Perpetual Chess Linkfest #11, October 28, 2022

British Chess loses a legend, as tension builds in two World Championship events.

R.I.P. IM Michael Basman

A Beautiful Tribute to IM Basman’s rich chess legacy from Peter Doggers of Chess.com (Chess.com Article)

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

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Simon Williams @ginger_gm

(1/2) Blair and I visited Mike Basman in the hospital on Saturday. He was clearly very ill but still shined with that special charisma his soul possessed. He mentioned that he wanted the following things to be remembered:

Simon Williams @ginger_gm

(2/2) To spread the love of chess, something he tirelessly dedicated his life to. To look at things differently, that's what Mike did and what Mike wanted future generations to do. RIP

Chess Improvement

Why Chess Players Should Meditate- “The goal of meditation is to bring space between stimulus and response” (Dr. Benjamin Portheault on the LiChess Blog)

FM Nate Solon on Why Chess Improvement is So Hard: “Chess players spend much of their training time drilling tactics like forks,

but in a real game they need to apply knowledge not only of tactics like forks, pins, and skewers, but also completely different types of thinking, like planning, psychology, time management, and so on. The challenge is to get all these different parts working together to win more chess games.” (Zwischenzug Blog)

FIDE Woman’s Candidates Tournament/Fischer Random World Championship

GMs Koneru and Lei lead in the FIDE Women’s Candidates Quarterfinal (Peter Doggers for Chess.com)

Fischer Random Chess @fischer_random

The Group stage has concluded! #FischerRandom Congratulations to Nodirbek Abdusattorov (Group A), Ian Nepomniachtchi (A), Magnus Carlsen (B) and Hikaru Nakamura (B) for advancing to the Semifinals! 📷: Lennart Ootes & David Llada

Sam Shankland @SamShankland

It felt so great to win Titled Tuesday today. I've never been able to bring my blitz to the same level as my classical chess, and after a ton of frustrating results, winning a top tournament was such a relief.

Niemann/Carlsen Controversy

“Historically, lawsuits by individuals accused of cheating at games have had a mixed but mostly rocky history.” (Stephen L. Carter for Bloomberg Opinion)

The ongoing Fischer Random World Championship features more stringent anti-cheating mention including plain clothes security officers watching for suspicious behavior! (Fatima Hudoon for DW.com)

GM Hjörvar Gretarsson on his game with Hans Niemann in the Reykjavik Open:

"I had the same feeling as Carlsen. I thought he was unfocused and opened the position. When it got complicated, he also played fast. At first I thought he was extremely talented. But I thought of cheating when I looked at the game afterwards. But I still assumed he hadn't cheated because I had no proof. For a lawyer, it's not fair to accuse someone of cheating without evidence." (Andre Schulz for Chessbase News)

Hans Niemann has been chosen to lead Team USA at the Team World Championship in Israel (Leonard Barden for the Guardian)

Chess Culture

Nathaniel Green gives an overview of how to Educate Yourself on “Chess Culture” (Nathaniel Green for Chess.com)

If only there were a newsletter that could help you keep up with chess culture. Oh wait…

GM Vishnu Prasaana on his Star Student, GM D Gukesh: “GM Gukesh plays a lot, rests a lot and a typical workday is around 10 hours.” (GM Avetik Grigoryan for the LiChess Blog)

“Mark Taimanov was a singular figure in chess history. Twice a Candidate for the World Championship, he was also one of the 20th century’s most important opening theoreticians, with entire branches of the Sicilian and Nimzo-Indian Defences named after him.” (Douglas Griffin’s Blog on Soviet Chess History)

A Chess Tournament Returned to Ukraine despite the War! “Most of the Grandmaster living in Kyiv used the opportunity to play in the tournament. However, two GMs from the Ukrainian capital, Georgy Timoshenko and Igor Kovalenko, could not take part because both serve in the Ukrainian army.” (GM Michael Golubev for Chessbase News)

That’s all the links for this week, have a good weekend- Ben