Book Recap #12 : Talking Improve Your Chess Now, with FM Alex Chua

Welcome back to another edition of Perpetual Chess, Chess Books Recaptured, a monthly bonus book recap podcast. This week, I am joined by FM Alex Chua, a 32 year old Texas based dad, who works for a green chemical manufacturing startup called Solugen. Alex wanted to discuss the underrated gem, Improve Your Chess Now by GM Jonathan Tisdall, which he and I both love. We think it provides a great blend of instructive games, practical advice, philosophizing, and humor. It presents fairly challenging material, which is probably best suited to intermediate to advanced players, but anyone can pick up at least a few things from this book, as we hope they can from this podcast. Please read on for more details and timestamps.

0:00- FM Alex Chua and I begin by discussing why we love this book and wanted to talk about it.

12:45- For what rating level is this book most appropriate? Alex thinks 1400-2000, I think 1800-2300.

17:30- As always, Perpetual Chess is brought to you in part by Chessable.com. Two great courses to improve your chess now are: The Checkmate Patterns Manual and the Visualize Series. Links below:

https://www.chessable.com/the-checkmate-patterns-manual/course/17841/

https://www.chessable.com/visualise-1/course/25695/

18:30- We list the chapters and then discuss our favorite chapters.

Mentioned: The Complete Chess Swindler, The Seven Deadly Chess Sins

26:30- Why discuss two of the key concepts investigated in the book, GM Alexander Kotov’s “tree of analysis”, and the idea of using “stepping stone diagrams” to improve blindfold/visualization skills.

Mentioned: Book Recap Podcast of Think like a Grandmaster with NM Christopher Chabris, GM Alexander Kotov’s Think Like a Grandmaster, GM Anatoly Lein, GM Jacob Aagaard, Book Recap Podcast of Blindfold Chess with Jerry Wells, Zurich 1953 by GM David Bronstein, GM Lubosh Kavalek, GM Anatoly Karpov, GM Ljubomir Ljubovic, GM Efim Geller, GM Vassily Ivanchuk, GM Boris Gelfand

48:00- We share a few of our favorite quotes and aphorisms from the book.

Mentioned: GM Sam Shankland’s Small Steps to Giant Improvement

1:00:00- What are favorite games shared in the book? What are the chess improvement takeaways?

Ljubobevic-Torre 1975 , Polugaevsky-Petrosian 1983, IM Cyrus Lakdawala’s Rewire Your Chess Brain,GM Baadur Jobava’s Twitch Channel, Chessable’s Checkmate Patterns Manual

1:14:00- In lieu of payment, I am making a donation of Alex’s behalf to Lichess.org. Keep up the great work, Team Lichess!

Mentioned: Simple Chess by Michael Stean, coming next month

You can message FM Alex Chua on lichess. Here is his account:

https://lichess.org/@/highlama

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Release date

Lydbog: 4. december 2020