The Say Chess Podcast

This week I interviewed Ono, who is an adult improver, chess blogger, and chess coach. He has an amazing chess blog on Lichess, where he just published a post on blunders.If someone tells you to quit an addiction that is really hard to do, because it is not an action. It’s the opposite, it’s a non-action. The same goes for the blunder or safety check, which basically says: "make sure you don't blunder".Better advice would be to start doing press-ups. Sounds ridiculous right? But if every time you feel a craving you drop and do five push-ups, you're more likely to succeed than if all you have to do is... resist. Because that isn’t doing anything. It’s a non-action destined to be about as successful as “don’t think about a pink elephant”.— Ono, What the Fork is a Blunder Check?You might remember that I wanted to investigate and get a better understanding of why beginners blunders in last week’s post. Ono was not so long ago a chess beginner and has climbed to around 1800 Lichess rapid/classical. Ono started up coaching last year. He is helping beginners get a good understanding of the fundamentals of the game and help them stop blundering, so I thought he would be perfect to talk to about this subject. We had a really interesting talk, which I hope you will enjoy. During the interview, Ono mentions a method he calls the Alex Crompton method. If you want to read more about it you can find it described on Alex’s blog. Some notes I took away from the interview* Chess is a very complex game. When you are a chess beginner everything needs to be very simple. It helps if the student appreciates or acknowledges that chess is difficult and you need to study it to improve.* When the chess beginner starts out they are starting to build their own engine. The first engine needs to be very simple. Then you slowly can build on the engine. Every time you make changes to the engine you will have to expect setbacks before the engine starts running smoothly again. You cannot start with evaluating space advantage as a beginner. The engine is not ready yet. * Is advising a beginner to blunder-checking really good advice? You need to give actionable instructions.* When you see the opponent move ask: 1. What does the move do 2. What does the move no longer do * You need to train this as a habit.* Skills like tactics need training, while chess knowledge can be acquired from reading a book. * Ono’s takeaway from Jacob Aagaard’s ‘Potional Play’ for finding a move: 1. What is my worse-placed piece? 2. Where are the weaknesses? 3. What is my opponent’s plan?* Endgame tips for beginners: promote a pawn or win a pawn. I hope you liked the interview and please leave a comment if you have any questions. One last thing before you leave. As a special bonus for paid subscribers, I have added ‘Blindfold Endgame Visualization’ to the list of free ebooks you get when you sign up, so if you want to join click below./Martin Get full access to Say Chess at saychess.substack.com/subscribe

This podcast includes an interview with Braden Laughlin, 23, from Canada. Braden is working really hard on his chess and aims at NM. As you can see on his rating graph he is taking steps in the right direction each month.The interview focus on his most recent tournament and how it went, and the lessons learned.Last year I also lost two 20+10 games against Braden, which we briefly talk about during the podcast (I need a rematch soon).We also talk about John Nunn’s Puzzle Book. Braden is currently working on it. I have previously written an article based on the difficulty of the book (it is hard!), and if it is beneficial to solve really hard tactics vs. solving easier tactics.Braden is also documenting his OTB games on his YouTube channel, which I can recommend following and subscribing to. Here is his first-ever OTB game:I hope you will enjoy the episode, and if you have any questions for Braden please ask in the comment section:/Martin Get full access to Say Chess at saychess.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, I talk about the new Chess Training Accountability Group and announce a few updates. A new addition to the group will be accountability partners. The group is already +150 members and we do not know each other yet. I can recommend that you press the purple icon on the left and join the chat and introduce yourself. However, to help people connect and stay accountable I will create smaller teams of people — of course only if you wish to! You will be teamed up with players of similar strength and training goals. The idea is that you share your weekly training plans/goals and follow up each week. I will set up specific channels for each training team on the Pumble-chat (the Purple-icon on