[1251] Pony
└ posted on Thursday, 4 March 2021, by Novil
- Reporter: Welcome to the deciding match of this year’s junior chess tournament. The match will be between Logan Hunter and Yuna Williams. Logan has six wins and one draw. Yuna has won all seven games. That means she’ll only need a draw to win.
- Reporter: Logan, how did you prepare for the tournament?
- Logan: I played hundreds of games on lichess.org. And I studied all the legends, Fischer, Kasparov, Carlsen…
- Reporter: Fantastic!
- Reporter: And you, Yuna?
- Yuna: I looked up how the pony moves.
- Reporter: Knight.
- Yuna: Whatever.
- Camerawoman: You’re in big trouble.
- Logan: I know!
![[1251] Pony](/comics/2021-03-04-1251-pony.png "[1251] Pony")
shes too strong to be left alone
Reasonably, his best chance is that she gets bored in the middle and leaves to go play with Wally.
Only one reporter is named?
@ Gilly:
wut, none of the reporters are named here
Dude, just memorize board positions. the more you know the more likely you are to win.
He’s doomed.
This is one of those jokes that looks like a simple gag at first but actually has some strong veracity on closer inspection. The knight’s biggest strength is its mobility in the early game, when the board is cluttered – but many tactics involve specifically clearing up pathways for the rook, bishop, and queen, which remain strong players throughout the game. And the two biggest #CurbStompBattles in chess – fool’s mate and scholar’s mate – don’t involve the offensive moving the knights at all. Depending on how badly Yuna wrecked her opponents, she might not have had to move the knight in the seven games prior.
Will Yuna be playing at the level of “no ordinary venue”* next year? Perhaps then she’ll get some competition…
*”don’t you know the when you
Play at this level there’s no ordinary venue.
It’s Iceland, or the Philippines, or Hastings, or, or this place!”
– Murray Head, Chess, “One Night in Bangkok” Lyrics by Tim Rice and Björn Ulvaeus
So you follow up the arc of a tennis competition with one with a chess competition.
We get it. Yuna is a super genius, can we move on to more interesting topics?
Sorry to be a downer, but holy crap this topic is worn out.
@ Zelnik:
You should follow Garfield comics and complain about him eating lasagna again.
Logan’s shirt reminds me of a certain vendor in a certain video game series.
(The artists did the same thing because it was easier, although it was a little less easy when they moved to 3D.)
I play on lichess.org! (Y)
@ DTIBA:
Strictly speaking Yuna looked up the pony moves before the tournament, not before the crucial game. So at least she did not have to play the first games without being able to predict what the opponent is even allowed to do.
Someones been binging queens gambit i see.
@ Michael:
I 100% misread “before the tournament” as “before this match”. But my point about Yuna possibly not needing her knight prior to her research still stands.
Well, if it’s “before the tournament”, then the most obvious interpretation is simply that she’s winning without having needed to prepare much.
Half-Life-Zim wrote:
More like agadmator’s chess videos on YouTube.
Bedinsis wrote:
I’m also sometimes annoyed when two similar story arcs follow each other. But what can I do? I have to take what Sandra & Co. provide…
Arthur wrote:
Actually, that’s not true.
I forget which chess master said it, but one said the most difficult opponent is the one who BARELY knows how to play.
Seems that is because the opponent who studies the game, prepares thoroughly, and comes in confidently can quite predictable.
The one who does none of this has no pre-conceived ideas of what should be done, plays the game straight, and is infinitely better prepared.
@ Novil:
But the chess arc didn’t immediately follow the tennis arc.
Or has everyone forgotten the marble arc. (I wish I could.)
@ Valkeiper2020:
Really no. It’s way more difficult to beat a good player.
There are two reasons why it might be more “difficult” to play someone who barely knows how to play. One is that you’re expected to beat a very weak player almost every time and will lose lots of rating points if you lose or draw, but will gain almost no rating points from a win. This might create pressure to push too hard for a win in a position that’s likely drawn. (In this case, Logan has to push for a win anyway since he’s a half-point behind, so that’s not much of an issue.) The other is that they likely won’t play “book” moves in the opening. OK… so they *aren’t* playing opening moves that are generally recognized as the best and tested by years of grandmaster play. That’s not exactly something that strikes fear into my heart. It might mean you have to actually turn your brain on a bit earlier in the game than you’re used to, but that’s going to happen sooner or later anyway.
On the other hand, a fast-improving kid is an opponent to be concerned about. What’s scarier than checking your opponent and thinking “Oh, I beat this girl three months ago… and she’s rated 300 points higher now?!”
@ Novil:
I think that’s fantastic: a trilogy of tennis, marbles and chess, playing with the different sides of sports. I love it!
And Yuna is anyway my favorite character. 😀
Good laugh as always, no idea why anyone complains, this is glorious.
He’s right to be afraid. Even Death had trouble with knights.
@ foducool:
see the tags.
Looks like tha man gets a name and the woman is worthless?
@ Gilly:
nevermind, I thought there was a comma between Logan amd Hunter.
@ Zelnik:
I’m so with you on this. I liked the theme in the begining but it got out of hand too fast.
Would be funnier if it wasn’t so crazy exaggerated.
