The reason behind the obscure Thinkabit account elimination by the lichess big fishs.
So many of you did believe thinkabit was banned by using engine or developing a bot? You were deceived!
The real reason is.. they could not tolerate Thinkabit desire for anonymity. They spent considerable time trying to figure out who he was, asked for him for his personal data and FIDE credentials without success.
After too much pressure from the other top seeds who could not stand being defeated by thinkabit game after game, they decided to favor the ones who are related too lichess team, who make streams or are internet celebrities.
I personally only ever played 1 game against thinkabit and had absolutely no thoughts or comments to make about this player ever until i heard today he had his account closed - just for the record. I commented today thst i found the stream link he did was weird as there was actually zero commentary in it.
Please could you substantiate a bit further who you think had influence over the account closure ?!
Off topic completely :)
@KingscrusherCould you invite Jerry ChessNetwork to join Lichess?
It would be awesome to have you 2 guys here together :)
Thinkabit login please
Even though thinkabit had american flag, in his decription he said that he is IM from Ukraine. Riplichess is also from Ukraine ...
I don't find a lack of stream commentary suspicious. There are many streamers that don't talk for a variety of games. Live commentary while playing chess games is a skill in and of itself. 99.999% of chess players never vocally annotate their games and thought process when they play.
As a fun example, go back to Crusher's or my first videos (or any of the older YouTube chess channels) and compare the commentary during play to the recent ones. It's pretty fun actually. From my end, on my very first video, while not a live game as those came a bit later, I crack up on my last sentence - brutally honest and totally unrefined.
LOL - still get a kick out of it today! =)
His stream is very suspicious. There was only one video in past broadcasts and plays 1200-1700 players. Isnt that strange? By the way he didnt completely crush these relatively weak players
Jrobi i think i was influenced by you to try doing live commentary years back - your a major innovator :)
Yeah, in such an open, tolerant, and digitally libertarian atmosphere as lichess', thinkabit was banned because he desired anonymity. Don't be ridiculous.
As Hellball said, he was politely asked if he was an IM, GM, NM, etc, as he played to a very high standard, whereupon thinkabit replied with something along the lines of 'I understand. You will not see me play on this site again.'
On top of that, if you'd been around here for anytime, there was always a lot of suspicion regarding thinkabit, pretty much from day 1. Many top players said they thought he was cheating - even Uereqas said it, who ironically also turned out to be cheating.
Thanks very much Crusher! I really enjoyed the early years with you and the other chess pioneers on YouTube - so many awesome and great experiences/vids! I learned a great deal from your game analysis videos back when I started (and still do). Heck, now that you're CM on the verge of NM you should fire up some online coaching services - I will be in line.
Maybe a coaching tool on your site is in order for the users! It's time to begin my OTB rated federation push this summer and work towards some goals on that front, and while self-study has done me well I want to experience the benefits that come from personal coaching.