Clockify). If you are interested in joining please fill out the form (again):Secondly, I have looked at the training data for the first week. This Saturday we had 467 training sessions with an average duration of 34 minutes. Five people have tracked over 15 hours of chess training! Wow!It has been requested that I dived the chess training category into several sub-categories. I think this is a good idea. After looking at the entries I have decided to add the following:* Opening review and preparation* Lessons with Coach* Game analysis and annotation* Puzzles, Visualization, and Calculation* Chess Training (misc.)I hope you agree with these new categories. Please ask in the chat if you are in doubt about anything.Finally, if you have any chess friends who you think could benefit from joining the group, please feel free to invite them./Martin Get full access to Say Chess at saychess.substack.com/subscribe

If you haven't already subscribed to my newsletter you can join for free at www.saychess.substack.comI had the pleasure to have a talk with Neal Bruce about his return to OTB chess after a 4 year pause from tournament chess. Neal has posted a long thread about the tournament on Twitter which was a good reference point for our talk.Neal is a real chess grinder and is one of the persons I have followed the longest on Twitter. We are part of the initial #chesspunks-group, which we also reflect on.I hope you will enjoy the podcast. Please share and leave a comment with feedback.Final thing. Remember to add my podcast to your favorite podcast player./Martin Get full access to Say Chess at saychess.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to the 89 new subscribers who joined since the last newsletter.The newsletter now goes out to 1,249 people!If you haven't subscribed yet you can join for free. New subscribers get a 50-page pdf with the 14 annotated games from Capablanca’s classic book ‘Chess Fundamentals.The Tactics Ladder — A Chess Tactics Book For Expert Players (2000 FIDE Level)It is time to give you an update on my very ambitious chess tactics book series. The Tactics Ladder. If you haven’t heard about the project check out this post: I successfully published the two blue books for the 1400 FIDE rating range in February. My original plan was to work my way through the 2000 puzzles in the blue series myself. However, they were a little too easy for me to be challenging. So when I made a poll to get an indication of what book I should do after the 1400-level and it turned out evenly, I decided to pick the 2000 FIDE rating.That is the rating goal I want to attain, so why not make some training material to get me there. I started working on the book in March. One problem occurred to me quickly. The number of puzzles drops when we go up to the 2400 puzzle rating on Lichess around 7400 puzzles had a user rating above 80, which I decided to be the minimum I would accept for the book. Originally I had planned two books for each step in the series, one on openings and middlegame positions and one on endgames. The relatively low number of puzzles made me change my mind and I will now publish only one book for the expert level. This also secures that the puzzle popularity rating will be higher compared to a two-book series. Popularity rating = (upvotes - downvotes)/(upvotes + downvotes)The average popularity rating for the book will be 91,8! The next decision was to select some relevant themes for the 10 chapters. Here is what I ended up with:* Opening tactics I* Opening tactics II* Crushing in the middlegame* Pawn endgames* Mate in X* Minor piece endgames* Advantage in the endgame* Sacrifice* Rook endgamesSo a slight pull towards the endgame, but I also think that it is something most chess improvers, me included, forget to work on. Soon to be published!The process of editing and aligning everything in Word has been a bit tedious and frustrating and has taken some time to overcome. Imagine creating a word document with 1000 pictures! However, I think I have won the battle against Word and will be ready to publish very soon!Free stuff to members?Finally, I’m thinking about enabling the membership function here on Substack, which would make it possible to support the newsletter. I still want to keep the newsletter free, but like many other content creators with Patreon or other similar solutions, I would be able to offer special perks to members. A perk could be the PDF of ‘The Tactics Ladder’ when it is released. Did you solve the two puzzles?/MartinSolutions* Solution no. 1* Solution no. 2 Get full access to Say Chess at saychess.