Hello, dear reader, and welcome back to the second edition of the Month in Chess(entials), a monthly newsletter in which we go over the most important chess tournament, games, and chess news that unfolded in the previous month and in which the author of these lines also bores you to death with things that have been happening in his (chess) life.

February 2023 was an extremely rich and busy month, both in terms of the number of tournaments/events going on in the chess world, as well as for the author of these lines personally – mainly (but not exclusively) due to the start of the 2023 Pro Chess League Season.

But I am getting ahead of myself! Let’s start our recap of the previous month in chess(entials) by taking a look at the most notable tournaments that unfolded over the course of the last thirty days.

Month in Chess

In contrast to January where seemingly the only event happening was the annual Tata Steel Chess tournament, the chess tournament scheduled for February was extremely stacked. FIDE events, private classical tournaments, online events, and chess leagues all unfolded one after another and it somehow became difficult to keep track of all the games and results.

Even so, I did manage to spend a decent amount of time looking at different games from different tournaments and following the results. The results of my “explorations” are summarized below.

FIDE Women Grand Prix

The month started with the 2nd leg of the FIDE Women Grand Prix – an integral part of the FIDE qualifying cycle for the Women’s World Chess Championship. The structure of the FIDE Grand Prix is not easy to explain, but basically – this series of tournaments are used to determine two participants in the Women’s Candidates Tournament. The second leg saw 12 of the total participants of the FIDE Grand Prix play (since every player has the right to play 3 out of 4 tournaments).

As will probably become apparent later in this newsletter, FIDE Women Grand Prix was somehow the tournament I followed the most. Partly it is because it was the first tournament of the month so my „chess hunger“ was still relatively fresh, but it is also partly due to a significant increase in obligations later in the month.

Anyway, from the very beginning of the tournament, Russian GM Alexandra Kosteniuk, well known for her online/Twitch handle „ChessQueen“ took the lead by winning her first four (!!) games. Even though her openings didn’t always work perfectly, she demonstrated an amazing fighting spirit and resourcefulness. Her game against Tan Zhongyi was very typical in that regard:

Now, when someone starts the tournament with 4/4, you’d expect that the outcome is almost decided and that the remaining rounds are „smooth sailing“. However, FIDE Women Grand Prix turned out to be a very fiery race until the very end – largely due to the tremendous performance of the Indian legend, GM Humphy Koneru. Despite starting with the three draws, Koneru kept playing at a very high level and slowly reducing the gap between her and the tournament leader Kosteniuk. Along the way, she missed several opportunities to score even more points, for example, in her game against WGM Zhu Jiner:

Koneru is completely winning here with the majestic shot Rh6!!

Despite the missed opportunities, Koneru remained within striking distance from Kosteniuk. The decisive clash of the tournament leaders happened in the penultimate, 10th round of the tournament – and it didn’t disappoint. Despite being completely winning for the larger portion of the game, Koneru let her opponent escape.

With the draw in the final round, Kosteniuk secured the overall victory in the tournament, since Koneru also failed to win her last-round game against Tan Zhongyi (ending up half a point behind).

Source: Chessgames.com

Airthings Masters 2023

The second big tournament that started somewhere in the middle of the Women’s Grand Prix was the first leg of the revised and revamped Champions Chess Tour – Airthing Masters. Following the merger of chess.com and chess24, the Global Chess Championship and the Champions Chess Tour were also merged into a new competition with an established name – featuring a completely new and fairly complicated format. It took me quite some time to figure it out and it is still not 100% clear to me, but in layman’s terms:

• Every leg of the Champions Chess Tour is open to all titled players. Non-GM players first have to compete in qualifying events which allow them to play in the so-called „Play-In“ stage, which is open to all GMshe Play-In tournament is a 9-round rapid Swiss, which is followed by a series of knock-out matches.
• On the basis of the results of this tournament, a total of 76 players are distributed into three divisions, which are then conducted using the so-called double-elimination format
• All participants in all divisions earn some money as well as tour points (the amount of which depends on their exact spot, of course)
• The winner of division 1 qualifies directly for the big final of the entire Tour

Even though most attention was paid to the highest division, which was won convincingly by the invincible Magnus Carlsen, all three divisions were stacked with top players and full of interesting clashes and strong match-ups. For example, in the round 2 match of the Division 2 Loser’s bracket, former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik eliminated the current World Chess Championship Challenger Ian Nepomniachtchi on the White side of the seemingly innocuous Colle System:

But mentioning just one example doesn’t quite do justice to all the other interesting matches that were played over the course of the week. Let me, therefore, simply mention that Division 2 was won by Fabiano Caruana – who managed to prevail over Chinese GM Yu Yangyi in a very convincing fashion, while Division 3 was won by yet another American – Samuel Sevian – who managed to beat the Indian prodigy R. Praggnanandhaa in a very tightly contested match, after the latter blundered in a better position in the crucial game of the match:

In general, despite the confusing schedule and the abundance of matches/games, chess.com’s event page – featuring the draws of every division – made it very easy to keep track of the action and follow the results of the tournament. However, I do have to mention that results were the only thing I managed to keep track of. With such a sheer amount of matches and the sheer amount of games played within every single match, it was simply impossible to check them all.

Therefore, my main complaint about the Champions Chess Tour (and many other online/rapid events) is that the games seem to blend into a singular mass whose components can’t be distinguished.

WR Chess Masters

On the other hand, February was not all about online chess and the Champions Chess Tour. From the 15th to the 26th of February, a new classical super tournament – titled WR Chess Masters – was held in Düsseldorf for the first time in history. Despite the absence of the World Champion Magnus Carlsen, the tournament featured an impressive field featuring the mix of „veterans“ (Anish Giri, Wesley So, Levon Aronian) and youngsters (Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Dommaraju Gukesh, Vincent Keymer, Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, Andrey Esipenko), thus presenting the chess audience with yet another „clash of the generations“ – just a month after the end of the Tata Steel Chess 2023.

And once again it was the member of the „old generation“ who shined and took the trophy home. This time it was the turn of the oldest participant in the tournament, GM Levon Aronian, who has demonstrated he can still very much play at the highest level after he had a very bad year in 2022 (result-wise).

Initially, it seemed as if Levon will simply „run“ with it, as he started the tournament extremely well (with 4/5). His game against Nodirbek Abdusattorov was particularly one-sided, although it has to be said he was helped by the latter’s risky opening choice – I don’t recall when was the last time we have seen the Sicilian Dragon at the top level:

However, in the second half, he lost to Ian Nepomniachtchi and drew the rest of his games, including his last-round game against Gukesh where he settled for a quick draw with the White pieces, basically opting to go directly to the playoffs:

Alas, as much as I respect these two great players, I do think this practice of arranging draws and going for tiebreaks needs to be prevented as it is awfully anticlimactic. It almost seemed as if Caissa would punish them both when Nepo won his last-round game against Vincent Keymer and joined them in the tie-break, but after 6 hours of play, he obviously ran out of steam. The tiebreak – and thus the entire tournament – was won by Levon in the end, despite his ‘crime against chess’ in the last round of the classical portion.

Source: Chessgames.com

Bundesliga

One of the main income sources for chess professionals who try to make a living purely by playing chess is various national chess leagues – especially in Europe. One of the strongest (and most lucrative) chess leagues – the German Bundesliga – continued in February with no less than five rounds being played over the span of the entire month.

