Issue 15 | MM Chess
Welcome back. It’s the 15th issue of the Mindful Masters Newsletter, the best (and only?) monthly chess newsletter you receive. I cover chess culture and relevant wisdom I've collected along the way.
In February we welcome the newest MMChess.org students: Scarlett, Max, Vitya, Marty, Aarya, Quentin, Anjana, Darrin, Julia, Sophia, Kim, Bobby, Sana, Ali, and Prayush, Zachary, and Adam, and Ben!
My story 🖼️
One of my proudest chess moments is winning the Denker Tournament of US State Champions in 2011, a competition with all 50 state champions. I won the Ohio Championship and, with a stroke of good luck, took the Denker Championship! This month, I found out someone make a video from the tournament:
Chess News This Month 📰
👸 Chess Queens: The True Story of a Chess Champion and the Greatest Female Players was published by two-time US women's chess champion Jennifer Shahade, chronicling the lives and games of famous female chess players.
🧠 Indian youngers solve puzzles faster than most grandmasters. Nihal Sarin (now 17) is a prodigy and one of the youngest grandmasters ever. His ability to solve puzzles is astonishing!
💥 Waste Time In a Smart Way. “It’s great, because instead of opening up some dumb app like Clash Of Clans, I now have a higher-brow option when it comes to putting off work, zoning out on the subway, or just killing a couple of hours in the evenings before bed,” said Bolton. Sometimes, The Onion satire is too real.
💪 Who Will Be The First Black Female Chess Master? My friend Rochelle Ballantyne is prominently featured in this article.
✨ GothanChess talks about his favorite game. This is an oldie, but a goodie. A game we can all learn from!
Fun Facts💡
⚔️ Chess players burn 10% more calories while playing chess. It’s a sport! Troubat et. al in 2008 found that chess players burned an average of 1.53kcal per minute at rest, and at most 1.67kcal per minute while playing chess - a modest 10% increase on average from doing nothing.
👑 There are almost 2000 grandmasters today. And by the way, All 73 Indian Grandmasters are still alive, as are all female grandmasters.
🤌 The Sicilian Defense (1. e4 c5) Is By Far The Most Popular Opening.