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to the 96 new subscribers who joined since the last newsletter. Join the 1,129 others receiving chess perspectives ranging from chess history to chess improvement.In the podcast episode I talk about:* The 30 days blindfold chess challenge* The 2016 World Chess Championship, A Russian Spy, and The Mueller Report* My own chess improvement, the newsletter/publishing business, and why I will try to shift my mindset from chess improvement to chess enjoyment.Remember to follow the podcast in your local podcast player. Are you ready for a challenge? I have made a 30-day training challenge to motivate myself, and hopefully, also others to do some blindfold chess training every day for 30 days. Here are the rules for the challenge:* Play at least one blindfold game each day* Solve min. 5 blindfold puzzles each day🧩* Play more blindfold games than regular gamesIf you want to Tweet about it you can use the hashtag #30DaysofBlindfoldChess Blindfold training materialHere are some good blindfold training resources that I plan to use for the challenge:Blindfold Chess Puzzles (link)This site has a really simple and useful layout. The tactics are based on the Lichess puzzle database. You can adjust the number of pieces and the difficulty. Blindfold Chess (link)Another option is to practice blindfold chess against an engine. Here this site is perfect. If you don’t like the layout there is also this site: https://chessinsights.org/blindfold/Lichess blindfold modeUnder preferences > Game display you can pick ‘Blindfold chess’. I have made an alternate account for blindfold chess practice. It is not 100% blindfolded since you can see the board, but it is fun to play against real opponents and it is challenging as well. If you want to play without the empty board you can enter moves on Lichess too. You just have to into Game behavior > Input moves with the keyboard. Then you just have to put a post-it over the board on your screen.Blindfold chess books (link)Finally, you can also invest in some blindfold books. I have made two books so far. Another new book with good reviews is ‘Cognitive Chess: Improving Visualization and Calculation Skills by Konstantin Chernyshov. Apps and programsOther good options for blindfold training are listed here:* Chessvis App* NoirChess* The Tarrasch Chess GUI (includes Blindfold training options)* Chessfish* Blind tactics on ListudyI hope you will find the resources useful and the podcast interesting!/Martin Get full access to Say Chess at saychess.substack.com/subscribe

Hi! I have made a brand new chess podcast. You might ask how will this be different from the other chess podcasts? The Say Chess Podcast will be updating you on my chess projects, delivering blindfold chess puzzles, miniature games, and moments from chess history. It will challenge you to visualize the chessboard and practice blindfold chess. To ensure a good narration of the puzzles I have used an artificial voice, that I think does a better job than I would.In the first podcast episode, you will find a part of Capablanca’s book ‘My Chess Career’ that I’m covering in newsletter format. The game mentioned on the podcast can be found in this Lichess study or look below.Let me know what you think!THE MATCH WITH MARSHALL, CHAPTER IV, My Chess Career, part VII “The most surprising feature of all was the fact that I played without having ever opened a book to study the openings.” — CapablancaSubscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.The Match with Marshall. No difficulty was experienced in arranging the match. Marshall was disposed to play in this case where he naturally discounted his victory. How far he was wrong the result proved. I beat him eight to one with fourteen draws thrown in between. I can safely say that no player ever performed such a feat, as it was my first encounter against a master, and such a master, one of the first ten in the whole world. The most surprising feature of all was the fact that I played without having ever opened a book to study the openings; in fact, had Marshall played such things as Danish Gambits, Vienna openings, or the like, the result might have been different. I certainly should have experienced more difficulty in obtaining such a result. I had only looked up an analysis of the Ruy Lopez by Lasker, on the f5-defence, but the analysis was wrong, as it did not give the strongest continuation for Black. This, and whatever I knew from experience or hearsay, was all my stock of knowledge for the match. My victory put me at once in the foremost rank among the great masters of the game. The play during the match showed that I was weak in the openings and just about strong enough in the simple play for position. My great strength lay in the end game, and I also excelled in combinations of the middle game. I had a fine judgment as to whether a given