Due to the fact that some of the strongest players in the world participate in it, Bundesliga is usually worth watching. For me as a Croat, extra interest is added by a huge contingent of Croatian Grandmasters that play for various teams – especially since this year some of the league dates clashed with the dates of the Pro Chess League and caused some headaches to me as a manager!

Finally, the Bundesliga should be of particular interest to the fervent listeners of the Chicken Chess Club Podcast due to the fact that one of the hosts – GM Laurent Fressinet – regularly participates. This year, he managed to ruin his „perfect“ drawing score by beating GM Martin Kraemer in a very nice positional fashion:

Chinese League Final 2022

While we are at different leagues – one event that was held in February that sparked my attention was the League Final held from 6th-11th February 2023. My interest was not the consequence of a particular affinity toward the Chinese chess scene – but rather the consequence of the fact that this competition saw the temporary return of the 2nd greatest female player of all time, GM Hou Yifan. Yifan played 6 games and scored 4 points. I can’t really tell you for which team she played or which team was ultimately crowned as the winner (mainly because I followed this one on lichess as it wasn’t available on chess24 – and lichess game viewer doesn’t really provide you with such info so easily…as of yet).
Let me, therefore, conclude this short segment with one of Hou Yifan’s games – one from the very first round against 2392-rated player Guo Qi. Perhaps it wasn’t smooth sailing, but that move 34.Kf1 is bound to leave you speechless.

Romanian National Championship

Another tournament that I followed superficially and sporadically was the Romanian National Championship. Not only did my personal acquaintance and a fellow full-time coach Vlad-Bogdan-Ghita participate. But quite a few people – most notably the renowned GM and coach Boris Avrukh – tweeted several interesting positions and games from this event – including the following beauty that is an early candidate for the game of the year 2023:

Alas, the tournament also got into the center of attention due to yet another cheating scandal that happened in the middle of it. The method was tried and tested – a player using the phone in the bathroom was caught because the arbiter displayed due diligence and went in the same cabin after he noticed very frequent toilet visits.

The scary part about this entire story is that the player was rated only 1698 and that he scored 0.5/4 in the tournament at the moment he was caught. I know I should be less paranoid about cheating, but instances such as these do nothing to curb that paranoia, given that they merely showcase that literally anyone can be tempted, irrespective of their rating or their tournament situation.

She Plays To Win International

Moving on to more positive topics. Given that I am a chess boyfriend, it is my sacred duty to follow any tournament in which WFM Maaike Keetman participates. In February, she was invited to Edinburgh to play the 2nd edition of the invitational WIM tournament titled „She Plays To Win International“, named after the non-profit organization She Plays To Win whose mission is too

„to encourage more girls to learn, play and benefit from chess.“

The participants of the tournament together with the participants of the side event. Great promotion of women’s chess. Source: ecforum

The tournament lineup consisted of 10 participants who battled over the course of just 5 days and grueling 9 rounds.

Now, in contrast to some shady closed tournaments held in Eastern Europe where certain higher-rated players collect their fee by handing a bunch of draws, here there were no such shenanigans. Apart from the few exceptions, the tournament was extremely fighting, with a bunch of decisive results and several games going on until the bare kings.

It was won by the 2nd seed – Slovakian WIM Svetlana Sucikova in an extremely dominant fashion (8/9). Maaike, unfortunately, didn’t manage to make the norm this time, although I can’t wait for her to give it another try. I am sure it is bound to happen sooner or later and it was very fun (and also quite stressful) for me to root for her from the distance!

Source: Chessresults

Pro Chess League

Last, but not least – February also saw the beginning of the Pro Chess League – a team competition organized by chess.com. Since the author of these lines is also a manager of the team participating in the league, it was only natural that I followed it closely (and in certain cases even streamed it).

From the fan perspective, I think it is a very entertaining event due to the following:

• You have the opportunity to see lower-rated players playing top-level opposition they don’t get to play otherwise. And this mismatch quite often leads to massive upsets, although probably the biggest one of the season was the victory of German WGM Josefine Heinemann over none other than Hikaru Nakamura
  
• Due to the rating cap, the teams seem to be fairly balanced and matches are, in general, very close and tight. I don’t think we have had a tie yet, but several matches ended by a very narrow margin of 9-7 for the winner ( including one of our losses )
• Irrespective of whether we are talking about Titled Tuesday, Champions Chess Tour, or Pro Chess League, players often seem to be a bit more nervous than usual when participating in these events – which can lead to some very dramatic mistakes, especially when faced with time pressure. The impact of major blunders and swindles is even more dramatic when it happens in TEAM events, but this element of NATURAL drama makes the entire competition very interesting to watch.

Other Chess News

Alejandro Ramirez accused by Jen Shahade for sexual misconduct

Even though February was filled with chess tournaments, in the domain of chess news it was not as rich as, say, January (or maybe it is just a consequence of me paying more attention to tournaments and games).

However, there was one major story that shook the chess world inside out. On February 15th, a well-renowned player, author, podcaster, female-chess ambassador, and Women Chess Program Director at US Chess, WGM Jen Shahade published a tweet publicly accusing a well-known commentator, coach, and former second of Fabiano Caruana, GM Alejandro Ramirez, of sexual misconduct toward her, as well as toward some other parties, some of which were even underage.

Source: Shahade’s Twitter 

Given Shahade’s reputation and the fact she is not one to throw such accusations lightly, it was immediately taken seriously. Both Us Chess and Saint Louis Chess Club launched official investigations against Ramirez and some of his privileges at the club were already revoked. According to Jen, after her statement, several other parties approached her and stated that they themselves experienced similar behavior from Ramirez.

This story came as a big shock for the broader chess community, as Ramirez was extremely well-respected and generally perceived as a very nice and humble guy. Alas, as usual in these cases, it transpired afterward that his proclivity toward exhibiting such behavior was not completely unknown in the chess circles, but there weren’t any real consequences until Jen decided to come out! Even in the aftermath, many people who have personally known him have decided to be relatively quiet/plead ignorance. In the recent episode on the C-Squared Podcast, both Fabiano Caruana and Christian Chirilla commented these allegations came as a total shock, which is a bit hard to believe as usually there are at least minor signs somewhere along the way.

It just goes on to show that we as the chess community have a loooong way to go toward making the environment more inclusive and safer for women, as quick and clear condemnation shouldn’t happen after 8-9 years and due to the bravery of the individual.

Alireza Firouzja confirms he is pursuing a career in fashion alongside chess

Anyone who has been following the chess scene lately has noticed that one of the biggest talents of our time, Alireza Firouzja, didn’t play all that much in the preceding 8 months or so. Many speculated that this was due to his focus on a single-minded goal of becoming the World Champion. However, from a certain point, a rumor that Alireza is giving up chess to focus on a career in fashion started circulating.

Of course, everyone dismissed such an idea as quite ridiculous… until Alireza himself confirmed it during an interview with the popular streamer WFM Alessia Santeramo:

Alireza’s plan is to try to push it on both fronts and have an accomplished career in both fields. This decision might be considered somewhat unconventional and it probably even angered some die-hard chess fans who want to see him play more.

