I feel like it's 50/50 between people doing that, and people that have spent a lot of time tuning a system they are pointing at focused and well specified problems.
9 karma · joined May 27, 2026
What's left is tautology.
The other things you describe, such as endgame tables, are really more related to the domain of chess-computing, a subdomain of algorithms, and likely something you exceed your friend's knowledge in.
Getting to a high rank in chess isn't about better domain knowledge, is about application and experience.