Perpetual Chess Linkfest #125, June 6, 2025

Emotional Aspects

Hi there chess players! Here is another week’s worth of chess news, notes and insights. Have a good weekend- Ben

Chess Improvement

IM Kostya Kavutskiy’s European chesscation continues. He wrote about struggling to manage expectations now that he is a world famous chess blogger and shared some fun experiences at the Killer Chess Training camp and the Chessbase studios in Hamburg (Kostya goes for GM)

I love a good Dragodorf game, it is very unlikely to be boring. On his blog, GM Matthew Sadler annotates a miniature from the recent Cambridge International. GM Sadler has also annotated a few other games recently in his blog archive

Video Gamer and recent Chess Obsessive Andrew Braithwaite wrote about how his chess progress accelerated by imagining he had a ferocious chess alter ego. Fun read. “Tournament chess, I’ve come to realize, is a weird game… it features a sometimes incongruous collision of cerebral and emotional aspects.” (Ambush Tactics)

White to Move, what would your plan be? GM Alex Colovic reveals Botvinnik’s progressive choice in his latest post

Dr. Nick Vasquez on a Key Lesson he Has Learned in Chess (and Medicine)- “When facing critical decisions, what makes someone an expert or professional is consistently considering you might be wrong.” (Chess in Small Doses)

US Chess announced a small change to its rating system to combat persistent deflation (Chess Life Online)

What can we learn about getting better at chess from American football star Tom Brady? “If you want to get good, you have to play a lot more than you read” (Nick Plays Chess)

FM Nate Solon is back with another great post on the importance of embracing defeat. “I’ve previously written about the cave strategy, where you retreat to a cave, study assiduously for months, and emerge to win a tournament. The good thing about the cave strategy is it lets you get good without experiencing the pain of losing; the bad thing about the cave strategy is it doesn’t work.” (Zwischenzug)

Chess News

Magnus’ slam of the table has drawn mainstream media attention. Nitesh Pahwa used it as a lens to look at a developing rivalry between Carlsen and Gukesh. (Slate)

I always enjoy following the North American Continentals as many GMs try to play their way into the FIDE World Cup. The above gentlemen all qualified- (GMs Jose Martinez, Sam Shankland and Alexander Fier.) Here is an enjoyable writeup and game analysis by IM Max Lu for CLO)

Congrats to GM Anna Muzychuk and GM Magnus Carlsen on winning the Norway Chess events. Colin McGourty breaks down a dramatic final round. (Chess.com News)

Nakamura’s recent “premature resignation” spurred GM Jon Speelman to look at other devisive errors in evaluation. Here, a GM playing Black offered a draw, but Black actually has mate in 3. Can you spot the mate in the 3? Find the answer in GM Speelman’s Chessbase column.

Podcasts/Videos

Chess YouTuber Extraordinaire Hanging Pawns went on Chess Journeys to discuss his… chess journey. (Chess Journeys Spotify)

On this week’s Perpetual pod, my guests and I went on deep on chess teaching, the business of chess teaching, and chess in movies with two American scholastic teachers, Coach Jay Stallings and NM Adam Weissbarth. (Perpetual Chess Podcast)

Misc.

Fun article from Jen Shahade- she played ChatGPT in chess, and not only did it play terribly, but it tried to cheat! (Games and the Grid)

That is the silhouette of FM Mike Klein who wrote about the 100 (!) countries he has now visited, and somehow loosely connected it to chess. (Chess.com Blog)

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