Perpetual Chess Linkfest #126, June 13, 2025

Taking a Pawn on b2

Happy Friday the 13th! Here are this week’s chess prose highlights:

Chess Improvement

Kevin Lincoln on the dangers of sort of knowing an opening. A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing! (Good Moves)

News

Julian from the Chess Engine Lab provides some more cool visuals- this one shows the quality of play of the Norway Chess participants in bar graph format.

IM Alice Lee leads early on in the Cairns Cup (NM Anthony Levin for Chess.com)

Vishy Anand uncorked a vicious sequence with 25… Rxb2!! to topple Erigaisi. Check GM Rafael Leitao’s annotations at Chess.com to see the rest of it. The old tiger still bites, or class is permanent, or Vishy is aging like a fine wine, or insert your own cliche about older players still sometimes being good at stuff.

Fun profile from David Llada on what makes GM Vasyl Ivanchuk one-of-a-kind. This quote alone made the hours spent compiling this week’s newsletter worthwhile. ““Marriage is like taking a pawn on b2 in the Sicilian Najdorf,” Ivanchuk once said, reflecting on his first divorce.” (ICC)

Misc.

I found this article to be fascinating- Irene Bantigue describes a recent push to get chess considered a varsity sport in New York City. “If New York City is one of the chess capitals in the world,” John Galvin said, “how does it not have a [public] high school chess league? It’s crying out for it.” (America Divided)

Is the chess world too accepting of poor sportsmanship- such as a (former) world champion banging the table in frustration after a loss? Dawn Lawson suggests it is. I tend to agree. (An Older Woman’s Chess Journey)

For those of you who are US Chess members, voting is now open for the US Chess Board. (US Chess)

Reviews

Forward Chess provides a review/sneak peek at GM Mihail Marin’s worthwhile, Learn from the Legends 2. (Forward Chess Blog)

Podcasts/Videos

For this week’s Perpetual Chess, I caught up with Tony Ballard. Tony is a former drug dealer (discussed at length in his memoir) who recently was freed after serving 26 years in prison. Tony credits chess with turning his life around and aims to teach it to at-risk youth as a rehabilitative tool . He is an inspiring guy. (Perpetual Chess Podcast)

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