But I agree with prevalent sentiments that he doesn’t really own the chess world anything. If fashion is a career he wants to pursue, we should all be happy for him and wish him all the best in that endeavor!

Russian Chess Federation Switches to Asia

Last but not least, allow me to „bore“ you with a little bit of chess politics. Due to the restrictions imposed on the Russian Chess Federation by the European Chess Union, at the beginning of February, the Russian Chess Federation applied for membership in the Asian Chess Federation – which was officially approved on the 28th of February. Chess, therefore, becomes the very first sport in which a federation tries to dodge the sanctions imposed on them and their players by switching federations in this manner.

Now, a whole debate could be held about the point of these sanctions. I fully agree with the opinion expressed by Fabiano Caruana in a recent episode of the C-Squared Podcast – banning athletes for the crimes of their home country seems a little bit harsh to me – especially since you could easily stretch this ethical principle to any other country in severe violation of human rights and international law (hello Saudi Arabia!).

But irrespective of your opinion on the matter, it does seem a little bit ridiculous that such a large federation can simply join a different continental federation just like that.

But what do I know anyway?

Month In Chessentials

Pro Chess League

February was not only a busy month in terms of the chess tournament schedule – it was also one of the busiest months of my life.

One of the biggest reasons was the start of the Pro Chess League 2023, in which the team I manage – Croatia Bulldogs – participates. Even though a number of preparatory actions were done before the season started, the fact that matches are played on a weekly basis means that there is a number of things to be done on a weekly basis, such as:

• Communicating with my team members and the chess.com staff, deciding who will play every week, and forwarding that info to the chesscom.staff
• Creating promotional materials (trailers such as this one) before every match
• Updating the data on the website, creating info about our future matches, entering the results of the matches
• Writing a report after the match (which often happens on a weekend because we played the first two matches on a Friday) preparing lichess studies with highlights and filming a video with highlights
• Streaming the event and making sure everything is in order with the players throughout the match

Perhaps these tasks don’t sound too daunting in isolation, but when combined they do amount to a significant amount of work – and I have to admit I somewhat underestimated it. It is true that most of these steps are self-imposed and maybe not necessary, but I want to do this job competently if I am doing it and I have never been the best at deciding where to make a cut.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention! We have played two matches so far (at the moment of writing), winning one and losing one. I will not delve too deeply into the details of these matches – if you want to find out more, please check some of the reports I have written where the matches are analyzed to the tiniest detail.

What I wrote?

Naturally, with all the effort and writing required for the needs of the Pro Chess League (and other endeavors), I didn’t really have much time/energy left to devote to serious writing. Fortunately, the amount of non-PCL writing did not amount to zero, as I did manage to start the project of accompanying my opening videos with articles and .pgns in written form.

Thus, in February I published three articles devoted to the Classical Variation, McCutcheon Variation, and the Alekhine-Chatard Attack of the French Defence. I do hope to continue this opening series – among other things – sometime in the future.

(Also note that I started publishing these articles on the lichess blog, as well, before I got muted – more on that shortly)

What I filmed?

Similarly, as with writing, the majority of my “video” hours went into creating materials for the need of the Pro Chess League – trailers, broadcasts, recaps, Meet The Bulldogs series, etc. I did manage to mix it every now and then by posting a historical video from the Steinitz-Zukertort match or an opening video, but if I were to single out a particular video that I am very proud of it is the video of my private lesson with one of my long-term students.

I was quite satisfied with how that lesson went (in front of the camera!) and people who have watched it seem to have extracted some value out of it, so if there is one video I would suggest you watch from my library, it would probably be that one.

You can find out more by simply visiting my Youtube channel.

100 Repertoires: Alekhine Defence

As I mentioned in my previous newsletter, after I published my previous Chessable course I immediately signed a new one, on the topic of the Alekhine Defence. Naturally, with all the stuff related to the Pro Chess League, in February I had less time to devote to this project, but I did do some work, given that the deadlines are rapidly approaching. I have finished all but one theoretical chapter, so I am not really doing that badly on this front. Although I also have to add all the additional chapters (Model Games, Thematic Tactics, Key Ideas, etc.) so there is some work still to be done in the upcoming weeks.

How I trained?

Now, one would expect that with such a busy schedule, my chess training would suffer. But somehow, I didn’t feel I was training chess that much less than usual (which probably means I overestimate the number of hours I spend working or the number of hours I usually put in chess. Possibly both!).

I managed to skip only one Killer Chess Training, I solved many Friendly Homeworks, I started solving exercises from a new book Imagination In Chess, I analyzed the games I haven’t yet analyzed from my most recent tournament and I even did some Chessable clicking on the side.

Since I am determined not to keep track of the hours I spend on chess as I feel adding more strings and structure to my hobby would be counterproductive, I can’t tell you what was the exact amount. But all in all, I did feel February was quite productive in that sense.

Which (chess) books did I read?

While my chess training didn’t suffer that much from the lack of time, I do feel that my chess reading did, as I hardly made any progress on the book Old Wine in New Bottles by Mihail Marin, which I started reading last month (and it is only partly because of the quality of the book itself). I did get started on a fantastic book Imagination In Chess by Paata Gaprindashvili which is basically a book featuring very creative and difficult puzzles – but for the moment I solved around 25 out of 500+ from the book (which is still not bad, mind you, given the level – but it can hardly be called hardcore book reading).

As for the non-chess reading – I did read the 2nd-ever book published by Stephen King, titled “Salem’s Lot”, but I wasn’t particularly impressed (partly because I am not the biggest fan of the “horror” genre, but also partly because I don’t particularly enjoy King’s character building and dialogues – it sounds quite bland and lacks any real depth).

On the other hand, I did get hooked on the Skyward series by Brandon Sanderson (one of the most prolific fiction writers nowadays who is well-known for his Mistborn trilogy and the fact he was the one who completed Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series after his death). I finished the first book titled Skyward in a matter of days – and am currently breezing through the second book, Starsight. It is one of those books that sucks you in and doesn’t let go – which is honestly true of all of Sanderson’s books.

What I played?

In February, I also spent less time playing chess than usual. Partly it is due to the more busy schedule, but partly it also has something to do with the fact that I lost some motivation/will to play after a degenerate night session led to me getting muted on lichess again (as I will elaborate in more detail below).

With that being said, I did play in an actual OTB competition this month. Last weekend in February, the regional qualifier for the Croatian Cup final was held, where the team I play for Dugo Selo participated. The event is played on 4-boards with the 30+30 tempo and is organized as a 5-round Swiss.

This is a very tough competition with a lot at stake, as only the winner gets the right to participate in the Cup Final. Alas, this year my team didn’t manage to qualify, as we lost our round 3 match against the young team of Samobor – partly because I managed to lose the following crucial game:

Alas, after this loss our chances to qualify were almost over, as we were trailing by both board and match points. In the end, we managed to beat the eventual winner Polet Buševec in a direct clash, but it was only sufficient for the overall second place, which was unfortunately not enough for us to make it through the Cup final.

Muted on Lichess?

Now, as I mentioned in the very title of this newsletter and as I foreshadowed in several places in this newsletter, in the month of February I have been muted on Lichess for bad behavior in the in-game chat… yet again. It was really hurtful because your coaching profile on lichess is disabled when you get muted. Your blogs are also not very visible, which I found particularly upsetting because the mute happened on the very same day when I published my second blog.

