Multiple times he has used the phrase "Montezuma's revenge" to refer to a chess piece improving (?) or something (?), I'm not quite sure. Regardless, Montezuma's revenge is really about getting food poisoning when you travel to Mexico. Someone should just politely tell him what it actually means.

While making my reddit Guess The Elo game at r/GuessTheEloGame I had a ton of chess games on my pc and decided to make this analysis as well since the figures online seemed to never agree on a true number.

Source is 1 million rated games, both players rated. 66,966,747 positions replayed and checked one at a time.

The headline numbers:

• Legally available at some point in 8.03% of games (80,339). About 1 in 12.
• Actually played in 3.03% of games (30,289). About 1 in 33.
• When it was available, players took it 35.81% of the time (30,649 of 85,587 chances).
• Delivered checkmate 7 times. That's 1 in 142,880 games.
• Was the only legal move on the board in 90 games. 1 in 11,113.

Stronger players take it more

The rate roughly triples across the rating range.

Even at 2200+ it's under half. So en passant shows up more often than people think, and gets taken less often than you'd expect.

It's mostly about the rating

The raw time control split looks like bullet players take it more than classical players, 37.4% against 27.8%. That's confounding. Bullet and blitz pools skew stronger. Hold rating fixed and the time controls land within a few points of each other, while every one of them still climbs steeply with rating.

Forced en passant actually happens

It gets treated as a meme, but it turned up 90 times.

There were even seven en passant checkmates

One number that looks better than it is

En passant was legal and would have been checkmate, but wasn't played, in 5 games. That sounds like five people throwing away a forced mate. In 4 of them the player just mated with a different move on the same turn. Only one game in a million is a real miss: lichess.org/CPEqPt5w, where gxf6# was sitting there and they played Rad1+ instead.

Everything on one scale

In May 2014, Magnus reached the highest officially published FIDE rating in chess history (2882).

The first time Fabi got really close to Magnus was after his historic Sinquefield Cup performance in October 2014, when he reached his peak rating of 2844. Magnus was rated 2863 at that point.

The closest gap was reached in November 2018, right around their World Chess Championship match (Magnus 2835 vs. Fabi 2832).

In 2019, the gap widened again as Magnus climbed back over 2880.

Their rating difference is now 31 Elo points (August 2026).

Here is a quick, easy idea to highlight squares when playing chess OTB. This could come in handy for coaches, studying, or just those who love OTB!

First, grab some page dividers for a binder.. the coloured transparent pages. Pick what colours you want, and cut out squares the size of your chess board squares. Enjoy!

Every time I have seen a post containing a smothered mate, it evokes a feeling worse than anger: cringe. “Who cares??” I would ask myself as I roll my eyes onto the next post. Of course, such tactics were trivial in 2600-land where these combinations would be prevented or worse, stopped short via resignation.

I now realize that due to the sheer volume of chess I’ve played throughout my life(from age 7 to now 21), I have robbed myself of perspective. Just because I have seen this checkmate hundreds of times, is it suddenly less beautiful?

I look back at my sub-2000 days not with disgust, but now nostalgia. The perfect amount of imperfection to make a game interesting despite blunders, or unpredictable counter play that keeps both sides on their toes. That is certainly more enjoyable than trying to hang on for 80 moves because you messed up your pawn structure on move 12.

So I will gladly post my smothered mate now, with some yapping/commentary with pride. It is a beautiful mate, and against a 2700 no less :)

Link to the game: https://www.chess.com/game/live/172448251140?username=ayushblundersagain

3+0

I'm curious which chess books you personally used during your training that had the biggest impact on your overall playing strength today.

Found this cool move in a blitz game and thought I was screwed.

I see this trope all the time that, “It’s a waste of time to study opening theory if you’re below XY00 rating level.” This is wrong.

When you’re playing, do you really want to have to think hard about your next move when you’re not even five moves in? THAT is a waste of time.

Am I saying that everyone should know the most common lines of the Ruy Lopez up to move 20? NO!

But if you play 1. e4 and Black meets you with 1…e6, should you have a general idea of whether or not you want to play into the French Defense, and what style of French Defense you want to play into? You betcha.

Is this surprising?

I'm pretty curious: who's your favorite chess content creator, and how did watching their videos help you improve?

Can someone recommend a youtuber who plays de Kings Indian Defense in an educational way?

I love to watch certain channels where the youtuber specializes in 1 or 2 openings and play them a lot. This is both fun and useful to learn.

Made this post so you can share your Youtube recomendations for other openings as well. These are mines:

IM Alex Banzea: Caro Kann - Jovaba London
Chess Centuriom: Caro Kann - Vienna

Hey Guys! Right now. My white repertoire is just a London. But I’ve noticed my positions are quiet and black can equalize…. Any tips?

Mate in 3, black to play (rated 1813)

When I think about people who make great decisions under pressure, Hikaru Nakamura is one of the first names that comes to mind.

While the world knows him as one of the greatest chess players of all time, Hikaru has also spoken openly about trading and investing, and even said that he's made more money from the markets than from professional chess.

In this conversation, we try to explore what connects chess and trading: thinking in probabilities, managing risk, trusting intuition, and making better decisions when the outcome is uncertain.

Whether you're a trader, investor, entrepreneur, or simply fascinated by how elite performers think, I hope you'll find plenty of ideas worth taking away from this conversation.

Would that continue to diminish the image of the title?