Hello there chess people! It’s been a quiet week, although if you want chess drama you can always find it. If you want other chess stuff, you can likely find that below too. Thanks for reading and have a good weekend!- Ben
Chess Improvement
TheChessDojo now has a blog! IM Kostya Kavutskiy walks you through the benefits of their new tactics trainer (ChessDojo Blog)
Dr. Benjamin Portheault interviews Casey Thomas, a dietician, about nutritional advice for chess players (Mindcreaser)
Dawn Lawson wonders if she is lazy or unusual for struggling to push hard on calculation practice. (IMO she is not!) (An Older Woman’s Chess Journey)
Professional Chess
Will Singapore submit a bid to host the 2024 World Championship? (Andre Shulz for Chessbase News)
Young Super-GM Erigaisi has managed to crack the World top 10 while competing primarily in open tournaments. Do engine-derived statistics suggest that he is taking a different approach in these games? (The Chess Engine Lab)
There are some discussions of a 4 million dollar tournament involving Caruana, Niemann, and others, but it might just be a rich dude posturing on Twitter/X. (Tarjei Svensen for Chess.com)
NM Anthony Levin looks back at the Chess.com classic, which was won by GM Alireza Firouzja (Chess.com News)
Books/Courses
FM Richard Webb reviews Unknown Weapons in the Grunfeld and says its “an excellent publication on the Gruenfeld Defence.” (British Chess News)
How (and why) did a Chess Club come to write a Chessable course (64 Chess Concepts You Should Really Know) ? As IM Richard Palliser explains, they did so in order to help club players and to fund the club’s expenses. (Chessable Blog)
Misc.
Legendary NYC Chess instructor Elizabeth Spiegel reflected on the success of the IS-318 school program which recently added a couple more national championship trophies to its mantle. “How do we win so often, you ask?… It's my whole job: I'm at 318 full-time. I don't have private students. If kids love chess at 318, they can be in class with me 5x45=3 h 45 min/week, go to chess club 4x 2=8 hours a week, come to morning and lunch chess (4 hours/week), do their chess homework (1 hour/week), go to a chaperoned Saturday tournament where all of their games are gone over (4-8 hours/week). That's 21-26 hours of meaningful chess practice a week for free. Even if you are so rich you can't see straight, it's hard to arrange that many hours of paid chess lessons. “(Lizzie Knows All)
How is Chess.com’s “CAPS score” calculated? Martin Justesen digs in (The Say Chess Blog)