It is not the first time this has happened. I was muted once in the past for the very same reason and I managed to get a second chance from the Lichess administration team. I thought I have learned my lesson and that I wouldn’t repeat the same mistake, but for the umpteenth time, online chess managed to get the worst out of me and led me to write some stuff I would later regret (although I have to say the language wasn’t AS BAD as the first time, so there is at least something).

So why does it happen? Why do I transform into such an unpleasant human being when playing chess online? Are there any steps I have tried taking to get better at it?

Good questions. Let me preface them by saying that I am not ALWAYS such an unpleasant human being when playing online chess. These episodes very often (although not exclusively) happen when I am very anxious about something in my life. In these situations, I retort to using online chess as a mean to escape from the problems in life – and in those moments, the result in that single god-damn online game is the only thing that matters. It is not surprising that this happened in the month of February, when my schedule was extremely busy, due to which I felt anxious and overwhelmed throughout the month.

When you couple that with my compulsive/addictive personality and my inclination to do overly long sessions that sometimes span to the early morning hours, you get the final result. With a lack of sleep and a general realization that what I am doing is very degenerate, I am not in the best state – and in those moments losses get absolutely the worst out of me.

Even though I am a very competitive person, I don’t have a similar problem with any other activity. Hell, not even the losses in over-the-board chess have nearly the same effect – these angry episodes are almost exclusively limited to the domain of online chess.

And it is not like I haven’t tried working on it. I have spoken to several therapists, set rules for myself, switched time controls from bullet to blitz and rapid, tried blocking my chess-playing sites, etc. But no matter how I do, no matter how much I think I will be able to have it under control, in times when I am not at my best, when I get overwhelmed or very anxious, these episodes keep repeating.

In one of my therapy sessions, I blurted out that I am a happier person when I don’t play online chess, and I am very seriously considering not playing it at all – or playing it only against people I know. As much as I would like to think I am not the type of person who can get extremely angry and unpleasant after a loss in an online game, it seems to me that this part of my personality will always be there and that the only way of not triggering it is not exposing myself to situations where it can be triggered, to begin with.

Therefore, if we ever played a game of chess after which I was very unpleasant, I can only say I am sorry and that I deeply regret it. I genuinely feel ashamed for the fact that I got muted again – and not only because it hurts my personal brand/coaching business, but also because that is not the kind of person I want to be.

(I do plan to write a longer, unfiltered account of my history of struggle with online chess addiction under the title Confessions of an Internet Chess Degenerate, so stay tuned for that)

Canceled on Twitter?

While we are on these difficult topics that were foreshadowed in the title – those of you who follow me on Twitter know that I like to shove my opinions everywhere and that it has caused some people from the chess community to get offended in the past. On February the 9th I caused another round of Twitter “drama” after I decided to respond to a tweet by Levy Rozman a.k.a. Gotham Chess, as follows:

Even though I realized there is a very real possibility of him seeing this tweet, I didn’t really expect he would not ignore it and actually personally respond:

Alas, once he responded, an army of his followers and fans also appeared and commented on my tweet, showcasing their support in a very logical, polite, and constructive manner:

Fortunately, since this is not the first time I have had something like that happen on Twitter, I quickly realized the best way to deal with the influx of notifications is to simply mute them for this thread. So even though the comment section got quite nasty, I wasn’t that much affected – especially since people I also got some support from many people I know and respect.

With that being said, I do admit that my reaction seems a little bit extreme. When taken in isolation, Levy’s Tweet doesn’t necessarily make it look like there is a problem with celebrity obsession within the chess world (although I would still never publicly brag about someone sharing my video even if they did, no matter how famous they were).

However, when I look at it in the context of everything else that is happening within the chess world, I can’t simply pretend it is not part of a much larger picture. Even though the chess world has always had a tendency for “celebrity cults” (as rightfully pointed out by Howard Burton in his great book Chessays which I reviewed here), I feel that the rise of social media and online platforms made this tendency much more obvious and wide-spread (as in many other domains of human endeavor).

Especially when we also couple this with the unprecedented, chess boom that has been going on in the last few years. Suddenly, we not only have more and more celebrities playing the game – but we also have more and more people within the chess community obtaining celebrity status.

Now, I know you might be wondering – okay, but why would that be a bad thing? Doesn’t it simply promote chess and bring new people in? Why do you have to be such an elitist?

Well, while I agree it is true that this is what partly drives the rise of the game even further, I also think there are negative connotations. As I mentioned in my response to Levy’s tweet – one of the reasons why I personally dislike the celebrity culture is how closely it is tied to the promotion of materialistic values. Many people equate being famous/wealthy with being successful/happy, which I think is not only untrue – but incredibly problematic.

One of the most influential books I have ever read in my entire life, The High Price of Materialism, is centered around refuting this common preconception. I could quote numerous paragraphs from it to demonstrate a point, but for the sake of this newsletter, I have decided to content myself with the following one:

“Similarly, we have adopted a world view in which the worth and success of others is judged not by their apparent wisdom, kindness, or community contributions, but in terms of whether they possess the right clothes, the right car, and more generally, the right “stuff.
[…]
Existing scientific research on the value of materialism yields clear and consistent findings. People who are highly focused on materialistic values have lower personal well-being and psychological health than those who believe that materialistic pursuits are relatively unimportant.”

One of the major consequences of the recent “instagrammization” and “Twitchization” of chess is an increased obsession with materialistic values within the chess world. More and more discourse is held about money, views, number of users, etc. Prominent influencers are openly complaining about the lack of money/think the money is not sufficient, there is constant talk about potential records in terms of the number of visitors or subscribers or Twitch viewers and seemingly everything has to be about prize funds, clicks, or fame these days.

This is the true reason why I reacted to Levy’s tweet. I felt it is the continuation of the very same narrative which implies that success can only be achieved if you become famous or that celebrity shares your tweet.

Because otherwise, you are just a nobody.

I genuinely think such messaging is harmful to the individuals and the chess community as a whole – especially when it comes from the keyboard of the world’s biggest chess personality. Therefore, allow me to conclude this paragraph (and the entire newsletter) with yet another quote from the High Price of Materialism:

“One explanation involves the extent to which people have been exposed to the messages of consumer culture. For example, people are likely to be materialistic if they watch a great deal of television and if their parents value materialistic goals. So part of the answer is that some people simply learn this attitude or outlook because of their environment.”

The post I Have Been Canceled On Twitter and Muted On Lichess – Month in Chess(entials) #2 appeared first on Chessentials.

Given that literally every article I have ever read about blogging – especially back in 2016 – recommended implementing and maintaining your own mailing list, ever since I first founded chessentials.com, I have included the possibility to sign up for my newsletter and receive regular emails from yours truly directly in your inbox.

Alas, as time went by, I realized writing and sending regular emails is much more difficult, complicated, and demanding than it initially sounds. In the last six years, I have been sending the Chessentails newsletter on a very irregular basis. I have tried implementing several formats and schedules, but ultimately, they would all dwindle down, and eventually, a long period of me not sending a single email would follow.

Yet, despite all the irregularities and lack of schedule, over time, my mailing list kept growing and somehow got to over 900 subscribers. Thus, when I decided to quit my job at Chessable on the 1^st of April 2022 and embark on my own journey as a chess freelancer, I realized it constitutes a very valuable asset and that trying to revitalize it in some shape or form is probably a very good idea.

