Update

chess.md

@@ -23,7 +23,7 @@ Chess as a game is not and cannot be [copyrighted](copyright.md), but **can ches
 
 **Chess and [IQ](iq.md)/intelligence**: there is a debate about how much of a weight general vs specialized intelligence, IQ, memory and pure practice have in becoming good at chess. It's not clear at all, everyone's opinion differs. A popular formula states that *highest achievable Elo = 1000 + 10 * IQ*, though its accuracy and validity are of course highly questionable. All in all this is probably very similar to language learning: obviously some kind of intelligence/talent is needed to excel, however chess is extremely similar to any other sport in that putting HUGE amounts of time and effort into practice (preferably from young age) is what really makes you good -- without practice even the biggest genius in the world will be easily beaten by a casual chess amateur, and even a relatively dumb man can learn chess very well under the right conditions (just like any dumbass can learn at least one language well); many highest level chess players admit they sucked at math and hated it. As one starts playing chess, he seems to more and more discover that it's really all about studying and practice more than anything else, at least up until the highest master levels where the genius gives a player the tiny nudge needed for the win -- at the grandmaster level intelligence seems to start to matter more. Intelligence is perhaps more of an accelerator of learning, not any hard limit on what can be achieved, however also just having fun and liking chess (which may be just given by upbringing etc.) may have similar accelerating effects on learning. Really the very basics can be learned by literally ANYONE, then it's just about learning TONS of concepts and principles (and automatizing them), be it tactical patterns (forks, pins, double check, discovery checks, sacrifices, smothered mates, ...), good habits, positional principles (pawn structure, king safety, square control, piece activity, ...), opening theory (this alone takes many years and can never end), endgame and mating patterns, time management etcetc.
 
-**Fun fact**: chess used to be played over [telegraph](telegraph.md), first such game took place probably in 1844.
+**[Fun](fun.md) [historical](historical.md) fact**: chess used to be played over [telegraph](telegraph.md), first such game took place probably in 1844.
 
 **How to play chess with yourself?** If you have no computer or humans to play against, you may try playing against yourself, however playing a single game against yourself doesn't really work, you know what the opponent is trying to do -- not that it's not interesting, but it's more of a search for general strategies in specific situations rather than actually playing a game. One way around this could be to play many games at once (you can use multiple boards but also just noting the positions on paper as you probably won't be able to set up 100 boards); every day you can make one move in some selected games -- randomize the order and games you play e.g. with dice rolls. The number of games along with the randomized order should make it difficult for you to remember what the opponent (you) was thinking on his turn. Of course you can record the games by noting the moves, but you may want to cover the moves (in which case you'll have to be keeping the whole positions noted) until the game is finished, so that you can't cheat by looking at the game history while playing. If this method doesn't work for you because you can keep up with all the games, at least you know got real good at chess :) { This is an idea I just got, I'm leaving it here as a note, haven't tried it yet. ~drummyfish }
 
@@ -48,7 +48,7 @@ The rules of chess are quite simple ([easy to learn, hard to master](easy_to_lea
 
 At the competitive level **clock** (so called *time control*) is used to give each player a limited time for making moves: with unlimited move time games would be painfully long and more a test of patience than skill. Clock can also nicely help balance unequal opponent by giving the stronger player less time to move. Based on the amount of time to move there exist several formats, most notably **correspondence** (slowest, days for a move), **classical** (slow, hours per game), **rapid** (faster, tens of minutes per game), **blitz** (fast, a few seconds per move) and **bullet** (fastest, units of seconds per move).
 
-Currently the best player in the world is pretty clearly Magnus Carlsen from Norway with Elo rating 2800+.
+Currently the best player in the world -- and probably best player of all time -- is pretty clearly Magnus Carlsen (born 1990), a [white](white.md) man from Norway with Elo rating 2800+. He just keeps beating all the other top players effortlessly, he was winning the world championship over and over before giving up the title out of boredom.
 
 During [covid](covid.md) chess has experienced a small boom among normies and [YouTube](youtube.md) chess channels have gained considerable popularity. This gave rise to [memes](meme.md) such as the bong cloud opening popularized by a top player and streamer Hikaru Nakamura; the bong cloud is an intentionally shitty opening that's supposed to taunt the opponent (it's been even played in serious tournaments lol).
 
