This week’s linkfest is brought to you by Swiss champion turned trainer, GM Noel Studer’s new course, Beginner Chess Mastery. This course is designed specifically for beginners up to the 1200 level. It is brand new, on sale for a few more days, and has a money-back guarantee. It, and Noel’s excellent, intermediate-level course are on sale for a few more days. More info here (this is an affiliate link, so purchasing via this link helps to support this free newsletter) You can hear more of GM Neal Studer’s chess improvement related insights on this week’s Perpetual Chess Pod.
Hi everyone, below you can find this week’s round up of chess news, reviews and blog posts, have a good weekend! - Ben
Chess Improvement
Gamechanger author GM Matthew Sadler shares a lot of great free content, and up until now, I have been forgetting to link to his blog. His latest post is about unorthodox opening ideas involving early 1…a6. (GM Matthew Sadler’s Blog)
TheOnoZone wonders if he is relatively worse at faster forms of chess because he took up chess as an adult and needs more time to think. Its possible IMO! (LiChess Blog)
FM Nate Solon has a ringside seat to how club-level players fare at solving chess puzzles. In this post he notes that amateurs typically do better solving narrow variations compared to multi-pronged, and shares advice for solving the latter. (Zwischenzug Blog)
TheChessCorner writes a helpful and short post about how to use Game Review to categorize your games in order to know what aspect of your game to work on. (Chess.com Blog)
GM Gregory Serper is so good at spotting and sharing patterns that recurred across chess history. He is at it again as he waxes nostalgic about the classic book Masters of the Chessboard. (Chess.com Blog)
Books
Quality Chess has 3 new books dropping imminently and is sharing free samples, as per their custom. Always worth a look! (GM John Shaw for Quality Chess)
I was honored to be named Chess.com’s Creator of the Month, and I thought Mick Murray did a nice job summarizing our interview (Chess.com Blog)
Misc.
Pretty cool story about a paraplegic who is now able to use an implanted chip to play chess! (Peter Doggers for Chess.com)
Here is another feel-good story- Russell Makofsky raised $11,000 to continue to donate chess sets across the world for The Gift of Chess (Mick Murray for Chess.com)
Chess News
The Reykjavik Open was entertaining as expected, top seed GM Bogdan-Daniel Deac took first by winning his last two games (Carlos Alberto Colodro for Chessbase News)
Leonard Barden provides another informative rundown of Global and British Chess News. “Top grandmasters are enthusiastic, and no wonder. Freestyle offers a generously rewarded escape from the many hours of drudgery spent before a classical game in preparing openings in detail with the aid of a Stockfish computer, with the real possibility that the mutual research will fizzle out into a drawn ending.” (The Guardian)
Young IM Alice Lee won America’s Cup. $40,000 is not bad for a teenager! NM Anthony Levin has the story. (Chess.com News) Earlier in the week, GM Levon Aronian won the Open Tournament