Thus, after a long period of tinkering and procrastination, I am finally happy to announce the return of the Chessentials Newsletter in a different shape and form – this time with a brand new title “Month in Chess(entials)”. As the title suggests, I have decided to turn this newsletter into a monthly update post from yours truly, which will be divided into two parts.

In the first part, I will talk about the events that happened in the chess world in the previous month. The primary focus will be on the chess tournaments and events that I followed, but I will also discuss all the other relevant chess news that I find interesting/worth mentioning.

The second part of the newsletter will have a more personal note, as I will talk about what has been going on in my own chess life in the previous month. I will use the opportunity to mention the content I produced and the projects I am working on, but I will also discuss the chess content I consumed (chess books, podcasts, youtube videos, etc.) and the training methods I am using to improve my own game.

My hope/idea is that this newsletter will, thus, strike a nice balance between being self-promotional and informative and that it will provide the reader with a very nice overview of what has been going on in the chess world and with the author of these lines in the previous month.

I genuinely hope you will enjoy it!

MONTH IN CHESS

CHESS TOURNAMENTS AND EVENTS I FOLLOWED

Even though January is usually regarded as a cold and depressing month during which you get back to reality after the Christmas holidays and start realizing your New Year’s resolutions were probably way too ambitious, it is a very good month for chess fans due to the fact that the annual Tata Steel Chess tournament – one of the biggest, oldest and most prestigious tournaments (arguably even more prestigious than Mr. Dodgy Invitational) in the world – is held.

Tata Steel Chess Masters

The 2023 edition of Tata Steel Chess arguably gathered even more attention/interest than usual. First of all, it was the first super-strong, elite classical chess tournament to be held in quite some time. Secondly – even though Tata Steel tournaments are famous for their very interesting and “mixed” fields, this year the lineup of all tournament groups – but especially of the strongest – the Masters’ group – was spectacular even by Tata Steel’s high standards.

The field consisting of the combination of the best players of the world (Carlsen, Giri, Caruana, Aronian, Ding) and virtually all of the strongest young players out there (Abdusattorov, Keymer, Erigaisi, Praggnanadhaa) guaranteed not only a ridiculously high average rating, but also the first-ever clash of the “newer” generation against the “old” veterans in this classical tournament format.

The course of the tournament itself definitely didn’t fail to live to the very high pre-tournament expectations as it turned out to be one of the most memorable, interesting, and dramatic editions of Tata Steel Chess Masters I can remember. It is hard to fully convey how good and exciting the tournament was within a newsletter format, but allow me to mention some of the key and most memorable moments:

• Anish Giri beating Magnus Carlsen for the first time since 2011
• Nodirbek Abdusattorov beating Carlsen in their first-ever classical encounter
• Magnus getting back in the tournament and being a serious contender for first place despite suffering two defeats in a row for the first time since Norway Chess 2015
• Vincent Keymer failing to win back-to-back won rook endgames in his games against Abdusattorov and Van Foreest, respectively, prompting Mr. Dodgy to come up with this tweet

Mr. Dodgy – as brilliant as always

• Jorden van Foreest having a bad tournament, but then almost beating Anish Giri in the penultimate round
• Nodirbek Abdusattorov leading the tournament the entire way, being undefeated until the last round and then losing to the very same Jorden van Foreest, allowing Anish Giri to overtake him

Thus, after considerable drama, Anish Giri managed to finally win the tournament on his home turf, with Nodirbek Abdusattorov, unfortunately, ending up in a shared second place with Magnus Carlsen – who almost managed to achieve a comeback of epic proportions.

Image source: Tata Steel Chess Official Website

Tata Steel Chess Challengers

Even though the Challengers group of Tata Steel Chess (formerly known as the “B” group) is usually overshadowed by the Masters’ group (to an extent that the official broadcast of chess.com – very disappointingly – failed at all to cover the games from it), that doesn’t mean it is any less interesting to follow.

Due to the fact that the organizers have the same philosophy of inviting a very diverse and interesting field AND the fact that the average level is lower than in the Masters’ group, the games are very interesting, exciting, and quite often – decisive, and the course of the tournament was no less interesting.

For me personally, the group was even more interesting as the organizers invited a very promising and talented 16-year-old Dutch IM Eline Roebers, whom I incidentally signed as a player for the Croatia Bulldogs team competing in the Pro Chess League just a couple of days before the event. As a manager, but also as her fan, I followed her games with great interest and rooted for her in this super-strong and stacked field.

As for the tournament itself, in the end, it was won very convincingly by GM Alexander Donchenko from Germany – who ended up a point ahead of the nearest competitor, GM Mustafa Yilmaz from Turkey.

Image source: Tata Steel Chess Official Website

Even though the final result seems very convincing, for the most part, the tournament was a three-way race between Donchenko, Yilmaz, and Velimir Ivić, a young GM from Serbia who only got invited as a last-minute substitute. In order to demonstrate how close the race was, let me just say that after 9 rounds, Yilmaz was actually leading the tournament with 6.5/9, while Donchenko and Ivić were at 6/9.

The 10^th round turned out to be quite crucial. Ivić lost a dramatic game against Supi where he had a much better, arguably even won position at some point and then went on to collapse in the last 3 rounds. Yilmaz slowed down and made 3 draws in the last 4 games, while Donchenko scored a huge win against Max Warmerdam and went on to win all of his remaining games (!!).

Thus, Donchenko will get the opportunity to play in the Masters group in 2024. This will be his second appearance after he got invited as the last-minute substitute in the 2021 edition of the tournament.

Tata Steel Chess Amateurs

Last but not least – I also spent some time looking at the games from the “lowest” section of the Tata Steel Chess tournament – the Amateurs section. This group is basically what was formerly known as the “C” group of the tournament – the winner gets the right to participate in the Tata Steel Chess Challengers the following year.

There were several reasons why I found this group particularly interesting. First of all, if you haven’t figured it out by now – I really love chess, and checking chess games from different tournaments is one of my favorite hobbies. I often feel there is too little attention to these “lesser” events that still feature extremely strong players and very interesting and exciting games.

Furthermore, my interest in this group was sparked because I was actually familiar with some of the names that participated in it. In my most recent tournament in Groningen 2022, I played against Dutch IM Nico Zwirs and 13-year-old FM Arthur de Winter, while I have also interacted via Twitter with the young Bosnian FM Sanjin Culum. This personal touch made it even more interesting to follow the tournament and their games.

The group itself was won by Belgian IM Stefan Beukema in quite a remarkable way. After starting with 0.5/2, he went on to score a remarkable 6.5 in his remaining 7 games – including the clutch win in the final round over Mark Van der Werf.

Stefan, will, therefore, get the opportunity to participate in the Challengers Group in 2024.

Image source: Tata Steel Chess Official Website

Rabac Open and Bošnjaci Open

Apart from Tata Steel Chess, at the beginning of the month, I also followed two local chess tournaments here in Croatia that are traditionally held in the first week of January – Rabac Open and Bošnjaci Open tournaments. Since I played in Groningen at the end of 2022, I didn’t feel like participating in any of these tournaments myself, but since many of my friends and people I know played, I of course followed the results and rooted for them along the way.

