Topics:
Homework Club and tips
Classes this week
Strategy Camp finalised
Members in action
And more!
Homework Club
The submissions to homework club remains high. Half of the people submitting are regulars and half of the people submitting are intermittent. Obviously, it is OK to submit as you want. The members do not owe the lecturers anything and we are not bored and desperate for more work.
But we want to stress this: Consistent improvement comes through repetition and reinforcement. Your results will benefit substantially from consistent attempts. There is succeeding and failing in the homework. Submitting is succeeding, not submitting is failing. The “score” is only used for statistics.
Regular submitters Shahil Dey and Volodar Murzin are obviously big talents. But their recent success is also helped by high consistency in submitting the homework.
Pro Tips for surviving homework club
- Submit. We know some of you do the homework and don’t submit. Either because you are late, or because you are nervous. Submit and get the feedback. You are not being judged. It is guidance and feedback.
- Look at the positions again after feedback. Just a little bit if you have limited time. Don’t wait till the class.
- For the mixed sheet, take a 2-3 minute glance of the positions and decide which ones you want to spend more time on and which ones you want to solve by guessing.
- Start early! Don’t plan to do everything in the last two hours before the deadline.
- If you are late, submit anyway. We can always ignore your submission if we feel it is too late. But don’t be late all the time.
- If you have not received feedback Monday evening, something has gone wrong. Resend!
Classes this week
With Motylev and Cheparinov preparing for the World Cup (Sam will also play) and Sam playing in Prague, this week is a lot of Julen, Jacob, Renier, Sabino and Peter.
Peter Long’s u1700 Workgroup is now solidly at 10am UK time after feedback from the frequent participants. This may change over time, but for now this works well for most.
Homework for Jacob Teaches Renier the Endgame is now uploaded. This class will take a break next week and will be a bit irregular over the summer. This week’s homework is easy as Renier will be helping his mother assemble furniture over the weekend.
You can easily see what was uploaded recently in the relative thread on the forum.
Strategy Camp finalised
GM Sune Berg Hansen joins Sam, Jacob and Julen for this camp, talking about his specialties, plus-equal and squirrel chess?! Join in the class to find out what this is about and join the exclusive camp if you want to understand it on a deeper level.
The final invitation can be found here.
Various
Talking of the summer. We are in conversation with a new lecturer to do a course over the summer when he has time between tournaments. It sounds very interesting to us!
Do you want to play in Good Morning Europe, Let’s play Arena Blitz on Sunday, while our American heroes are playing in Las Vegas? Join here.
Position of the week 8 will be up later today. Probably! 😀
Members in Action
The big news up front! Congratulations to Shahil Dey of Kolkata and probably the member of the academy that has watched most of our classes. On Sunday Shahil fulfilled the requirement of 5/9 (without playing round 9 yet) needed to get his final norm for International Master. In round 9 he won a great game and exceeded the requirement with a full point! Had Shahil won two additional winning positions he had along the way; he would have made his first GM-norm. We believe this will be easier for him to achieve, now he will no longer be confused by the IM title requirements!
Before the tournament Shahil was no. 4 in the World in his age-group. Number two and three were both playing in this event. Shahil will overtake Bharat now, we think, but these junior ratings change every month, so let’s not get too hung up on it!
Our other member, Manish, had a tough tournament and lost some rating. Manish is a smart kid and will with serious effort get all the titles he wants.
If we go to u15 (instead of u14), we have two members in the World top 10. Christopher Yoo, who is also a private student of Sam and occasionally Jacob, as well as Volodar Murzin, who routinely is a top scorer in Killer Homework and, if we have understood everything correctly, has now completed the GM-title!
Both these stellar young men played in the online rapid event Gelfand Challenge, and did well. Only one player qualifies to play the world elite in the next super online rapid event. This time it is GM Gukesh, who has previously been trained by our friend Vishnu, and might still be so…
Arshiya Das
Arshiya has played well in her state championships and is now competing in the national online championships in India. Here are some of the links:
https://chess-results.com/tnr565002.aspx?lan=1&art=9&fed=%20%20%20&snr=75
https://chess-results.com/tnr564724.aspx?lan=1&art=9&fed=%20%20%20&turdet=YES&snr=72
Arshiya is u11. Solid 1500 elo performances are great and we are truly proud of her. If you have travelled in India, you will know that 1500 there is 1700-1800 in Europe. The consistent improvement we have seen in her homework is unsurprisingly showing up in her games too.
Richard
Ricard made 9/11 in the Madrid League. His team were favourites and disappointingly only came second. Still, his result was good enough to win some rating points, even if he is not happy with the quality of the games (after the lockdown, this will be a common experience). See more here.
Ricard posted his games on our Forum.
Peter
Peter Dove describes in a blog post how using simple questions taken from Jacob’s books helped him to win two tournaments prior to Covid. We look forward to see how you have improved as a member of the Academy! See the post here.
Kushal
Kushal was 4th in the u18 and 6th in the u16 Championships of Gujerat. The second result can be found here, as well as the games here.
Upcoming Events
Shahil and Manish are in action again already today in Vezerkepzo. See more here.
Christopher Yoo, Jennifer Yu, Kirk Ghazarian, Ryo Chen and Bryan Xie are the members we spotted in the starting field at the National Open in Las Vegas, starting Wednesday. Follow it here.
Sam Shankland was in trouble in the first round in Prague Masters, when he tried to push too hard in an equal position. Get your pieces out first Sam! Chances will come…
Your results!
Please feel free to share your own results and upcoming tournaments on the Forum. Your friends and trainers at KCT want to cheer for you!
Publications
Jeremy Hart has been published and KCT is the star turn! Read his fantastic piece for the June eNewsletter of the English Chess Federation here (page 46).
See you in the class!
Your friends at Killer Chess Training,
Jacob, Sam and Kallia