10,000 subscribers! 🥳🎉 What's coming up soon! | Chess Chats #13
#10000subs #chessnut #vienna
I’m very proud to announce that my channel has reached a major milestone. 😃 I knew that it was coming, so had the live subscriber count open on YouTube Studio and recorded the special moment!
Today, Monday, 30th June 2025, at 1:29 PM Sydney time (GMT +10) my channel Adventures of a Chess Noob gained it’s ten-thousandth subscriber! Thank you to all the amazing chess fans and enthusiasts, especially my fellow chess noobs, for coming along the journey with me. It’s been a period of growth for my channel as it was only a couple of months ago that I crossed over 4,000 subscribers!
I’ve some exciting news to share as my channel moves into five figures, and a bonus game at the end! 🤩👍
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1. Chessnut Move review unit has been SHIPPED!
For those not familiar with Chessnut, they are an electronic chess board manufacturer based out of Hong Kong. I might be a bit biased as someone from Hong Kong originally, but in my view, they make some of the best electronic chess boards available. Check out my reviews:
- Chessnut Air (a great value analysis size board)
- Chessnut Pro (full size board with wooden pieces)
- Premium pieces for the Chessnut Pro (high quality alternative wooden chessmen)
- Chessnut Evo (all-in-one electronic chess board with a built-in Android tablet)
- Chessnut Go (ultraportable board with magnetic pieces)
Note: if you’re interested in your own board, use coupon code CHESSNOOB64 on the Chessnut store to get an extra discount!
The upcoming Chessnut Move is a “robot” e-chessboard, with self-moving tournament sized pieces! Each piece is a micro-robot that knows its position on the board. This means that you don’t have to move your online opponent’s pieces for them (wizard chess!). However, this also means that the board can set itself up. So what? Well, this is a huge advantage for Chess960/Fisher Random, and for using the board to solve puzzles, or studying lines and positions!
I’ve been promising to review this for a while, with Chessnut initially reaching out for a possible review unit in February/March 2025. Unfortunately, I think they must have had some engineering or production delays as AFAIK, only a single review unit has been seen in the “wild” so far. I don’t have a problem with this as I would prefer Chessnut to send me a retail unit rather than an engineering sample too early. In fact, I had difficulty reviewing the Chessnut Evo as many of the software features were in alpha/beta, and it was plausible that Chessnut would make a hardware revision prior to retail release. However, look at this!
The Chessnut Move is in my country and hopefully, I’ll receiving it this week! As a boy I dreamed of owning a chess set with self-moving pieces (I had envisaged one with a mechanical arm 🤖), and while this doesn’t have the robot gripper, it’s pretty close! ☺️
2. Partnership with Royal Chess Mall!
And now in the analogue chess world, I’m stoked to announce that Royal Chess Mall contacted me over the past month and we’ve come to an agreement in terms of me reviewing some of their products! Royal Chess Mall is one of the larger chess piece manufacturers based out of the city of Amritsar, in the Indian state of Punjab.
If you’re not familiar with India, Amritsar is also the home of the famous Golden Temple and the centre of Sikhism. In my opinion, Amritsar is where the best hand carved chess pieces are now made. There is a long history with multiple generations of craftsmen, specialising in the carving and manufacturing of chess pieces. While the most luxurious and highest end sets sell for an astronomical price, budget and mid-level pieces are surprisingly affordable given the handmade craftsmanship, and it is where the best value probably lies. Most (if not all?) international chess stores who sell better quality chess sets would have sourced them from India, and most likely, a manufacturer in Amritsar.
As for Royal Chess Mall specifically, I’ve personally purchased five or six chess sets from them over the past decade as a customer with my own money, rather than as a content creator. Many of these sets I’ve given to others as gifts, but I still own my two favourites:
- Old Columbrian set (used in the background of my videos)
- Leningrad Staunton (used in the OTB game with A/Prof Joel Rhee in the Blitz Chess Chats #1)
Note: if you’re interested in your own board, you can use the coupon code CHESSNOOB64 on the Royal Chess Mall store, but there are probably better coupons on the front page. Please just go for the better price!
3. More Blitz Chess Chats coming soon!
To recap, in this new series, I speak to medical academics and researchers about their field of expertise and program of research; and we start the interview under the pressure test of a game of 5-minute blitz! Come for the chess and stay for the interview! ♟️🤪👍
The first video and article with Prof Rhee had a very nice game of the Jaenisch Gambit with an interesting conversation about older person care in aged care homes. I’ve another two interviews lined up in July 2025, the next of which will be tomorrow! I’m looking forward to the game and the interview — the topic of conversation will be on public health policies towards sugar sweetened drinks.
Bonus game: a beautiful, strange, and romantic Vienna!
And finally, this rather lovely if somewhat weird Vienna Game was fittingly, the most recent game I played before my 10,000th subscriber!
I played the Vienna and Black immediately took us into a strange territory by playing a “reverse” Vienna Gambit (1. e4 e5 2. Nc3 f5?). Looking through my stats, I’d seen this response five times before, but I had no recollection of this. Interestingly, GM Daniel Naroditsky used this curious f5 against IM Carissa Yip in one game in the Blitzcoin Invitational: Yip—Naroditsky, 2021.
Fundamentally, (2… f5) isn’t any good as it seriously weakens Black’s light squares, and the simple (3. exf5) is completely fine! The thing with the Vienna Game is that it isn’t a one trick pony. Preventing White from playing the Vienna Gambit doesn’t mean the game is done!
simple (3. exf5) is completely fine! The thing with the Vienna Game is that it isn’t a one trick pony. Preventing White from playing the Vienna Gambit doesn’t mean the game is done!
The problem for Black is that they’re just one step of tempo too slow, and we see this after (5… Qe7?) an understandable mistake where Black attempted to defend their e5-pawn. It isn’t obviously an error, but one of the tactical ideas in the Vienna is that the queen’s knight can leap to d5, and this will win tempo against a Black queen on e7 or f6.
As Black was missing their f-pawn, on turn 7 after I’d castled, I immediately launched a knight attack (7. Ng5!?). Stockfish evaluates that the obviously solid but pedestrian (7. d4) was better, but my intuition was that the knight attack, which gambits my f5-pawn, would win a major concession through denying Black’s castling rights after (7… Bxf5 8. Bf7+ Kd7) and keeping their king in the centre. Although Stockfish didn’t think this was the most accurate approach, White nonetheless remains clearly ahead and we get a nice juicy target in the form of Black’s king!
And this approach worked! Black underappreciated the risk and on turns 14 and 15, attempted to strike down the h-file with their advancing h-pawn. However, I’d set up pins in the centre files and Black’s tunnel vision gave me the tempo I needed for a beautiful combination to click into place!
- 16. Nxe5+: Black’s d6-pawn is pinned, and trading their queen for White’s knight and rook seems wrong.
- So, 16… Kc7, but now…
- 17. Nxc6: I captured another pawn, and my knight is annoyingly immortal as I won tempo with the discovered attack on Black’s queen with my rook on the open e-file!
- Black steps their queen off the file with 17… Qf6…
- 18. Re7+: but this was to set up for this dastardly tricky move! This desperate check seems to be inviting, begging, White to capture the knight! The only other move available seems to be Kc8, which looks pretty grim.
- The correct move is hard to find 18… Bd7, which blocks the check! Instead, Black plays the natural looking 18… Kxc6??...
And they hung checkmate with the unexpected (19. Qd5#) in the centre of the board! Good game, GG!
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