I'm an adult improver student of Jordan's (28 y.o., +250 USCF since meeting him)! You get a good picture of his coaching style from this interview: thoughtful, methodical, and with a focus on the practicalities of playing. This interview was great, especially the emphasis on developing solid and practical play. I think it's really tempting in the streamer/content creation age to prioritize traps, "gain 500 ELO overnight", etc. It's refreshing to hear the long term grind toward mastery as desirable
Really nice episode. I listened to another after this one, but I can’t find the number here. I think 236. The guest was asked about if they follow top-level chess. I wanted to add that it is not entirely obvious ‘how’ to follow top level games. There is a glut of content, not the least problem of which is the games themselves are many and complicated… as well as a lot of competing channels. So I was thinking it would be great if an episode could address ‘How to watch and follow top-level chess’. It might even be applicable to high level tournaments, around FM and IM etc. I’d love to know how people do it, and for how long, because do people really watch 5 hours of footage each day? Doubtful. Yet deep down I want to engage more with events… but I am not sure how. Now that I think of it, maybe picking a player to follow is one strategy… and you follow that ‘hero’ through a tournament, both their ups and downs, and maybe use an engine ‘as if’ to help them find resources after.
Tiger Woods’ dad had a different idea about playing up. He didn’t have his son play up but let him dominate and win. That way he got used to it. Then he moved up and dominated. In chess, you are gonna face a ten year old kid rated 593. Is he 593? Is actually 2300, but just starting? You can get your ass kicked playing your own level or playing up. It’s all good.
