Opening
Why opening names cannot replace development, threat detection, and ordinary good moves.
Our First Lichess Blog Post
A small celebration for publishing the first ThreeSadPandas post on Lichess.
My First Lichess Tournaments
Two Classical Swiss tournaments, two finishes, and one new reason to keep showing up.