@@ -56,13 +56,13 @@ During [covid](covid.md) chess has experienced a small boom among normies and [Y
 
 On **perfect play**: as stated, chess is unlikely to be ever solved so it is unknown if chess is a theoretical forced draw or forced win for white (or even win for black), however many simplified endgames and some simpler chess variants have already been solved. Even if chess was ever solved, it is important to realize one thing: **perfect play may be unsuitable for humans** and so even if chess was ever solved, it might have no significant effect on the game played by humans. Imagine the following: we have a chess position in which we are deciding between move *A* and move *B*. We know that playing *A* leads to a very good position in which white has great advantage and easy play (many obvious good moves), however if black plays perfectly he can secure a draw here. We also know that if we play *B* and then play perfectly for the next 100 moves, we will win with mathematical certainty, but if we make just one incorrect move during those 100 moves, we will get to a decisively losing position. While computer will play move *B* here because it is sure it can play perfectly, it is probably better to play *A* for human because human is very likely to make mistakes (even a master). For this reason humans may willingly choose to play mathematically worse moves -- it is because a slightly worse move may lead to a safer and more comfortable play for a human.
 
-Fun fact: there seem to be **almost no black people in [chess](chess.md)** :D the strongest one seems to be Pontus Carlsson which rates number 1618 in the world; even [women](woman.md) seem to be much better at chess than black people. But how about black women? [LMAO](lmao.md), it seems like there haven't even been any black female masters :'D The web is BLURRY on these facts, but there seems to be a huge excitement about one black female, called Rochelle Ballantyne, who at nearly 30 years old has been sweating for a decade to reach the lowest master rank (the one which the nasty oppressive white boys get at like 10 years old) and MAYBE SHE'LL DO IT, she seems to have with all her effort and support of the whole Earth overcome the 2000 rating, something that thousands of amateurs on the net just causally do every day without even trying too much. But of course, it's cause of the white male oppression =3 lel
+Fun fact: there seem to be **almost no black people in [chess](chess.md)** :D the strongest one seems to be Pontus Carlsson which rates number 1618 in the world; even [women](woman.md) seem to be much better at chess than black people. But how about black women? [LMAO](lmao.md), it seems like there haven't even been any black female masters :'D The web is BLURRY on these facts, but there seems to be a huge excitement about one black female, called Rochelle Ballantyne, who at nearly 30 years old has been sweating for a decade to reach the lowest master rank (the one which the nasty oppressive white boys get at like 10 years old) and MAYBE SHE'LL DO IT, she seems to have with all her effort and support of the whole Earth overcome the 2000 rating, something that thousands of amateurs on the net just causally do every day without even trying too much. But of course, it's cause of the white male oppression =3 lel { anti-disclaimer :D Let's be reminded [we](lrs.md) love all people, no matter skin color or gender. We are simply stating facts about nature, which don't always respect political correctness. ~drummyfish }
 
 ## Chess And Computers
 
 { [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpXy041BIlA) is an absolutely amazing video about weird chess algorithms :) ~drummyfish }
 
-Chess is a big topic in computer science and programming, computers not only help people play chess, train their skills, analyze positions and perform research of games, but they also allow mathematical analysis of chess as such and provide a platform for things such as [artificial intelligence](ai.md).
+Chess is of some interest to [computer scientists](compsci.md) and [programmers](programming.md), computers not only help people play chess, train their skills, analyze positions and perform research of games, but they also allow mathematical analysis of chess as such and provide a platform for things such as [artificial intelligence](ai.md).
 
 Chess software is usually separated to **[libraries](library.md)**, **chess engines** and **[frontends](frontend.md)**. Chess engine is typically a [CLI](cli.md) program capable of playing chess but also doing other things such as evaluating arbitrary position, hinting best moves, saving and loading games etc. -- commonly the engine has some kind of custom CLI interface (flags, interactive commands it understands, ...) plus a support of some standardized text communication protocol, most notably XBoard (older one, more [KISS](kiss.md)) and UCI (newer, more [bloated](bloat.md)). There is also typically support for standardized formats such as FEN (way of encoding a chess position as a text string), PGN (way of encoding games as text strings) etc. Frontends on the other hand are usually [GUI](gui.md) programs (in this case also called *boards*) that help people interact with the underlying engine, however there may also be similar non-GUI programs of this type, e.g. those that automatically run tournaments of multiple engines.
 
@@ -78,7 +78,7 @@ Playing strength is not the only possible measure of chess engine quality, of co
 
 NOTE: our [smallchesslib](smallchesslib.md)/smolchess engine is very simple, educational and can hopefully serve you as a nice study tool to start with :)
 
-There is also a great online wiki focused on programming chess engines: https://www.chessprogramming.org.
+There is also a great online [wiki](wiki.md) focused on programming chess engines: https://www.chessprogramming.org.
 
 Programming chess is a [fun](fun.md) and enriching experience and is therefore recommended as a good exercise. There is nothing more satisfying than writing a custom chess engine and then watching it play on its own.