Nate Solon

What I'd do if I wanted to gain 50 Elo in 6 months:

In a blitz game I cut my calculation a bit too short and missed a spectacular idea. Black to play.

A decade in poker taught me something I didn’t expect: The real value of the game isn’t the money. It’s the skill. Decision-making under pressure with equanimity. Strategic thinking with incomplete information. Agility in ever changing conditions. Asymmetric risks with huge upside. Tournament poker is basically founder training. Maybe only 10% cash. And within that 10%, only a small fraction hit significant wins. But we chase the top spot anyway. For the love of the game. As @demishassabis recently said, games like poker are microcosms of life. The advantage is that in poker, you get to run the simulation thousands of times. That’s iterative compounding. Look at @BenbaLamb, who hit 10-figures of volume on his crypto casino, @yeet. @PrimordialAA went from online poker to founding LayerZero, now a multi-billion dollar protocol. Or @catehall, who founded Alvea during peak COVID and brought a vaccine candidate to clinical trials faster than any startup in history. Poker is zero-sum. But we can and should play positive-sum infinite games with those same skills. (Nod to @komorama + the resonant computing manifesto) Your time in poker isn’t a sunk cost. It’s an investment in who you become. And (hopefully) what you build. The 2026 tax change makes professional gambling impractical (sorry @Erik_Seidel). Combine that with what AI makes possible, the only real fence left is the one you build around yourself. Take the biggest asymmetric risk you can make. Bet on yourself. And bet big.

@zxlava Maybe that's why he's so cranky all the time

Filch mopping floors by hand while being surrounded by wizards was crazy

@stevemagness @Brady_H Gotta add bro science retard to the bio 😂

@Brady_H I made it. It’s an honor to finally join you in this illustrious club.

Hey @stevemagness welcome to the club! 😂😂😂😂

@michael_nielsen Thanks Michael! 🙏

Fascinating little history - through the lens of chess, but really about why anyone chooses to dedicate themselves to any specific skill

Everyone complaining about Stormchaser's Talent, but no one wants to talk about Stormchaser's Hard Work.

Here's a thing I wrote about chess players' hobbies, and famous people who had chess as a hobby. zwischenzug.gg/p/is-chess-a-w…

Reporter: Do you have any hobbies outside of chess? Karpov: Stamp collecting and Marxism. Kasparov: No.

@chessmensch “Oh no my ring!”

Did they say "I do" or "IM?"

@SaffronOlive Weirdly, some of the bans may have forced players to build better decks.

It's wild that Vivi, Cori-Steel Cutter, Profts and Monstrous Rage are all banned because of Izzet and the color combination is still at the top of the meta. Imagine if all the cards that were supposed to be legal together were legal...

@divya_venn "bros and hos" aren't part of my vocabulary and I don't even know what an "opp" is

I love being a girl, but I do envy the relative simplicity of men’s lives and the fact that the world deals with them honestly. You have your bros, your hos, and your opps. It is very clear to you which is which. There is the singular goal: go forth and conquer. If you succeed in Making Something of Yourself the bros will cheer and the opps will seethe and your bloodline will endure. My One Great Complaint with womanhood is that everything is sugarcoated. Lovers and stalkers and enemies all turn to you with beautiful polished smiling masks; the things that will kill you are indistinguishable from the ones that will save you and the ones that will waste your time. It’s not that people are deliberately trying to tear you down, it’s that everyone has an incentive to feed you pretty lies. People value protecting your feelings over helping you become more aware, resilient, and capable. an excerpt from "how to be a girl's girl", out later today on observing happiness!

@SaffronOlive If this is legal under the current rules, then the rules are insane. How can takebacks be allowed??

Curious about the Boomerang Basis take back. I keep hearing people argue that no new info was gained, but isn't the knowledge that your spell will resolve with no responses new info? To me the rule seems abusable, like you can cast something to check for a response, pull it back and cast something better once you know it will resolve.

@CryptoSala How do you know?

@natesolon Yes cheating has gone through the roof!

No one knows how much cheating is really going on in online chess. Not Kramnik, obviously, but also not Fabi, or ChessCom, or Lichess.

@MrChessIsDead Yes, I've encountered a fair number of these too. Sometimes, it's amazing how many games they've played and while still being active.

@natesolon It's crazy, man. I personally know of a few accounts who are OBVIOUSLY cheating and don't get caught, and of course, once you find a sample just by interacting a bit, you can induce that the whole thing is probably much bigger.

@fuzzywuzzyzz What do they say?

@natesolon Somewhere in middle between Kramnik and chesscom numbers. But i was suprised how my young students of mine dont see no moral problem in cheating. After hearing how they see the situation i realised its lost battle already

Mixed feelings about Polymarket, Kalshi , etc. The gamblification of everything is probably not great for society, but my background does position me well to benefit from it.

Position from @gmblohberger's fab lesson for the @womeninchess fundraiser!! Question 1: Can Black play ...d2 here? Question 2: What is the lesson topic? twitch.tv/lularobs @lularobs

@nntaleb I'm self-employed, and I go to a Starting Strength gym. It's not personal training, but the groups are very small (usually 3-4 people), and they tell me exactly what to do. I don't mind it.

Seems to me that self-employed & independent people tend to not like to work under personal trainers telling them precisely what to do. Is this observation correct?

I’m thrilled to share a special life update -- I recently married the amazing @irene_sukandar We kept our relationship mostly private until now, but we’re happy to share this milestone publicly. Thank you for supporting our journeys, both on and off the chessboard. Here’s to the beginning of a beautiful chapter ❤️