position was won or lost, and was able to defend a difficult position as few players could, as I repeatedly demonstrated during the course of the match, in repulsing Marshall’s onslaughts. I may add that my style was not as yet either definite or complete, though it had a wide range, i.e. I could attack almost as well as I could defend, and could make combinations in the middle game nearly as well as play the endings where I felt more at home and was decidedly strongest. Here are some of the games with notes as I see them today. GAME No. 7.The Fifth Game of the Match.F. Marshall vs. J. R. Capablanca, 0-1Link to Lichess studyYear: 1909Opening: Queen's Gambit Declined (Lasker Defence)1. d4 d5 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. Bg5 Be7 5. e3 Ne4 Today, when I have developed theories in accordance with my greater experience and knowledge, the chances are great against my making such a move, but then it was different, I did not know what to play, and when someone told me that Lasker had successfully played this move in his match with Marshall, I decided to adopt it. It was not till the end of the match, when I learned something else, that I changed my defence. 6. Bxe7 Qxe7 7. Bd3 The continuation adopted by Marshall in this game is in my opinion deficient. I believe that he played this variation best in the twenty-first game. Here, at any rate, I think it is better to play cxd5, followed by Qb3, after the Knights have been exchanged. 7... Nxc3 8. bxc3 8… Nd7 cxd5 at once is better. 9. Nf3 O-O 10. Qc2 h6 11. O-O He still had time to play cxd5, which was the correct continuation. 11... c5 With the idea of counterbalancing on the Queen’s side the attack of White against the Black King. 12. Rfe1 dxc4 13. Bxc4 b6 14. Qe4I do not think well of this maneuver, as the attack is too slow to obtain any advantage, and on the other hand, it compels Black to post his pieces where he wanted, i.e. the Bishop at b7, the Knight at f6, and his two Rooks at c8 and the Queen-square respectively, thereby holding the open lines with the Rooks and ready at the same time to attack the enemy’s center. 14... Rb8 15. Bd3 Nf6 16. Qf4 If Qh4, Nd5 would have been sufficient. 16... Bb7 17. e4 Rfd8 18. Rad1 Rbc8 Black has now the superior game, as there is no weak point in his position, and his Queen’s side is much stronger than White’s. Besides, the strategical position of Black’s pieces is superior to that of White’s. 19. Re3 Not good, as Black quickly demonstrates. Bb1 was the correct move. 19... cxd4 20. cxd4 Rc3 21. Bb1 An error, Qh4 was the only chance White had of holding the game. 21... g5 22. Nxg5 Qg3 would have lost a Pawn, but White sees chances of attack by sacrificing the Knight and consequently adopts this continuation in preference to the other, which he thought would also have lost the game with less chances of a possible mistake on Black’s part. 22... Rxe3 23. Qxe3 Ng4 hxg5 would have avoided complications but would have left White with two Pawns for the Knight. 24. Qg3 Qxg5 25. h4 Had White played Qc7 at once, Black would have answered 25. Qc7 Rc8 26. Qxb7 Rc1 27. Qb8+ Kg7 28.Rf1 Qd2 winning outright. 25... Qg7 26. Qc7 Rxd4 Not the best, Qf6 was the right move. Incidentally, it would have saved me a great deal of trouble which I had to win the game. Here I will call attention to the poor notes sometimes written by analysts. Games are often annotated by unknown players who have not sufficient knowledge of the game. As a matter of fact, the games of the great masters, at least, can only be properly annotated by very few players. Of course, even the best are not exempt from mistakes, but while they make them few and far between the others do so continuously. I was highly praised by many because of the excellence of my play in this position, while in reality, I could have done better. They simply did not see that here Qf6 was better than the text move. 27. Qb8+ Kh7 28. e5+ Be4 29. Rxd4 Bxb1 30. Qxa7 Nxe5 31. Rf4 Be4 White should not have allowed this move. 32. g3 Nf3+ Very poor play, f5 at once was the right way. After the text move Black has a difficult game to win. 33. Kg2 f5 34. Qxb6 Nxh4+ 35. Kh2 If Kh3, then Qa8 would win at once.35... Nf3+ 36. Rxf3 Forced, as Black threatened Ng5+ followed by Qa8. 36... Bxf3 37. Qxe6 Be4 38. f3 Bd3 39. Qd5 Qb2+ 40. Kg1 Bb1It is from now on that it can be said that I played well. The ending is worth studying. 41. a4 Qa1 42. Qb7+ Kg6 43. Qb6+ Kh5 44. Kh2 Ba2 45. Qb5 Kg6 46. a5 Qd4 47. Qc6+ Qf6 48. Qe8+ Qf7 49. Qa4 Qe6 50. a6 Qe2+ 51. Kh3 Bd5 52. a7 52… Bxf3 Resigns.Stay tuned for more!Thanks for reading The Say Chess Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work./Martin Get full access to Say Chess at saychess.substack.com/subscribe