Alireza Firouzja Fanblog

Leetcode - a good introductory site with tons of practice problems and a weekly competition. Pretty beginner-friendly.

Rust book and Rust by example - ways to learn how to code in Rust, a must if you want to code on sites other than Leetcode (which is very Python-friendly). Unless you want to use C++, but like. Why.

Codeforces - a more intense site designed for people who emphasize the competitive side of competitive coding.

Competitive Companion - a Firefox (and Chrome, but use Firefox) extension that scrapes example test cases off the web and converts them to .in and .out files for more competitive sites like codeforces.

Rust Competitive Helper - a command line utility that works with Competitive Companion to auto-generate code and set up your workspace for you. Near-essential if you want to compete on codeforces. If you want to use this, feel free to DM me on here or on my main - it takes a little wrangling to figure out how to work it properly.

players used to have personalities man. tal would give you two knights and a sultry wink, then slam your head into the concrete. petrosian would play 40 moves and youd expect all of them and you’d shake hands and never be winning against him once in your entire career. now? Every Player’s A Generalist! Tactical AND Positional AND Aggressive AND Defensive AND Opening-Focused AND Endgame-Focused AND Nothing-Focused! After All, Being Fun Would Mean The Computer Would Disagree. the top 100 is a graveyard of gms who USED to be interesting before it got beat out of them in their 20s. Firoujza was the Moses leading us to a Zion of style on the board. Rezzy hits the clock, grabs you by your lapels, and screams into your face ‘I’LL KILL YOU.’ And win or lose, it would be a great game! But now ’84 MJ decided a fashion career was his life’s calling, and now VINCENT KEYMER is dunking on him by 20 elo.

Im switching to Go. Ke jie wont let me down

spoilers

Absolutely insane situation! I watched the last couple hours of the games today (specifically Fabi and Gukesh). Easily the most intense and fun chess we've had in a long time. It's crazy that we have four potential winners tomorrow.

In terms of how I rate the outcomes:

Fabi wins. I'm a huge Fabi fan and I think he deserves to be world champion as the number two player of the Magnus era.

Gukesh wins. I like Gukesh a lot and having a teenage world championship challenger would be really exciting. No doubt in my mind that he's earned it.

Hikaru wins. I find Hikaru a bit insufferable but it would be phenomenal content.

Nepo wins. Please god not again.

In terms of Alireza's performance, well. I think he'd previously been anointed as the leading light of the post-Magnus generation, especially after he hit 2800, but he hasn't lived up to that since then. I think maybe that was an unfair amount of pressure to put on him. I don't know if his problems are psychological or if he's hit a wall, but he certainly seems far weaker than he was just a couple years ago. He was rank 2 in the world not so long ago, and he's fallen to rank 16 in the live ratings.

Starting to believe there's a connection between being in a country with mandatory military service and being good at sc2