Even though following these events is fun and interesting, my mood was very much spoiled when I saw how many quick draws are being made – and also when I heard stories about entire games being pre-arranged. I even wrote an entire Twitter thread about the case of a father of a young girl paying her opponent not to show up before the last-round game so that she could win the first women’s prize.

The entire thread about this case can be found on my Twitter

I genuinely find all these “off-the-board” machinations – which are, unfortunately quite common in the Croatian Chess Circuit – extremely disgusting and harmful to the game and I will not stop talking about them and against them until they become much less prominent – or non-existent at all.

CHESS GAMES THAT DELIGHTED ME

Now, as you would expect from a month during which Tata Steel was played – it was full of fascinating and interesting chess games that are well worth remembering.

It is hard to do justice to all these wonderful players by trying to single out just a few of the games, but below, you will find some of the games that delighted me the most in the month of January 2023.

Pechac – Tabatabei

A crazy game in which White played the King’s Gambit, Black blundered a piece on move 7 and then went on to win nevertheless.

Caruana – Maghsoodloo

A crazy game in which Caruana was significantly worse, then managed to equalize and then Maghsoodlo decided to go for a brave king walk (which Caruana later described in a podcast as “completely crazy”), ending up in a losing position, which Caruana did not convert.

Carlsen – Praggnanandhaa

One of the crucial games of the tournament, played in the penultimate, 12^th round. Carlsen obtained a very promising position, but then missed one detail and allowed a heroic defense by Prag. Had Carlsen won this game, he would have had very reasonable chances to catch Giri and Nodirbek in the last round and force the playoff.

Giri – Gukesh

In my opinion, Giri’s best game in the tournament, featuring a very strong piece of preparation and a devastating attack.

 Van Foreest – Giri

Another crucial game, also played in the penultimate round. After a brave and remarkable piece of preparation, Van Foreest had Giri on the ropes, but failed to convert the position. As it usually goes – in order to win a tournament of this caliber, you have to have at least a little bit of luck.

Roebers – L’Ami

A big upset win in the Challengers group and the biggest win of Eline’s career so far. You can find this game analyzed in a separate video and article devoted to Eline’s best games.

 Vasiukov – Rantanen

As will be mentioned later in this newsletter, the first book I read in 2023 was devoted to GM Evgeny Vasiukov and his best games. The following attacking masterpiece is definitely one of the most memorable games from this book and fully deserves to be included on this list:

OTHER CHESS NEWS

Before I started writing this specific newsletter, I was under the impression that January 2023 was a relatively uneventful month and that not that much was happening in the chess world, apart from Tata Steel.

However, once I started revisiting the events of the past month, I realized that is not entirely the case and that there were quite some news and stories worth mentioning. The overview of the most important ones/ones that sparked my interests – together with my unsolicited opinions – can be found below.

Sara Khadeem defects to Spain

In the latest case of Iranian chess players leaving their native country – the leading Iranian player and one of the strongest female players in the world, IM Sarasadat Khademalsharieh (Sara Khadem) defected from her come country and settled in Spain after refusing to wear a headscarf/hijab at the 2022 FIDE World Rapid and Blitz Championship.

This constitutes a serious violation of the Iranian law that would make Sara’s well-being seriously endangered were she to return. Thus, she joins a long list of Iranian chess players, (such as Alireza Firouzja, Elshan Moradiabadi, and Dorsha Derakshani, to name a few), leaving their home country.

Given that the Iranian chess federation is also forcing their players to forfeit their chess games against Israeli players, it is quite remarkable that FIDE is not reacting in any way and silently watching as these events unfold.

Which makes the following piece of news even more ironic. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Shohret Bayat and FIDE double standards

While we are talking about Iranian chess players – Shohret Bayat is one of the leading chess arbiters/officials who got a lot of media attention some two years ago for the very same reason Sara Khadem is getting attention today. During the Women’s World Chess Championship 2020, Shohreh refused to wear hijab in public and was forced to leave Iran and never return.

Alas, in 2023, Shohreh got into the center of media attention for a very different and very unfortunate reason. After wearing a Ukrainian-themed outfit and a T-shirt with the title “Women, Life, Freedom” as an arbiter in official FIDE events, she got reprimanded by FIDE for not adhering to the arbiter dress code and her entire future as the FIDE official is, as of yet, unclear.

This is quite remarkable in so many ways. First of all, according to Shohreh – there aren’t any official regulations that would prescribe the dress code for arbiters in official FIDE events – so she technically wasn’t in violation of anything.

But even if she was – isn’t it a tiny bit hypocritical to reprimand an arbiter who has to LEAVE her home country due to POLITICAL reasons, for wearing the clothing with POLITICAL messages, while it is so very clear that FIDE is still very heavily under the POLITICAL influence and while FIDE is refusing to do anything about the POLITICAL influence of the Iranian chess federation?

Gens una sumus, my ass!

Do better, FIDE!

(If you want a more in-depth account of the entire topic, I can only recommend you this deep dive posted on the lichess blog)

The host of the Ding-Nepo World Championship announced

While we are at FIDE and politics – in January, the venue and the conditions for the upcoming Ding-Nepomniachtchi were finally announced. Prior to the announcement, there were many voiced expressing their concern/indignation that the venue is not known 3 months before the match, while after the announcement, the venue and the source of the funding were also under the microscope.

But all these things aside, it is nice to see that the match will happen after all and that the prize fund is very substantial and worthy of such a prestigious chess event!

Champions Chess Tour and Global Chess Championship Merge

While we are talking about big chess events – in the aftermath of Chesscom’s merger with the PlayMagnus group, in the mid of January the new season of the Champions Chess Tour, was announced. The event is basically a merged version of PlayMagnus’ Champions Chess Tour and Chesscom’s Global Chess Championship, with a ludicrously huge prize fund (2 million USD – exactly the same as the World Chess Championship) and equally ludicrously complicated format (which I still struggle to completely understand).

One nice and welcome change compared to the Champions Chess Tour is the addition of the Open Qualifiers, which enable any grandmasters to participate and reach one of the main six events (in line with the Global Chess Championship and in sharp contrast with the original tour that was invitation-only). However, for me personally, it is hard to get excited about a tour that has so many rapid events, as the likelihood of all of them blending into a single mass is very high.

While I definitely like the fact that Chesscom is organizing all these events (how could I not, given that I manage a Pro Chess League team) and makes earning money more accessible to a wide array of players, I am not 100% sure how much I like the fact that these long-winded online events are now becoming a new norm and overshadowing over-the-board events.

I think the recent lack of classical chess tournaments is a direct consequence of such a trend and I feel it is already too late to reverse it. But I guess we will see what exactly the future holds.

Mittens The Chess Bot?

While we are at chesscom and announcements – at the very beginning of the year, on 2^nd of January, Chesscom announced the addition of the new set of cat-themed chess bots to their collection of chess bots that the visitors of the website can challenge to a game of chess. I don’t think anyone envisioned that one of these bots, called “Mittens” featured a “cute” cat photo, and an extremely high playing strength more than sufficient to beat the best players in the world and definitely not corresponding to her nominal rating of “1 ELO”.

