Good day, fellow chess fan. It was a glorious week in the chess world, as no one new was accused of cheating, although GM Kramnik is available to discuss his prior allegations. The Champions Chess Tour Finals kicks off tomorrow in Toronto and should be a fun one, with Magnus, Hikaru and Alireza in action, among others. Other than that, we have some mainstream media chess articles to share, and the usual assortment of chess links. Have a good weekend.
Chess in the News
IM Levy Rozman was featured in the New York Times! His family “ always figured he’d go into computer science or finance — “‘He has a computer in his brain’, said his grandmother” (Reid Forgrave for the New York Times)
Enjoyable feature on the grandmaster siblings, Vaishali and Praggnanandhaa. Vaishali said “Every time he had a great result and the attention was on him, I would slip back to feeling a bit miserable.” (Susan Ninan for the BBC)
Chess Improvement
I really enjoyed this analysis by GM Dmitry Gordievsky of Hikaru’s blitz repertoire. “The first good news is that the second move, 2. Nc3 (against 1. e4) , can be premoved” (LiChess Blog)
Following up on his prior post, Dr. Nick Vazquez outlines how the book Make it Stick will impact his training apporoach “I know a lot of players including myself who are far better at tactics than they are at the game. Perhaps we’ve been (studying) wrong.” (Chess in Small Doses)
One more from Dr. Nick, he looked back and categorized all of his classical game blunders from the prior 2 years. I endorse this productive masochism! (Chess in Small Doses)
Martin is giving away a free tactics ebook (The Say Chess Blog)
Coaches corner with legendary author, GM Johan Hellsten! The biggest factor for improvement for players below 2000 is… “ Analysis of one's own games, which will indirectly lead to work in the most necessary areas.” (Chessable Blog)
Here is a helpful Review of Playing the English by Nikolaos Ntirlis. “As expected, extensive use has been made of chess engines in preparing the repertoire options, and the book includes many novelties.” (Forward Chess Blog)
Chess News
FM Dennis Monokroussos is back on the blogging grind, and provides a helpful rundown of recent cheating allegations (The Chess Mind Blog)
WGM Jennifer Shahade was recently profiled in American Chess Magazine, and she shares a few excerpts on her blog. “I loved what I founded with US Chess Women. But I ultimately realized I could make a greater impact from outside of US Chess.” (Jennifer’s Substack)
Carol Meyer, The Executive Director of Us Chess, is departing (Chess Life Online)
FIDE is making changes to its rating system as of January 1 2024 (Tarjei Svensen for Chess.com)
Carlsen surpassed Nakamura, with the highest rating ever on Chess.com (NM Anthony Levin for Chess.com News)
Congrats to FM Nate Solon on hitting 5,000 subscribers! Nate looks back at his most popular posts, and the “State of the blog” (Zwischenzug Blog)