2025 in Zwischenzug

Happy New Year!

If you didn’t have a chance to attend my study plan workshop, you can still use the template to design your own chess study plan for 2025.

Now seems like a good time to look back over 2024…

Coaching

I launched the Chess Gym with Martin Justesen, a community focused on chess improvement. A simple, consistent program, combined with a strong community, really helped our members improve, but ultimately we had to shut it down because the daily maintenance work (especially coming up with new puzzles) was too much to keep up with.

While this venture ultimately fizzled out, it taught me some valuable lessons. First, I need to think not only about how to help people improve their chess, but what is actually possible for me from a time perspective; second, it reinforced the idea that what works for the vast majority of players is to keep it simple and focus on consistently playing games, reviewing them, and solving puzzles.

I also introduced group coaching at the end of last year as a way to combine personalized feedback with an engaged community. After a break in December, I’m re-launching group coaching with a twist: I’ll be doing a six-week group class where we build a Black repertoire vs. everything but 1. e4 based on the Semi-Slav. (Let me know if you’d like to join!)

I’ve figured out a process for opening prep that works for me and has been a big factor in going from 2200 to 2400+, but I’ve found it difficult to fully convey this process in isolated articles and sessions. The idea of the course is to walk you through that process in real time. In a nutshell, my approach is to learn by doing, starting with the simplest possible base that will allow you to play the opening in blitz and rapid games, and then expanding and improving from there. The lines will be based on my preparation for my Chessable course on the Semi-Slav.

Speaking of the Chessable course, this will be the last chapter in the trilogy, along with 1. Nf3 for White and the Nimzowitsch Sicilian for Black, completing a full repertoire for both colors. I had really hoped to get it out by the end of 2024, but I just didn’t manage to get my files done in time. However, all the lines are done and in the process of being imported. Now I just need to respond to tester feedback and record the videos. The course should be out early 2025, so keep an eye out for that!

Chess

I played four classical OTB tournaments in 2024. I was actually quite surprised when I checked my USCF page – I had completely forgotten about a few of them.

In January I repeated as Nebraska Expert/Master Champion. Then in February I ventured to New Jersey for the US Amateur Team East, which is always a mixed bag. It’s a lot of fun to see old chess friends, but also a massive shitshow. Perhaps against my better judgment, I’m playing again this year, although I’ve made the adjustment of getting a room at the tournament hotel, so at least I can go lie down if I want to.

In June there was the Nebraska Hall of Fame tournament. It turns out that Nebraska has a rich chess history, and several players led by Rodney Malpert are trying to bring it back to the glory days. It was great to have a tournament close to home and I’m excited to see what they do in 2025. This time around, I had to settle for a draw with my Nebraska frenemy JJ and second place.

Finally, in November I won the ALTO tournament in Charlotte. This was my second ALTO win in a row, leading my friend David to crown me “king of the olds”. Overall, I’ve hit a live USCF rating of 2450, an all-time high. To be honest I didn’t expect the results to flow as easily as they did this year, given that I’m not prioritizing my own chess improvement at the moment. But I have been dogfooding (using my own coaching techniques on myself) so this gives me some confidence that the strategies I’ve been developing for my busy adult students really work.

Life

The biggest development, of course, was the birth of our daughter Beatrix in April. Leo (2.5) is a great big brother. He now knows the names of all the chess pieces, although he’s more interested in trucks and trains. Overall, kids have been a huge blessing, and our days are more filled with love and meaning. At the same time, things are not getting any quieter, at least not in the next few years.

Partly as a result of this, I’ve become something of a personal productivity nerd. I now plan every minute of my workday and I spent a good chunk of the first week of January designing a new planning system in Notion. I don’t know if I want to operate like this forever, but for the present, it seems to be the only way to get my work done.

At the urging of my friend Todd, I finally got into weightlifting, and hit my 2024 goal of squatting 225. This was great, but at some point I decided I didn’t want to devote an hour in the middle of the day to working out, and I’m now on an even simpler workout plan I can do at home. My goal for Q1 2025 is to be able to do 10 pullups.

I started a regular chess improvement column in New in Chess, which I’m happy to say I’ll be continuing this year. The most interesting part was the cover stories I wrote on ratings and cheating, which forced me to get better at structuring longer pieces. One of my long-term goals is to write something that appears in a major non-chess publication.

This was a slow year for me in terms of reading, but I completed my 12 book challenge. I’ve set a more ambitious goal of 25 books in 2025.

Finally, I joined SolveIt, a course on building things with AI. I’ve been slow to get onboard with AI, but since starting the course, I’ve been amazed how much faster and easier it makes it to build things with code. I’m working on some chess tools for myself and my students that might eventually become available as apps.

Wishing you a great 2025!