While it’s true that trades benefit the side that’s up material, thinking about trading can be counterproductive, because it causes you to play passively and without purpose. What works better is centralizing your pieces. This keeps your pieces consolidated and harmonious, and

I'm very interested in chessboxing except for the part where I get punched

I think they're talking about the Jobava

Crazy that when you walk into a standard gas station, almost everything you can buy is designed to brutally exploit some sort of evolutionary vulnerability.

Three ways the rules of chess could be improved: 1. Get rid of castling. This move is inelegant, out of step with the other rules, and far too good. It makes decisions about king safety less interesting because castling is a no-brainer too often. 2. The game should end with

He'll be dragged for this, but honestly, he does have a point. There's a pretty pervasive sentiment in the chess world that nobody deserves to make any money for doing chess stuff. This makes it more difficult for talented people to create products or services with genuine value.

I'm gonna play a poker session at Horseshoe Council Bluffs tonight. Plan is to play a few orbits, then announce to the table. "Hey fellas, I thought this was Council Bluffs, not Council FOLDS." Then rack up immediately.

Well worth reading for chess players and coaches. There are a lot of very robust findings from learning research that we have not incorporated into how we learn and teach chess.

Updated Blue Red lessons, leaning into the broken stuff

Early observation from my 100 Games of Blitz challenge: Virtually everyone underestimates how much hard work it takes to get better at chess, and overestimates their ability to do that work. The requirements for the challenge, 5 blitz games a day 5 times a week, sound very

Thinking out loud, why does every chess opening video and course have a talking head? I get it if you're a great presenter like Gotham, but for most chess coaches, wouldn't it make more sense just to have a board and voiceover?

When Nate Solon thinks your game review needs some work…you say yes chef 🫡 Live coaching session tonight at 10 pm EST! Come hang out and improve with me 😤 twitch.tv/kamrynheidi #chess #chesspunks

Getting better at chess isn’t really that hard. What’s hard is getting past the emotional/psychological baggage that’s blocking you.

On the one hand, getting to my LGS when I could just play Arena sounds like a real pain in the ass. On the other, I'm really looking forward to being incredibly obnoxious when I counter something with It'll Quench Ya.

Found this in a basement clean-out: An original edition of Coup that the game designer sent me after I wrote a blog post analyzing the game from a game theory perspective. Thought I lost this, so happy I found it, you literally can't buy it anywhere.

Nate Solon Fear of losing prevents me from playing too much Nothing hurts like losing at chess

The only problem with the Benko Gambit if you're under 2000 is it will allow you to win your games too easily, possibly stunting your development.