I recently played an OTB rapid game that really highlighted three mistakes I’ve been making when studying chess. Here are the mistakes and how to avoid making them yourself! Mistake 1: Doing ‘lazy’ analysis In one of the line...
Another year, another Daily Chess Champs! 2023 marks the fourth year in a row that I’ve entered the Chess.com Daily Chess Championship event, a chaotic 1-day/move tournament that begins with 22 simultaneous games on the 1st of January every ...
If you like chess and memes, then you should like what I've been organising! On Friday, 25 March, two of chess's most prominent meme-rs will be battling it out live to earn the 'Meme Queen' title. You can catch the action live on twitch.tv/hashtag...
As the African Zonal 4.5 Chess Champs headed into the final four rounds, South Africa’s medal hopes looked promising. In the rest-day update, I said we could expect some exciting chess from the final days, and the players certainly did not d...
The 2022 Zone 4.5 African Individual Chess Championship has crossed the half-way mark, and the South African contingent is keeping its title hopes alive in both the Open and Women’s sections. South Africa has traditionally been a force to ...
It’s become tradition for me to join the annual Chess.com Daily Chess Champs, and 2022 was no exception. 22 games kick off simultaneously on 1 January, and for the next month it’s a mad scramble to juggle games while trying not to time...
In the past, South African chess players were competing for the top spot in Africa. Today, the fiercest competition is taking place between the two parties claiming to be in charge of Chess South Africa (Chessa). Note that this is an opinion pie...
The annual Daily Chess Championship is always a fun and chaotic event to take part in – every year’s championship starts on the first day of the new year, players are put into 12-player groups where they play 22 simultaneous games (2 p...
Happy New Year everyone, I hope your 2021 is off to a good start! It’s been a while since I did any games or analysis on my blog, so I’ve decided to show some of the games I played at the end of 2020 as part of a classical (60m+10s) do...
It’s a question that plagues many of us – how do I improve as an adult chess player? The answer is probably just ‘hard work’ (and no, grinding bullet or blitz does not count as ‘hard work’!). But what, then, to ...
We’ve all been there: you’re dragging your piece across the board in online chess and it just doesn’t land on the square you were aiming for – the dreaded mouse slip has struck again! At best, it’s annoying and you lo...
Anyone who’s looked for books that may improve their chess has probably come across Yusupov’s 9-book training course. The series has won a number of awards, and Yusupov himself is well-known in the chess scene both as a strong player a...
Most streamers want to grow on Twitch, since it’s a lot more fun streaming to a community and having people to interact with while streaming, rather than putting on a show and talking to yourself for an entire stream (at least in my experien...
2020, what a year! We’re 9 months in, and I thought I’d better give an update for those of you who’ve been following my blogs and wondering if I’ll ever post again. I started off the year with grand plans for my blog &nda...
Even though the Olympiad has been postponed to 2021, I’ve decided to continue interviewing the members of South Africa’s team, so everyone can continue getting to know our top players better. This was the first interview to take place ...
FM Daniel Barrish is no stranger to national titles, having won his first u10 SA Championship at the age of seven. Nevertheless, his most recent title is a special one: at the end of last year, Daniel beat out a field of some of South Africa&rsquo...
Robyn van Niekerk caught everyone’s attention as she stormed to the lead in the 2019 South African Women’s Closed Chess Championships, and she maintained her lead convincingly right up until the final rounds where she narrowly missed h...
It’s taken me nearly two months to write this series on my SA Closed experience, since I’ve been quite busy starting a twitch channel, planning interviews, and organising my studies. But here, at last, is the final post of the series! ...
I recently caught up with the newly-crowned 2019 South African Women’s Chess Champion, WIM Jesse February, to find out her future chess plans, her chess training and advice, and her thoughts on South African chess. As top finisher at the SA ...
This is the second part in my series on the games I played in the 2019 South African Closed Chess Championships. Part one can be found here. Part one ended with me on 2 points out of a possible 4, with (in my mind) no hope of winning the tournam...
After a long break, I decided to reenter the world of daily chess with the biggest Chess.com tournament on record, the 2020 Chess.com Daily Chess Championship. In this post, I’ll be discussing my games from Round 1 of the tournament. I pla...
The South African Closed Chess Championships was held from the 7th to the 17th of December, and the 12-player round robin A sections (Open and Women) crowned the national champions and selected the first 2020 Olympiad team members (top 2 finishers...
My blog was left mostly unfinished towards the end of this year. I was already behind on my blogging and training, and a minor injury prior to my Trek departure threw me off even more as I scrambled last-minute to get supplies to manage my injury ...
A big focus in South African chess this year has been the drama and uncertainty surrounding Chess South Africa (CHESSA) leadership, and it is likely that most of us involved in chess have, at some point, felt despondent regarding the current and f...
After missing the last two weekly updates, I’ve finally had a chance to write about the past three weeks of my 77 Days of Chess training. For those of you just joining, you can check out the introduction and first two updates here. Unfortu...
