Perpetual Chess Linkfest #115, March 7, 2025

Find a chess hero

Chess Improvement

Are accuracy scores a good measure of how well you played in a game? GM Noel Studer says no. (NextLevelChess)

In the wake of his recent passing, Jen Shahade reviewed some Spassky games. Here she presents an all time classic tactic by Spassky, Black to move and win! Answer in Jen’s post.

Dawn Lawson writes about the getting used to the feeling of being the only woman at a local chess tournament. “, I felt very self-conscious about my gender, my age, and my chess ability. Would the kids who played me think I looked like their crazy grandmother?” (An Older Woman’s Chess Journey)

Should you moved your attacked rook or do you have something better here? Find out what went wrong for Black here in Kevin Lincoln’s post

Dr. Nick Vasquez on “the paradox of choice” and how to make a study plan from the overwhelming amount of chess resources. “I firmly believe the overwhelming number of options available to people is one of the biggest obstacles to improvement.” (Chess in Small Doses)

Stockfish wanted to play 11. Bg5 but that dastardly engine Scorpio played 10… h6 to prevent it. What did Stockfish do about it? Find out in GM Alex Colovic’s latest.

Chess News

GM Aravindh Chithambaram photo via Wikimedia commons

At age 25, GM Aravindh Chithambaram has just made a massive rating jump into the 2700s and won the Prague Masters. These days that qualifies as being a late bloomer. FM Dennis Monokroussos annotates his win with Black over GM Anish Giri and wonders, “who is this guy?” (The Chess Mind)

IM Danny Rensch, IM Levy Rozman, Alexandra Botez and others will present at the MIT Sloan Sports/Business Conference (Tarjei Svensen for Chess.com)

FM Andy Lee provides a lovely tribute to GM Boris Spassky. “It’s generally considered good practice to study the games of past champions, but it’s not always clear what the student is supposed to find in them. Beyond the general assimilation of tactics and strategy, I’d argue that the purpose of studying such games is to find a chess hero, someone who has a similar feeling about the nature of chess while executing this understanding at a much higher level.” (Chess & Lit)

Books

GM Matthew Sadler waxes nostalgic as he reviews 4 recent books for New in Chess, including Peter Doggers’ The Chess Revolution. “At the top level, there’s lots of fantastic chess played, but it gets harder to spot it when so much is happening all the time! Even Freestyle Chess – which I like a lot in principle – worries me because I have to throw away so much of what I’ve learnt to play it! (I don’t even think control of the centre is that important without the standard piece setup.) None of these are objective criticisms of the book of course – merely the lament of someone who’s suddenly realised he won’t stay young forever... and maybe isn’t that young already!” (New in Chess Blog)

Misc.

Leonard Barden reveals a few details about the soon-to-relaunch BBC chess show The Endgame. It debuts Monday. (The Guardian)

Chess Videos/Podcasts

This week’s pod is with GM Wojciech Moranda, a high level trainer and author from Poland. Wojciech and I primarily discussed chess calculation, and what he calls “The 5 Elements of Calculation.” (Perpetual Chess Podcast)

Thanks for reading and have a good weekend- Ben