Russia has as many Grandmasters as the US, Germany, and India COMBINED
The best monthly chess newsletter you receive.
Issue 32 | MM Chess
It’s the 32th 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: Anay, Shreyas, Gabriel, Jack, Daniel, Reyansh, and Atharv!
Student Success🏆
Share your wins! Every month we’re highlighting some of the successes of our students. Reply to this email with pictures of you or your child’s success.
Congrats to Ritam (and his teacher Fabian) who’s breaking through and constantly placing in the top 5. Here, he placed 4th in the K-5 Unrated!
Congrats to Gideon Richard, who won 1st Place for 900-1099 rated players at the Under 13 World Open!
My story🖼️
I ran the Lifetime Chicago Half-Marathon with my friend Sol Lowenstein. To be honest, we both didn't train enough for it. I only ran outside about 10 times in total. But running 13.2 miles is as much mental as it is physical. So, we powered through and finished the race in less than 2 hours!
Monthly Tournament♟️
📅 This month’s tournament will take place on Wednesday, July 19th, 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 55 students, both kids & adults!
To Play: Join the MM team and press into “MM July Arena.” The Zoom for the tournament is here, and the password is Smile.
Congrats last month to Aarav, Matthew, and Yoan! Matthew placed in the top 3 for the first time.
Chess News 📰
Learn crazy tricks from MM’s Youtube page! Here are 5 tricks in the Ruy Lopez, AKA the Spanish Game.
💁🏻♀️💪🏻Meet Alice Lee, the 13-year-old International Master that has US women’s chess going crazy. She has crushed grandmasters on the internet and on the board, and even held her own against the world No 2, Hikaru Nakamura. She is the youngest player in the top 50 women, and she is not stopping there.
🧒🏻 Imagine being 9 years old and beating chess players twice or thrice your age. That’s what Faustino Oro does every day. He is a chess whiz kid who’s called the “Messi of Chess”, after the famous soccer star from his country. How did he reach out 2300 rating and an FM title? He learned chess online during the pandemic by watching YouTube videos. His father gave him prizes for every 100 points he gained, and soon he was unstoppable.
🎂🥳 What a way to celebrate your birthday! Dommaraju Gukesh, a teenage chess prodigy from India, gave himself the best gift ever by defeating the mighty Magnus Carlsen, the former world champion and current world No. 1, in a fast and furious blitz game. He is no stranger to breaking records, as he became a grandmaster at 12 years old, almost the youngest ever.
♟️🥇Sarana’s sweep: Serbian chess star crushes Chigaev to win Olympic Esports Series 2023. Serbian Grandmaster Aleksei Sarana showed no mercy to his rival Maksim Chigaev in the final of the Chess.com event at the Olympic Esports Series 2023 in Singapore. He won all three games in a row, leaving Chigaev with no time and no hope.
😢🌟The chess world has lost one of its brightest stars. Vadim Malakhatko, a Ukrainian-born grandmaster who played for both his homeland and Belgium, passed away on 5 June 2023 after a sudden heart attack in Kyiv. He was only 46 years old and was a chess wizard, who cast his spells over the board and won many trophies and medals in individual and team competitions. We mourn his loss and celebrate his legacy.
🌍👩🏾🦱 What do you get when you combine FIDE, UNHCR, and a bunch of refugee girls in Kenya? A chess club that rocks! The Girl Club is called “Chess for Protection” and it’s a blast! The club started with 40 girls in 2021 and now it’s 250 in three schools. They learn chess from the best online and play all day long. They also learn how chess can make their lives better and hear great stories. The club helps the girls learn, bond, and have a lot of fun. The girls also compete in chess tournaments in their camps and online. They are the queens of the game and the rulers of their own lives!
Fun Facts💡
🏅 Russia has as many Grandmasters as the US, Germany, and India COMBINED. With a total of 240 Grandmasters, they take the crown of the country with the most chess Grandmasters in the world! 12% of the world’s GMs to be precise
🔝Did you know the title “Grandmaster” wasn’t official until the early 1950s? When FIDE awarded it to that year's world championship candidates as well as several living greats who were largely past their prime.
📊This graph shows the vast increase in the “Grandmaster” titles approved per year! But it makes us think: Is the title suffering from inflation? I mean, as it’s more prevalent, doesn’t it lower the value of the title?🤔
🤯 A photo of an iconic statue at the John Marshall Memorial Park in Washington DC. It took over 100 years of planning and funding to make this park come true! In the end, one of the most interesting statues standing in this park is this sculpture of two men playing chess:
⭐ This is a quick visualization of the most common chess openings. As you can see, the top 5 openings are as popular as the following 45 combined!