Mittens, the chess bot that conquered the chess world

Throughout January, Mittens would quickly conquer the chess world and become a viral chess phenomenon. Before you knew it, everybody was posting competing who would first beat Mittens, Youtube videos with Mittens in the title and Mittens on the thumbnail were getting millions of views, a separate Twitter account for Mittens was created and the bot even made it to the non-chess publications.

Even though it was obvious that the whole story is primarily a very transparent and highly successful marketing plot, it was all pretty confusing and shocking when you consider what Mittens is at its core – a super powerful chess engine with a “disguised” chess playing strength and a stock photo of a cat.

It made me realize how gullible an average person on the Internet is and how easy it is to sell a “narrative” today with very little to no substance – especially if you also mobilize an entire army of content creators and influencers. And while I don’t think promoting a chess engine is necessarily that harmful, I do find it quite problematic that a very similar method is used to promote other, much more suspect products, such as the Play-to-Earn NFT-based chess playing platform the Immortal Game (In general, this method of creating hype and using influencers to sell a “narrative” without a substance is very characteristic of NFT/crypto world. I can definitely recommend the following Youtube video/documentary by James Jani for more details on the topic).

The New Chess Boom?

 In hindsight, the popularity of Mittens seemed to be the consequence (or the cause, depending on whom you ask) of the so-called New Chess Boom – a big surge of interest in chess that surpasses even the Queen’s Gambit Declined/Netflix boom.  Apart from chess clips and videos receiving an enormous amount of views and some youtubers reporting ridiculous numbers in terms of monthly subscribers gained,  throughout January chess.com repeatedly kept having issues with their servers due to the unprecedented increase in the number of daily visitors and newly registered users.

An image many visitors of chess.com kept seeing throughout January as chess.com kept having server issues due to the record traffic

What was the cause of such a big and relatively sudden chess boom? Chess.com tried to provide some reasoning in a blog post they published on their website, which was then later analyzed in a separate  Gotham Chess video.

And while a lot of the reasoning was self-aggrandizing at best and–  frankly – quite ridiculous at worst (what on Earth does the acquisition of the PlayMagnus group by Chess.com have with the chess boom is beyond me), there definitely seems to be some truth in the argument that we might be experiencing the delayed effect of chess receiving a lot of the media attention due to the Niemann cheating scandal, the Ludwig Chessboxing event and arguably even Messi – Ronaldo photoshoot, which also caused a snowball effect when it comes to Youtube/Social media algorithms starting to pick up on that popularity and recommend such content to their users.

How long it will last and where it will all lead remains to be seen!

MONTH IN CHESSENTIALS

 Now, even though the majority of the New Year’s Resolutions don’t make it until the second week of the year and even though I had Tata Steel to follow, the month of January turned out to be extremely busy (and hopefully productive) on my front. By some miracle, I managed to start quite a few “old” projects I have been procrastinating on ever since I first decided to become a chess freelancer and some “newer” projects – such as the Pro Chess League – also appeared on the scene and started pressing me with their deadlines.

Here are some of the things I have been working on over the course of the past month!

WHAT I WROTE?

I started the year by writing a big article about the best chess books I have read in 2022, reviewing a total of 20 chess books in quite some depth. Even though the article took me much more than I anticipated and turned out way longer than it should have been, the reception was much more positive and engaging than I expected. It was quite heartening to see that the chess book reading is not yet a completely forgotten sport despite the rise of the digital tools.

Alas, due to all the other obligations (or more precisely – due to me watching too much Tata Steel instead of doing some work), this would turn out to be the only “chess” article I would write in the entire month. It is a bit of a pity as I am starting to realize more and more writing might be my favourite form of expression + I have quite a few ideas for future articles.

I do hope to start writing more in the upcoming months, although it is very tricky to find a balance between different things you can do as a self-employed chess “entrepreneur”.

Which kinda leads me to the next point.

WHAT I FILMED?

This newsletter was not the only thing that I decided to “bring from the dead” in January 2023. After a long period of procrastination, at the beginning of this year I finally decided to revive my old Youtube channel and started posting videos on a fairly regular basis.

So far, I have posted 14 videos. For the moment, the content is relatively varied – from chess opening videos via historical games from the Steinitz-Zukertort World Chess Championship Match, to videos covering my own games and beautiful chess studies. I even made one “educational” chess video titled Typical Mistakes on the Amateur Level and I would definitely love to do more on that front – just like on many other fronts (I would very much like to do more chess sketches and “Funny chess videos” with a much higher production value) – in the future.

Now with that being said, even though I have been seriously doing Youtube only for a month, I have already started experiencing some serious doubts in regard to whether I should be doing it. Here are some of my thoughts in regard to why:

• Even though I am aware that you should not really pay attention to your numbers, even though I know no success comes overnight, and even though I don’t even aim to become the biggest chess Youtuber in the universe, seeing that your videos get 2-digit views or 3-digit views at most can be quite discouraging.

• Even though my Youtube videos are not necessarily the most professional or high-production videos out there, a lot of time goes into creating them (scripting, filming, editing). Especially since I aim to provide the viewer with the lichess study with the annotated material covered in the video (which is something I hoped would distinguish me on the market, but so far it hasn’t been the case). There are days when I wonder whether the time and effort are worth it and whether I would be better off devoting my energy somewhere else.

• I am aware I am not the most talented presenter out there and I often wonder whether someone with my “prerequisites” should venture into Youtube to begin with. I am aware one’s presentation skills and camera presence can be improved through practice, but even though I read a lot about the topic, I often feel that my improvement in that domain is minimal. Additionally, there are certain aspects, such as intonation, voice sound and accent, over which I feel have very little control (and hiring, say, a voice coach or going to acting lessons seems like a bit of an overkill, at least at this early stage).

• As for the things I do have control over – I am aware that I am maybe not playing the Youtube game in the best manner in the terms of video length (my videos are surely too long), video descriptions, titles, and thumbnails (even though I don’t necessarily think they are the worst out there), etc. At first, I didn’t think that not playing this game is such a big deal, but many recent posts, including the one by the popular OG chess Youtuber ChessNetwork have made me realize that playing this game might be more important than ever before.

• However, I am not even sure I want to play the Youtube game, given that Youtube is actively pushing short content in order to compete with TikTok (apparently they will soon start monetizing Shorts) and given that I genuinely think TikTok as a platform and short content are an extremely negative trend that shortens our attention spans even further. This represents a huge clash with my personal beliefs and values and I don’t think I can ever go against them.

I really hope this will not come across as me whining or someone who is expecting quick success being jaded, but rather as an objective outlook on the situation. For the moment, I am fortunately still enjoying the process of creating Youtube content too much to just give it away, but I guess we will see what the future holds.

Fortunately, I seem to have enough projects/endeavors to keep me going anyway! This leads me to the next point!

PRO CHESS LEAGUE 2023

One of the reasons why I was so busy throughout January is the Pro Chess League – an online team competition organized by chess.com – which is returning in February 2023, after a three-year-long hiatus. Given that the team Croatia Bulldogs which I manage was invited to participate in this competition, that chesscom is trying to bring the whole competition to the next level, and that I am managing the team as a chess freelancer for the first time, I decided to embark on the whole task much more seriously and professionally than in the past.

