My girlfriend gets upset with me whenever I claim to be old. She does not remember the fall of the wall at all, while I remember the Iran hostage crisis. I cry about the death/retirement of Rock ‘n Roll, while she sees it as a genre of Classical music, as I see Mozart, Gershwin or Charlie Parker.
A decade ago Yusupov told me he participated in the European Championship and played eleven GMs between 2500 and 2600 of whom he had never heard at all! This was his “I am from the past” Epiphany.
I have lots of them these days and honestly I enjoy them. I like the way new chess publishers are trying new things. As the old fart I am, I like what we do best of course, this is why we do it this way. But I really like that things are moving forward.
Yesterday I was made aware of two videos by GM Mykhaylo Oleksiyenko, whom I honestly still thought of as 21 years old. Actually, he is 32 and has three beautiful children, as the internet informs me. But thank you for Michael to making me aware of these videos, they are very complimentary to me.
The first one deals with the method of the three questions in a tactical setting, with a position I first saw in Byron Jacob’s wonderful little book Analyse to Win, but there were a small mistake, which was the justification for me including it in Excelling at Chess Calculation, with some chat.
The second position is more positional in nature and comes from one of his own games.
This one is a bit harder and I have to confess that I got it wrong! But it is all very logical and instructive.
Overall this first visual encounter with Mykhaylo Oleksiyenko was been a total pleasure for me. Not so much because of the nice recommendation of the three questions, but more because of the clarity and high level of his explanations of the positions. If you are looking for a private trainer, I think he teaches on Chess.com, which apparently is not just about Puzzle Rush… You can find him on Facebook here.
Here’s another great video (you probably know him from your travels to India, Jacob) by IM Saravanan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLSPqJmEiTM
Great book reviews and includes a lot of QC books- the list of books are in the first comment. Also another list of books here in the previous video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbRWrXgj4IA&t=63s
I have a lot of the list and share his love for eg Secrets of Grandmaster Chess and Flear’s endgame book but he’s so infectious that I’m thinking of buying the missing ones eg I have none of the Gulko /Sneed books.
He mentions following Mickey Adams books as a great method of understanding positional ideas- not the only time I’ve heard this- has anyone asked at QC to get Mickey to write a book?
Hey Jacob
As you mention puzzle rush do you think your score in this game gives you any useful feedback as a player? I’m scoring mid 20s and I’d say that my usual mistakes are
-seeing a win of a piece and missing a quicker mate
-getting the first part of a combination and not following the best line after that
but primarily running out of time because though my average is 10secs per puzzle many are under 5secs but some need a lot longer if I don’t see the motif eg 30 secs. Especially true after I’ve had 2 wrong answers and have to get it right.
Having seen Naka solve these (and much harder) instantly on youtube eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz7zqL8q0jE&t=5801s before I have even worked out where the all pieces are standing let alone then find the combo, am I missing some sort of visual skill and if so is that trainable and how? Personally if I can find the combo i’d be happy but if I could do it faster then I presume you can do better calculations in limited real world games and time trouble
@JB
No, it is as important as your bullet rating.
@JB
There are already two books written (before 1997) by Adams. It is strange that they are note mentioned by Saravanan.
Hopefully, QC can cover the period after 1997 with a new book …-))
@vm
I must admit, I would be in the market for a book by Mickey Adams too 😉
Big Vladimir Kramnik games would be a nice project voor Quality chess to honour him
Would be very nice.
Hi gm. I would like to ask you to consider making a course especially designed for kids with special needs. I am not to bad at chess myself but sometimes I get confused during the course. I hope you can consider this please kind regards Duane from South Africa