Perpetual Chess Linkfest #81, May 3 2024
Showtime
The big news of the week is that Hollywood is making a book and then a movie about a guy who sits in his house and collects chess related articles from all over the internet. OK, actually it’s about the Magnus-Niemann saga. The signed author, Ben Mezrich, writes very entertaining books that have very little relation to the actual events that he is chronicling. I can’t wait to see how his imagination runs with this story!
Beyond the box office- we’ve got a few glowing book reviews for you to review and and a bunch of chess improvement-related advice to absorb. Enjoy and have a good weekend! - Ben
Book Reviews
GM Matthew Sadler reviews GM Ivan Sokolov’s Winning Chess Middlegames 2: An essential Guide to 1. e4 structures . One of my biggest failings as a professional chess player was that – in my heart – I wanted chess to be a simple, clean game… this approach made me inflexible and vulnerable to the inevitable glitches of practical play. (New in Chess Blog)
Patzer’s Review on Evaluate Like a Grandmaster by FM Nate Solon and GM Eugene Perelshteyn Very good book IMO, & he agrees! (Patzer’s Review)
Richard James reviews GM Matthew Sadler’s Re-engineering the Chess Classics. He writes, “It’s a fascinating book, I think you’ll appreciate, which will be of interest to most chess players.” (British Chess News)
Chess Improvement
‘NDPatzer’ is back, this time he explores how a cognitive bias called The Einstellung effect is impacting his chess skills (LiChess Blog)
Dr. Nick Vasquez on what he is doing to try to limit moments of blindness in his games. “Asking questions is the single best way to change the filters on your perception.” (Chess in Small Doses)
Great post from Dan Bock on What Decides Games at the 1900 (USCF) Level (The Chess Improvement Lab)
Among other topics, David Hamm shares some very helpful beginner tips for those of you newer to chess. “I think laughter is a secret to finding lasting joy in chess and I don't hear that talked about a good bit.” (LiChess Blog)
‘TheOnoZone’ on whether its true that he and other adults don’t enough time to study chess “I used to say that nobody doesn’t have the time for something, they just don’t want to prioritise it. Once I had a kid I had to admit that wasn’t true.” (LiChess Blog)
IM Matthew Wadsworth with a trip report on a strong showing for him at the Reykjavik Open (Chessmoves)
FM Andy Lee does an extremely deep dive on what we can learn from the critical Caruana-Nepo game from the Candidates (Chess & Lit)
Julian from the Chess Engine Lab tested the abilty of Maia (a Lichess-based neural net engine) to solve puzzles (The Chess Engine Lab)
Chess News
Vaishali Rameshbabu is now officially a GM! (Nathaniel Green for Chess.com)
Meanwhile, 9-year-old WCM Bodhana Sivanandan is already working on a WIM title! (Tarjei Svensen for Chess.com)
GM Magnus Carlsen had a lot of interesting takes on the Candidates and World Championship (Tarjei Svensen for Chess.com)
More quotes from Carlsen plus incisive analysis of top chess here from Leonard Barden. “International chess could be heading for an Indian era to match the Soviet Union’s dominance of the late twentieth century.” (The Guardian)
Misc.
Very interesting research from Karel van Delft & colleagues about whether prompting a player to consider candidate moves improves chess performance. I won’t spoil the conclusion! (Chessable Blog)
Former Canadian Champion, GM Mark Bluvshtein, who is retired from competitive chess, writes about how chess has helped him in the business world (Collage)
Martin Justesen on the potential downsides of the Gamification of Online Chess Sites (Say Chess)