This meant that a lot of work was to be done behind the scenes before the competition even begins. Some of the things related to the competition I have been doing in January (and not only in January) are as follows:

• Contacting the (potential) players and signing them for the team
• Preparing the contracts and making sure everything is clean from the legal standpoint
• Revamping and updating the Croatia Bulldogs team website
• Preparing and designing the visuals for the website/social media
• Preparing and editing the official promo trailer for the team
• Creating additional content such as Meet The Bulldogs videos/articles, introducing the players prior to the season

So far, everything seems to be going according to plan and I am fully ready and excited for the start of the season – which will happen in the 3^rd week of February.

100 REPERTOIRES: ALEKHINE DEFENCE

Last but not least, after the release of my latest Chessable course titled Stomp The Sicilian: The Maroczy Bind, I agreed to do another one in the first half of 2023, this time on the topic of the Alekhine Defence.

Given that my Chessable courses are currently my main source of income and that I have an impending deadline to meet, I had to get started on this project, too, and get it going.  Alas, in contrast to doing Youtube or creating video trailers, here I am much more familiar with the process and the requirements, although that doesn’t negate the fact that creating a Chessable course is a very time-consuming and challenging task – especially if you want to do it as thoroughly and deeply as possible.

One of the hardest part about creating a Chessable repertoire is annotating the position in great detail – and I am trying me best to be as thorough and elaborate as possible. As you can tell from the length of the article, writing too much is not a particular problem for me, though.

Now, even though the work is difficult and tedious at times, I always find working on Chessable courses very interesting and rewarding – especially since I know that it will ultimately have direct benefits for my own chess, even if it is not a 100% substitute for the actual chess training.

This leads me to the next point.

HOW I TRAINED?

Due to the busy working schedule, the fact that one also wants to have life and like, hang out with friends AND the fact that I played a classical tournament at the end of December (after which I definitely needed a break), in January I worked much less and less frequently on my own chess than usual. In the first part of the month, I barely did any work at all and only in the second half did I slowly got back into it.

However, that is not to say that I didn’t do any work whatsoever. Apart from working on the Chessable repertoire as mentioned above, I did spend some time analyzing my games from the most recent tournament (using the methodology I will definitely describe in the future video/article, so stay tuned for that).

Then, I also managed to keep the habit of solving the weekly chess exercises in the form of the Killer Chess Homework provided by a renowned chess coach GM Jacob Aagard via the Killer Chess Training platform. I am really enjoying the process of trying to solve these very hard exercises as they force me to actually focus deeply and go “into the zone” – which I think is the most important feature of every high-quality chess training/improvement method.

(An excerpt from one of the Killer Chess Homeworks with my solutions and quick feedback from GM Jacob Aagard. I will write more about the Killer Chess Training platform in the future, so stay tuned)

Toward the end of the month, I managed to get into the habit of clicking on Chessable and doing some work on my openings again. And while this may seem like a lot already, the total amount of work was definitely less compared to an average month where I usually devote around an hour EVERY day working on my game.

On the other hand, even though I have been somewhat slacking in the domain of chess training, I have managed to stay consistent in the domain of chess book reading.

This brings me to the next point!

WHICH (CHESS) BOOKS I READ?

Even though I read 20 chess books throughout 2022, at the beginning of 2023 I realized I still have quite a few chess books on my bookshelves that I have purchased somewhere in the past, yet never even opened (as befits every self-respectable chess book enthusiast).

Thus, almost immediately at the beginning of 2023, I got down to business by immersing myself in a fascinating book about the relatively lesser-known Russian Grandmaster Evgeny Vasiukov, titled Evgeny Vasiukov, The Champion of Moscow, written by Kasparov’s former chess coach Alexander Nikitin.

Before I got the book, I didn’t know much about Vasiukov’s style and games, but he was a very interesting player, who was a very interesting opening analyst, finding long-forgotten ideas in well-known systems or using rare systems whatsoever (anyone who is into the King’s Indian Attack should study his games).

He was also a very creative and refined attacker who was extremely dangerous when he had the initiative. It was a big pleasure to go over his games and see some fine attacking gems and remarkable combinations.

After finishing that one, I switched to the book titled Old Wine in A New Bottles by Mihail Marin. It is essentially a collection of Marin’s articles on different tactical and strategic chess topics. So far, my impressions are mostly positive, but I am only halfway through the book, so I will refrain from giving the final verdict for now.

As for the non-chess book, I recently finished Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Slum, a very heartbreaking and difficult read based on a true story, depicting life in a slum in Mumbai. Currently, I am reading a fantastic book titled The Future of Capitalism.

WHAT (CHESS) CONTENT I CONSUMED?

Even though January has been an extremely busy month full of obligations on all fronts, my consumption of (chess) content didn’t suffer as much as some other areas of my life (which may have something to do with the fact that some creators took well-deserved breaks at the start of the year and the fact I often procastrinated and dealt with my anxiety and Youtube doubts precisely by consuming some content). Providing the full-list of the content I consumed would be probably way too long for this newsletter (or several newsletters, for that matter). But some of the most interesting podcast episodes I listened to, videos I watched and articles I read are, as follows:

• Episodes nr. 38 and nr. 39 of the Chicken Chess Podcast, featuring an on-site report from the Tata Steel tournament and a lot of insights into the behind-the-scenes of such a prestigious tournament
• Episode nr.21 of the C-Squared Podcast, featuring some very remarkable insights by GM Fabiano Caruana on the Mittens Phenomenon, but more importantly – on the future and viability of the classical chess
• This insightful article by FM Nate Solon about the Woodpecker Method. Even though I often don’t agree with Nate’s viewpoints/propositions (in particular with his views on classical chess), his writing is extremely good and thought-provoking. And this article is not an exception.
• This fantastic article by John Hartmann about the Carlsen-Niemann cheating affair. A very reasonable and balanced take well worth your time.
• This great video by Chessbase India/Sagar Shah, featuring GM Anish Giri discussing his triumph at the Tata Steel Chess 2023. Apart from the pure game analysis, I found the first 30-min of the video where Giri talks about his career, psychology, and off-the-board matters very inspiring, insightful and interesting.
• This hilarious video by GM Oleksandr Bortnyk very vividly demonstrates the difficulties of playing 2 chess games in a single day
• This great episode of the 64: A Chess Podcast with GM Evgenij Miroschenko, featuring some very remarkable and honest observations about the world of chess and about the Russian-Ukriane conflict
• Last but not least – even though this is technically not chess content, I will sneak it here nevertheless. I can wholeheartedly recommend you this video by gaming/speedrunning youtuber Karl Jobst about the famous con-man and established gaming cheater Billy Mitchel. Some people have heard about Billy from the documentary King of Kong and I think it is worth spreading the word that he is not a gaming legend, but merely a disgraced conman.

CONCLUSION

This brings me to the conclusion of the first-ever Month in Chess(entials) newsletter. It would be really great to hear what you think about this new format, so feel free to either leave a comment on the blog or reach out to me at continents.obp@gmail.com.

If you enjoyed this newsletter, you can consider subscribing to get it directly delivered to your inbox – the forms can be found everywhere on this blog. It would mean the world to me if you shared it with someone you know or if you simply followed and checked some of my other work/content!

I am very happy and excited to try out this new format and to get into the habit of keeping in touch with my readers on a more regular basis.

Until next month!

Vjeko

The post Tata Steel, Chess Boom and Pro Chess League || Month In Chess(entials) #1 appeared first on Chessentials.