Fpawn Interview on Chess.com Blog

Kirk Ghazarian (credit: David Llada
at 2019 Bay Area International)

How well do you really know fpawn? Chess blogger and longtime mentee NM Kirk Ghazarian was determined to find out. Kirk asked the right questions and I gave him my honest replies. Check out the following sample of the topics:

• How did you improve as a player to reach the NM title?
• How do you inspire your students to achieve their goals?
• Do you have advice for a player who stagnated in improvement.

Kirk included several photos and three games to illustrate the power of the King's Bishop Pawn - a trio of Black wins in my favorite Dutch Defense opening.

Chess Improvement Guide Blog

Thank you Kirk for inviting me for this interesting interview. Keep up your good work!

Young Reporters Interview Magnus Carlsen

Carlsen poses with two young reporters.  Photo by Dein Spiegel.

A pair of 13-year old reporters from Hamburg, Germany interviewed the World Champion prior to a celebrity simultaneous exhibition.  The two youngsters asked several unusual questions, including from whether he plays on Gameboy (no), dreams about chess (mostly important losses), or would skip a chess match to play a soccer game with Real Madrid (yes).

Many chess kids and their parents will smile at the following exchange.

Q: Magnus, when you were a child, did you cry after losing a chess game? And if yes: when did you stop doing so?

A: Who says that I am not crying today? ... Okay. I think, I was 16 when I last cried after losing a game. But you should not be ashamed of that. The tears only show that you are ambitious and that you want to achieve something.

Read more about this interview at the ChessBase news website. 

Interview with GM Shankland at Olympiad

GM Sam Shankland has been the hero of Team USA and one of the biggest stories of the Tromsø Olympiad as a whole.  Not only did he achieve the best result on Board 5 (alternate) to date, his FIDE performance rating after the penultimate round places him third in the entire competition, behind only elite Grandmasters Veselin Topalov and Yu Yangyi!

One surprising factoid from this interview is that "Shanky" participated in his first chess tournament shortly before his 12th birthday.  Indeed, I remember him sporting a 1600 rating at his first National Open ten summers ago.  These days, the average 8 or 9 year old chess player seems to sport a 1600 rating.  Sam worked hard at chess (5000 standard games on ICC within 15 months) and reached master in less than 2.5 years!  Unfortunately, 2200 would not impress Vishy Anand, who famously said "nowadays, when you're not a Grandmaster at 14, you can forget about it!"

In the interview, Shankland speaks highly of both the Berkeley Chess School and the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis.

Good luck to Sam and the rest of Team USA at the final round of the Olympiad on Thursday at 2AM Pacific time.  Note that Wednesday is a rest day.

Interview with World #2 Aronian

Check out a new interview with Armenian GM Levon Aronian, currently the #2 rated player in the World at 2815.  Widely known to be gregarious, he generously responds to written questions from MetroChess of Los Angeles, building up the anticipation of his visit in July as the lead instructor at their exciting summer camp.  This interview focuses on how Aronian learned chess as a junior.

Q: In your view what is the main benefit of learning chess during childhood?

A: Chess can teach a person to appreciate beauty in things that are not visibly beautiful at first sight. In chess you need to dig deep to see the true meaning of some moves. Another thing I learned from chess is patience. Before you react, you need to understand the situation.

Q: Is there any advice you can give to young developing chess players?

A: I think it’s important to be good at tactics and calculation. Those skills you can develop by yourself, and for strategy you will need an experienced guide. The best thing that Melik (Khachiyan) did for me was to force me to solve and play blindfold chess – it helped my calculation and imagination.

Click to read the entire interview or to learn about the chess camp in Glendale on July 9-13.