@ Zelnik:
Why not a comic arc about Zelnik? That’s sure to be riveting.
@ Arthur:
Not quite. Knowing some openings will help you in avoiding blunders and traps early, but for most of the game you are playing in positions that are unique and most likely will never be played again. This means that your general skills are far more important.
This also kind of suggests why Logan is terrified: someone without any serious preparations or long experience with chess was able to win every game anyway. This indicates pretty insane level of talent. If someone can go through openings without memorizing anything or giving advantage to the opponent, that person will bring hell in the midgame.
Novil wrote:
and here I though pogchamps 😀
Ah yes, the movie rule: in competition, the one with the least preparation is the protagonist and will thereby win, thus showing their awesomeness.
Novil wrote:
And that’s proof that you’re a creator who loves what he does, rather than some cheap money-grubbing creator. You don’t decide what path the story takes; your characters do.
@ No one of consequence:
Yeah, that was pretty much my thinking. Someone who goes into the tournament with no preparation at all and wins all the matches ANYWAY is someone who’s got some solid improvisational problem-solving skills. And there’s generally a point at which no amount of memorisation of past moves helps – it’s a matter of being able to look at the board, thinking ahead as many moves as possible, and figuring out how to get a checkmate (or force a draw if that’s just not going to be possible). Deep memorisation of past moves can help shortcut that by being able to go “okay, this looks like THIS situation from a historical game, so I should probably do this other thing” – but the person who can figure out what to do without that preparation, and who does so well enough that they’ve cleanly swept the competition? That’s someone to fear.
The first opponent would have a right to be confident at her lack of preparation. The second, maybe even third could think she got lucky. Seven straight wins, though? That says “good enough at strategic thinking to come up with her own winning strategies on the fly.”
Draxynnic wrote:
Well you have to be Paul Morphy to do that.
and quite frankly – that would not work.
@ Foradain:
Love the Chess reference!
@ David C:
I taught someone to play Go. The first game I gave the beginner a handicap, but I still won. The second game he beat me. By the third game he was vastly better than me. Soon he was the local Go champion.
“Experts are predictable. The world is full of dangerous amateurs.”
No one of consequence wrote:
Not to mention murder in the endgame.
Pupils came to the Master of Go and asked him: “Teacher, is it possible to became a Master of Go just by learning how to play?” Master smiled and answered: “Tonight I had a dream that Nasreddin Hodja came to me. He wanted to learn how to play, so I explained him the rules. That’s an example how for one to become a Master of Go, they only need to learn the rules.”
@ Valkeiper2020:
Nope.
It is mostly HARDER to beat them, because they ruin most strategys with random bullshit moves, but they don´t win.
Ever.
With all those sport arcs I’m kind of waiting for the tournament arc for Sandra and Woo
That reminds me of “Masha and Bear” and yes, he’s in big trouble!!!
“Ride, ride little pony!”
I’m reminded of a comic from Super Stupor, where a supervillain found they had sent a little girl super hero to stop her. And right on the spot her henchman quits.
@ Sashael:They win occasionally because they don’t have some of the preconceived notions.
For example, in 1984 Cliff Young, a 61 years old potato farmer in overalls and work boots, won the Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon, a 543.7-mile (875-kilometer) endurance race from Sydney to Melbourne, which takes about 5 days to complete. Cliff had an odd shuffle-like running form and was unaware of the “common knowledge” that it was best to run 18 hours and sleep 6. He instead ran the entire race without stopping in his odd shuffle running form and ended up winning the race by more than 10 hours. https://elitefeet.com/the-legend-of-cliff-young/
There are some other cases in the Real Life examples on TV Tropes’s “Achievements in Ignorance” page https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AchievementsInIgnorance
Finally, I’ve reached the latest episode ✌️👏👏
Novil wrote:
Even so, don’t you have the opportunity to pick-and-choose whose life you want to focus on? For instance, Landon’s parents’ divorce and his camping trip with his dad was only brought up in passing, it was never actually depicted in the comic.
Marscaleb wrote:
And they explained why. And was right.Arthur wrote:
ALL board positions? 🙂
Paeris Kiran wrote:
She’s not just genius: she’s co clever she’s capable of bending physical laws. I find quite plausible she will win. She would win even if he wasn’t clearly so stressed he wouldn’t be able to play properly.
Omiz wrote:
Congratulations. Especially if you are coming from the beginning. There is so much backstory.
Larisa a major character didn’t show up unitlil strip 33 then 50, and then she gets an arc of her own.`
You’ve probably been reading several strips a day. Now comes the withdrawal with a schedule of 2 strips a week.
@ DTIBA:
Personally, I thought it had to do with Yuna, who has practically admitted to being a novice at the game, is what many masters and experts fear to have as an opponent. The saying goes that a master or expert only fear an opponent who’s a complete/nearly complete amateur, the master can’t predict the strategies of one who has little to no idea what they’re doing. Of course, since Yuna is an incredibly intelligent little girl, she’s likely to become more of an expert as the match goes on. Your theory makes much more sense, though.
Isn’t there a trope about the unpredictably of an amateur being a bigger problem than another master? Especially in martial arts?