The Olympiad maintains center stage, and the rest of the chess world is otherwise somewhat quiet. Here is this week’s assortment of noteworthy chess links. Have a good weekend! - Ben
Chess News
The Olympiad is in the homestretch, India is dominating the Open section heading into Round 9. The Women’s section is much more nip-and-tuck with India, Poland and Kazakhstan tied for first (NM Anthony Levin for Chess.com)
James Crabtree of the Financial Times provides context on the upcoming vote to unban Russia from FIDE. “To understand why Russia is willing to spend valuable geopolitical capital on chess is to peer into the psyche of Putin and his entourage.” (Financial Times)
Leonard Barden is back with another banger, covering various highlights from the Olympiad. “The near simultaneous advance of Gukesh and Erigaisi to the world top at a decade younger than the Carlsen-Caruana generation raises the prospect that chess in the second half of the 2020s could become an all-Indian duel, a new version of Mikhail Botvinnik v Vasily Smyslov in the 1950s or Garry Kasparov v Anatoly Karpov in the 1980s, with France’s Alireza Firouzja as the spoiler in the role of Mikhail Tal.” (The Guardian)
Chess Improvement
FM Nate Solon on why trainers like him should keep working on their chess (Zwischenzug)
GM Gregory Serper shares a fun story from the annals of chess history and a few examples of tricky Queen Endings (Chess.com)
Julian from The Chess Engine Lab came out with a cool way to visualize common piece placement in the opening- heat maps. (The Chess Engine Lab)
IM Kostya Kavutskiy tied for first in his tournament in Italy! “Missing chances is disappointing, but at the same time it also means I have lots of room to grow 😊, which is a very motivating feeling.” (Kostya goes for GM)
Reviews
NM Craig Clawitter recommends “May the Best Player Win” a new chess novel for kids by Kyla Zhao (Chess.com Blog)
Misc.
Anna Cramling was one of the many female chess players targeted with obscene letters and argues that the perpetrator is not being punished harshly enough. (Tarjei Svensen for Chess.com)
What is the chess bar scene like in Toronto? SheldonofOsaka left Osaka to find out. (Chess.com Blog)
“Simaginfan” on Why Tarrasch is one of his favorite annotators. (Chess.com Blog)
Correction
Regrettably, I linked to a “fake blog” last week of a chessplayer who is actually deceased, GM Dmitry Svetushkin. You can read a touching tribute to GM Svetushkin (by his friend GM Ilya Smirin), who died in 2020 by suicide at age 40 here.