Perpetual Chess Linkfest #114, February 27, 2025

Death with no chess.

Hi there chess fans. We lost a real one this week with the passing of legendary World Champion Boris Spassky. What a life. I encourage you all to read the obits and enjoy a few games of one of the classiest World Champions we have known. Other than that, this week is fairly light on chess content. Enjoy, and have a good weekend!- Ben

R.I.P. Boris Spassky

Spassky in 1966, via Wikimedia commons

The chess world lost a legend, in GM Boris Spassky. If you only read one Spassky obituary, read that of Peter Doggers’, but FM Dennis Monokroussos also provides some links to obits in The Week in Chess, the New York Times, and more. (Peter Doggers for Chess.com)

Via GM David Howell’s Instagram

OK fine, you also should read the obit by Leonard Barden: “In the summer of 1946, Spassky began to visit a chess pavilion in the city’s Central Park and became obsessed with the game: ‘I used to go at 11am and return home at 11pm. When the pavilion closed in September it was like death, with no chess.’ (The Guardian)

Books

Forward Chess provides some highlights of Nicolaos Ntirlis’ latest, Reimagining 1. e4 (Forward Chess)

Chess Improvement

Fascinating chart from Julian at The Chess Engine Lab. This is a plot of at which move number the most GM mistakes occur. Julian notes there is a bump at move 40 (often the last move before time control), but it is not as pronounced as he expected. There is an oft-repeated adage of mistakes being frequent on move 41, the first move AFTER time control, due to some sort of pyschological letdown. Julian’s data does not appear to capture such a phenomenon. Read more in Julian’s post.

Great post from GM Noel Studer, although I don’t think “fixing blunders” is as easy as he makes it sound! “I recently spoke with a student who’s been stuck for a while. In five consecutive lessons, I drilled one simple point: Your issue is not thinking concretely enough — you’re blundering in every game because of it.” (Next Level Chess)

GM Sam Shankland had a fun round one win at the ongoing Prague Masters. 8. h4 announced Sam’s checkmating intentions early in a London opening. ChessNetwork wrote about/recapped the game on the LiChess Blog GM Aravindh now leads the tournament after 3 rounds.

Dr. Nick Vazquez returned from blogging hiatus to share some insights and try to get me to listen to a 4 hour Huberman podcast. Not gonna fall for it! (Chess in Small Doses)

Podcasts/Videos

GM Sam Shankland went on a non-chess podcast and talked about the ups and downs of his career. I always enjoy Sam’s candor. (The Comeback Chronicles)

FM Nate Solon went on a chess podcast and talked about “the blank slate drill”, “gritty calculation,” his upcoming Chessable course, and a recent tournament that was disappointing for him on multiple levels. (The Perpetual Chess Podcast)

One of the many flattering stories that has been told about GM Spassky on Perpetual Chess is below, from chess publisher and author Lou Hays…