What? Another boring chess game?


Buzz off, this is my blog, and if I feel like posting a chess game, that's what is going to happen. But if you like the game, stay here - this is a nice game.

Again played after hiours today, and again on a 5' online blitz server (chess.com). What amazes me is that these days I seem to have a sort of touch for nice attacks and brilliant combinations. Let me show you why I am saying this.

The starting position arose after the following opening sequence:

tommasodorigo - UTOPII841, chess.com April 16 2025

After a very intense day at work, I sought some relaxation in online blitz chess today. And the game gave me the kick I was hoping I'd get. After a quick Alapin Sicilian opening, we reached the following position (diagram 1):


As you can see, black is threatening a checkmate with Qxg2++. However, the last move was a serious error, as it neglected the intrinsic power of my open files and diagonals against the black king. Can you find the sequence with which I quickly destroyed my opponent's position?

1. Qc2! 

The highest-mass subnuclear particle ever observed used to the the top quark. Measured for the first time by the CDF experiment in 1994, and subsequently confirmed by CDF and D0 in 1995, the top quark is the heaviest elementary particle we know of, and it is a wonderful physical system per se, which has been studied with momentum in the past thirty years at the Tevatron and at the LHC colliders. 
The top quark

In a world where misinformation, voluntary or accidental, reigns supreme; in a world where lies become truth if they are broadcast for long enough; in a world where we have unlimited access to superintelligent machines, but we prefer to remain ignorant; in this world we are unfortunately living today, that is, the approach taken by scientists to accumulate knowledge - peer review - is something we should hold dear and preserve with care. And yet...

Perhaps the most important thing to get right from the start, in most statistical problems, is to understand what is the probability distribution function (PDF) of your data. If you know it exactly -something that is theoretically possible but only rarely achieved in practice- you are in statistical heaven: you can use the maximum likelihood method for parameter estimation, and you can get to understand a lot about the whole problem.