After experimenting with different schedules, I’ve settled on writing a newsletter every other week. This being the “off” week, I thought we could try another experiment: an open thread on what you’re reading/watching this week.
Chess Improvement by Barry Hymer and Peter Wells - Musings on chess improvement from an educational psychologist and a chess grandmaster. This book places a high value on metacognition - thinking about thinking - which I think will appeal to a lot of subscribers to this newsletter.
Blindfold Endgame Visualization by Martin B. Justesen - One of my goals for this year is to get good enough at visualization that I can comfortably read chess books without a board. The relatively simple positions in this book are a good starting point. Also cool: Martin self-published this book!
Circuits Thread on distill.pub - For next week I’m working on a post about explainable AI in chess. This thread features some of the coolest work going on around explainable AI right now. They examine individual neurons in a model trained for image recognition and try to understand what they’re doing.
Good stuff Nate. 2x a month is a good schedule given the amount of work that clearly goes into your posts. As for me...
Reading (chess department) - Attack the Strongpoint by Zaitsev- its kinda meh, so going to start an additional book to do a recap podcast about, possibly Nunn's Secrets of Practical Chess, which somehow I have never read.
Reading- (Non Chess Department)- How I Built This by Guy Raz- Well written distillation of years worth of amazing interviews with business people
Watching- Borgen (Danish political drama). Still in the first season, but its pretty entertaining, Proceeding at a slow pace though, because it requires that both my wife and I have the energy for subtitles on the same night!
I really liked Yusupov's tips on analyzing your own games (in book 2 I think?). One of these days I want to go through the whole "Secrets of..." series by Yusupov and Dvoretsky.
Good stuff Nate. 2x a month is a good schedule given the amount of work that clearly goes into your posts. As for me...
Reading (chess department) - Attack the Strongpoint by Zaitsev- its kinda meh, so going to start an additional book to do a recap podcast about, possibly Nunn's Secrets of Practical Chess, which somehow I have never read.
Reading- (Non Chess Department)- How I Built This by Guy Raz- Well written distillation of years worth of amazing interviews with business people
Watching- Borgen (Danish political drama). Still in the first season, but its pretty entertaining, Proceeding at a slow pace though, because it requires that both my wife and I have the energy for subtitles on the same night!
Nice, Secrets of Practical Chess is near the top of my list too
Working through the first Yusupov book — loving the structure so far.
I really liked Yusupov's tips on analyzing your own games (in book 2 I think?). One of these days I want to go through the whole "Secrets of..." series by Yusupov and Dvoretsky.