Aiden Rayner

@EugenePerel I would love to hear your perspective on it for sure!

Are you interested to know why blunders happen in chess?

@andrewjmason 31,470 ;) Nice to be #1 in the world at something hahaha.

@aidenatdontmove Well done! Question: Are the gamecenter leaderboard stats working for you yet? (It looks like it's working for me, but I'm the only entry so far 🤣)

I’m delighted to share a small creative milestone. Over the past few months I’ve been building a lighthearted arcade-style game called Sweet Slam, and it officially launched this weekend on the App Store. It entered the charts at #59 in the Top 100 Paid Casual Games in the U.S., which has been a fun surprise to see. If you’re curious about the project…or just want a quick break in your day…you can check it out here: apps.apple.com/us/app/sweet-s…

@andrewjmason Mine just shows myself at #2, but no one else.

My word, we just might cross 600 published episodes and 250k downloads on the same day! Numbers rack up fast when you put out an episode every day. Check out "Chess Visualization with Aiden Rayner" in your podcast player of choice if you want to help us do it.

@andrewjmason THAT'S a bit better. 14,130. My childhood SNES Arkanoid skills started to awaken for a bit there. (Then went away again.)

@aidenatdontmove 🤣

@andrewjmason Turns out I'm very bad at it haha. 2170 so far. But I can do better.

@aidenatdontmove Thanks! Can't wait to see your score 😎

If you want to truly understand a game or opening variation, write 5 full sentences about every move. In the first 3 sentences you'll capture the obvious stuff. You have to push for sentences 4 and 5, they're where the magic is. You'll understand the line like never before.

Rajveer Meena from India recited 70,000 digits of pi! That's wild. The human brain can do insane things with memory techniques. I'm curious whether they might be useful for our Chess conceptualization. What memory techniques have you used to aid your Chess, #chesspunks?

"Losses at blindfold chess can be very revealing." - Hearst & Knott, "Blindfold Chess" (2009) While not strictly what the authors were referring to... the sorts of mistakes we make on our mental board are the sorts of mistakes we make when we *can* see the board. They just appear in simpler moments.

@isofarro Then you'll love me haha. Index cards for days!

@aidenatdontmove Chess players using index cards. That's my niche.

And here was me thinking I was just going to be writing a one-off article this week... 47 cards mean we're apparently looking at another series to end 2025!

What you see on the board ≠ what's there. It's easier for brains to juggle patterns we know so, under pressure, it can warp the position to match a pattern. We then calculate based on the warped position, not the real one. Ever been sure a piece was elsewhere before you moved?

Every move does four things. A square empties: ranks, files, and diagonals open up. A piece leaves: some squares are no longer controlled, attacked, or defended A square fills: ranks, files, and diagonals close A piece arrives: new squares are controlled, attacked, and defended To any master, these four things are just "the move". But they are four distinct things, hard to notice all-at-once for the amateur. A huge number of our mistakes come down to not noticing one or more of them at a critical moment. Especially during calculations.