It’s the 36th 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. Please let’s welcome the newest MMChess.org students: Zezva & Sreelekha, Daniel, Thomas, Rivka, Alex, Emma, Scott, Rohan, Henry, Ryan, Daniel & Alex.
Current students: refer your friends with our “give a lesson, get a lesson” coupon! If they sign up for classes, you get a free lesson credit!
Student Success🏆
Every month we’re highlighting some of the successes of our students. Proud of something chess-related? Send me photos!
Congrats to Jaden Y., who tied for 2nd-4th place at his first official tournament!
My story 🖼️
We’ve had a lot of new students and parents join MM Academy, so I thought I’d reshare an old post. My parents like to brag that my dad taught me to play at 3 years, and 10 months when my family lived in Israel. I didn’t like to follow the rules (clearly, as you can see by the board behind me).
And by the way, age isn’t so important - the world champion only learned at 5.
Monthly Tournament♟️
📅 This month’s tournament will take place on Wednesday, November 22nd, at 7pm EST (6pm CT, 5pm MT, 4pm PT). Most of the players will be rated from 500-1800. In the last tournament, there were 32 students, both kids & adults!
To Play: Reply to this email or press the big green button here. If you haven’t already, you also have to join the MM team and press the “MM Thanksgiving Arena.” The Zoom for the tournament is here.
Congrats last month to Wells, Connor, Jasper, and Shreyansh! You rock, guys!
(Connor with his prize!)
Chess News 📰
🏆 Our coach Fabian Vivas is a chess champion! He won the ITT Cerrado Internacional X Festival de Ajedrez Velez Santander, beating strong players from different Latin American countries. It was a challenging tournament, he had to get 7/9 for International Master norm (2450+)!
He also came close to winning the South American Championship but had to settle for 2nd place after a draw with a grandmaster in the last round. He did a fantastic job! Congrats, coach!
🔥 GM Daniel Naroditsky won his third consecutive Bullet Brawl on October 21 after he scored an incredible nine wins in his final nine games to finish on a perfect score of 80/80 and edge out GM Hikaru Nakamura by just one point. The American commentator is now second on the all-time leaderboard with seven wins.
👧🏽Congratulations to Bodhana Sivanandan, the chess superstar of England! She is the first English player to win a world youth title in a quarter of a century, and she did it without losing a single game in the Girls Under 8 section. She also swept the European and Commonwealth titles this year, achieving a rare triple crown!
🌎 Fabiano Caruana is the US chess king again! He crushed his rivals in St Louis and is ready to take on Magnus Carlsen, the world champ who barely escaped him in 2018. Fabiano is also a YouTube star and a Chessable teacher. His masterpiece was against Andrew Tang, who fell for his London trap.
👩🏻💻Chess + Esports + Pan American Games = awesome online event! Eight players each for men and women on chess.com. José Cubas (Paraguay) won the open section with 5.5/7. Thalia Landeiro (Cuba) won the women’s section with more wins.
🎥 New animated series on ChessKid: Chessy and Checky. Chessy is a clever girl who loves chess. Checky is a naughty chess piece that makes trouble. The series teaches kids chess and life skills. See the first episode here.
🍰 Happy 60th birthday to GM Garry Kasparov, the chess legend! He was the world champion from 1985 to 2000 and the most powerful and influential player ever. He is also a famous author, speaker, and activist for good causes. Learn more about him on his website.
♟️ Andrey Filatov, the president of the Russian Chess Federation, announced on Friday that they intend to sign 10-year contracts with promising young players to prevent them from leaving the country (ugh). With no signs of the war in Ukraine ending, Russian’s best chess players have already left.
Fun Facts💡
🤫 Hikaru and other players think Chess.com Titled Tuesdays has a cheaping problem. He considers Fabiano to be “paranoid” since according to him, around 50% of players in online tournaments are cheating. “Realistically, in my opinion, the number is around 25%,” says Nakamura. Still a lot!
👀 Hans Neiman talks hit GothamChess with clickbait titles in the most condescending way possible. But he’s kind of right, Levi tends to take his clickbait to new levels from time to time.
😆 This is one of the best memes I’ve seen in a long time. Sometimes, being a great player is not about learning all the tactics, but about being consistent and improving what works best!
📈Vladimir Kramnik gets more conspiratorial, without verified data. I’d really recommend checking out his profile on chess.com, where he shares content like this:
🤯A YouTuber by the name of Tyler1 has made quite a name in the chess world. Around 2 months ago he started playing and improving his game and now, only a week after reaching an Elo of 1100, he reached 1400 (he’s now in the top 6% of chess.com player base). This is just outstanding considering that to achieve this he has had to play around 45-50 Blitz games A DAY on average.