Issue 30 | MM Chess
It’s the 30th issue (wow!) 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: Samvedya, JJ, Phil, Reyansh, Jame’s daughter, Jonathan and Jubilee, Radha’s son, Erika, and Khang’s kid!
Student Success🏆
Every month we’re highlighting some of the successes of our students. Proud of something chess-related? Send me photos!
Congratulations to Ritam (and his teacher Fabian), for his first success in an in-person tournament held at Albany, NY. He competed against unrated players of his age group, and among the four players he faced, he won 3 games and lost one, scoring 3.0 points. He was ranked 8th out of 39 players. Being a first-timer and scoring above 2.0 points he got a medal also.
Congrats to Timi M. for winning 2nd place among beginners in the Southwest Virginia Championship
Big applause to Flavio (and his coach Luis) who won the prize of best club player of Dama Negra (the club organizing the event) in the VII Open Internacional Semana Santa La Nucía.
Congrats to Rishi V, who in a few months ramped up his progress and tied for 5th a the High School Chess Nationals!
About the chess workbook🖼️
A big part of my job at MM Chess is helping teachers improve in every aspect of their work, from communication to curriculum. I’m in the background, training teachers how to use positive reinforcement and what material is best for a specific level.
Whenever I recommend chess workbooks to our teachers and students, I’m always left answering: “This book is the best, but it’s not perfect.” This summer, I plan to launch my own book. I asked some of my strongest students to “create” puzzles for me. One of my favorites is Daochen’s puzzle: there’s only a King on d4! Where do you place the King, Pawn, Pawn, Bishop, and Rook for checkmate?
Monthly Tournament♟️
📅 This month’s tournament will take place on Wednesday, May 17th, 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 49 students, both kids & adults!
To Play: Press the big green button here. If you haven’t already, you also have to join the MM team The Zoom for the tournament is here, and the password is Smile.
Congrats last month to Omar, Ray, and Connor! All three of the winners had never won a Top-3 prize before.
Chess News 📰
🏆 Ding Liren wins the World Chess Championship! After a huge performance, Ding Liren defeats Ian Nepomiachi! Ding said: 'This match reflects the deepness of my soul' . He continues: “I started to learn chess from four years old,” Ding says. “I spent 26 years playing, analyzing, trying to improve my chess ability with many different ways, with different changing methods. with many new ways of training.”
He continues: “I think I did everything. Sometimes I thought I was addicted to chess, because sometimes without tournaments I was not so happy. Sometimes I struggled to find other hobbies to make me happy. This match reflects the deepness of my soul.”
🤝 Since the COVID-19 pandemic, chess has become more and more popular in New Brunswick. On Saturday, some 300 young chess players from all over New Brunswick congregated in Moncton. The Moncton Coliseum hosted the Scholastic Provincial Chess Tournament, which included students in kindergarten through grade 12.
⏲️ Teams are on fire! The 2023 Pro Chess League's main season came to an end. 8 teams are left, and on May 11, four of them will square off for dominance!
😶 Should we laugh or cry? GM Eric thought that Alireza ran out of time, but! It ended in a draw by repetition!
🥇 Did you know that chess is a mandatory course in Armenia's elementary schools? Here is everything you would like to know about it.
Fun Facts💡
🤯 There’s an ABSURD amount of players in Iran aged over 100 and we can’t explain why! One of the possible explanations we have is that Iran is one of the few countries that use the Solar Hijri Calendar so it’s possible that only some Iranians transpose the year of their birthdate to the Gregorian calendar when registering, and others do not, which causes it.
😅 This was the featured chat for a game of this WCC 🤣 In the 10th game of the World Chess Championship, one of the chat curators mistakenly (I hope) let this message appear “Ding literally pooping himself…”
📈 Being a top 10% player isn’t that hard, after all? These are the percentiles of chess players in the world. It means, after being rated 1200, you are a better player than 90% of all players‼️ And let's be honest, being rated 1200 is far from impossible
Pssst* We can get you in that 10%😎
🤣 Magnus was once voted among the sexiest men alive by Cosmopolitan! His pick-up must have been... “I just lost my queen last round — but I think I just found her!”
That's all folks! Make sure you subscribe to our Newsletter to get more content like this!