Perpetual Chess Linkfest #16, December 16, 2022
Opening Breakdowns, Tournament Reports and History Lessons
Did you guys know that as a collective you are more inclined to click chess improvement related posts than chess news posts? The truth hurts! Anyway, I am still going to keep linking to both of them. Without further ado, here are this week’s links. Have a good weekend everyone! - Ben
Chess Improvement Posts
Great stories from GM Serper in an article on the proper way to learn openings… “Unfortunately, most chess players don't know how to study openings, so they just try to mechanically memorize the content of the books and videos” (GM Serper for Chess.com)
Martin Justesen with a nice primer for club players on a weapon against d4 (Say Chess Substack)
IM Richard Palliser shares some quick knockouts in the Colle-Zukertort system (Chessable Blog)
FM Nate Solon shares tips on Deciphering Engine Opening Lines (Zwischenzug Substack)
Top Chess Tourneys
As I type this, Magnus is leading vs. MVL, so it looks like Naka and Magnus will be playing in the Speed Chess Championships! (Jack Rodgers for Chess.com)
Leonard Barden with more details on Magnus’ astounding route of Fabiano Caruana in the SCC quarterfinal (The Guardian)
On the Scholastic front, many new US National Champs were crowned in Baltimore (JJ Lang for CLO)
FIDE is changing the format for qualifying for the Candidates (Colin McGourty for Chess 24)
Chess History
Great blog post from New in Chess’ Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam on the Magnus era. Amusing quote from young Magnus here: “Sveshnikov is entitled to his opinion (that lack of opening knowledge would hinder young Magnus’ future prospects), and I am entitled to my opinion that he is a grumpy old man.” [I would have an lol emoji here, but apparently Substack is too highbrow for emojis) (NIC Blog)
Douglas Griffin shares some fresh translations of Smylov’s Famously Lucid Annotations (Soviet Chess History Blog)
Misc.
Pretty cool story on the AI front- Researches are making swift progress on an algorithim that can identify random players by their moves amidst a pool of thousands of players (Matthew Hutson for Science Magazine)
Congrats to Tani Adewumi and his family, who have been granted US Citizen (Vanessa West for Chess.com)