We are entering the six weeks of summer and also a relaxing of lockdown in many countries. This of course means that a lot of our trainers will be playing chess. No worries, we got you covered!
This week Alexander Motylev played in the Russian Higher League, scoring 5½ of 9, which was about par. He will join Cheparinov, Shankland and two of our members in the World Cup starting in just over a week, in Sochi, Russia. Motylev did win against our member, Volodar in round 5.
Meanwhile Renier and his fiancé are playing in Benasque. Apparently the conditions are very restricted and Renier has confessed to keep his eyes firmly on the price – the third GM norm. And maybe it is time for Raluca to make an IM-norm?
Summer Scheduling
It is obvious that with tournaments starting again, we will return to a situation where we have lecturers that will be away from longer periods of time, and sometimes just a week or two. What we will do is to take breaks in the courses and continue once the lecturers are available again. It has the downside for you members that you will be in the middle of a course and then it will be off for four weeks. It has the upside that you will get a chance to catch up on courses you wanted to watch, but have fallen behind with! On the balance, we think it is in your favour and we are OK with that. Plenty of time to catch up with Cheparinov’s course on Pawn sacrifice in the middlegame, Shankland’s course on How to learn a new Opening, Aagaard’s course on Jacob teaches Renier the Endgame and of course, the Fundamentals, available only to our yearly members.
Please go ahead and vote what is the best time for you to have the under1700 group for July and August here.
Sam will return after the World Cup, so will Cheparinov. Salgado has some internet problems, being on a long summer holiday, but hopefully we can fit him in sometime. Jacob is busy giving US online camps since yesterday. Renier is playing in Benasque, but will be back afterwards. Still, we are managing to fill the schedule and will continue to do so. In July with a 10 hour camp with GM Tiger Hillarp Persson, who is currently playing the Swedish Championship and with opening expert Nikos Ntirlis in August. Nikos have guested us previously and we were asked to bring him back. Happy to help.
As we said before, during the summertime, we will leave the recordings for the non-recurring courses (for example, Thinking Aloud and Game of the Week) up for 3 weeks. You can always find older course recordings in the corresponding course page and free classes to share with your friends in the Your Academy page.
Tomorrow Peter Long is having the u1700 WorkGroup at 10:00 and at 17:00 UK time, Jacob will host a Practice Session on Advanced Calculation and a small change in the schedule, just for the upcoming Homework Club classes, Jacob will host them on Monday, instead of Tuesday and Killer Openings will be on Tuesday. As always, you can see our classes on Google Calendar here and for ics files here.
For all of you interested in the best setup, do not miss John’s Corner this Saturday on New Stockfish & How to build a computer.
For July and August, we will run the “bring a friend and get a course” campaign
If you are a yearly member and you bring a friend (or as many friends as you’d like) and they get a trial or a monthly membership, you can choose any of the courses: Attacking the opponent effectively by GM Sabino Brunello, Foundation of Positional Play by IM Renier Castellanos, Kasparov’s Chess Evolution by GM Iván Salgado López, Material Imbalances by GM Julen Arizmendi, Thoughts on Strategy by GM Julen Arizmendi, Understanding Weaknesses by GM Julen Arizmendi, or the recordings of the camp Work on and learn from your own games. All your friend has to do is write on the order notes who introduced them and we will put the course of your choice in your account.
If your friend gets a yearly membership at €749 and they pay with a card, you can choose whichever course recording is available on the shop.
Enjoy the sunshine and playing chess!
Your friends,
Kallia, Sam and Jacob