Nice pieces of advice by GM Hellsten! I have taken notes and I will start applying his tips after my games in order to be a bit less patzer at this complicated but amazing game. Thanks, Ben, for uploading these podcasts for chess improvers to become better and better at chess! :)
Magnus would purposely imitate Tal in that he does a move that is questionable just to confuse his opponent but Magnus does this in between doing silent moves like Capablanca.
(The best course on Chessable) I can ~highly~ recommend Hellstten's course on endgame strategy. I found it far more practical and comprehensive than "100 endgames you must know". Dvoretsky's book is great in print, but I can't imagine doing it on Chessable. Check out Hellstten's course it's fantastic! He has ~30 hours of content and draws from all of the books that you should own. It's exactly what I needed as someone who didn't know where to go next; I just wanted to ensure I had everything covered. Far better than the "revised and updated" books written 20-100 years ago. I think this is a big issue on Chessable. That stuff should be a fraction of the price, it's practically public domain.
Good interview with some good advice but I don't see where he really gets into "how to analyze your chess games". He mentions 3 types of mistakes to watch out for and do your personal analysis before using an engine, but I was hoping for something more specific. Maybe I am looking for too much specificity.
Good interview. Been meaning to buy Hellsten’s books but only those aimed at players over 2000. Does anyone know which of Hellsten’s books are geared towards those rated over 2000? If so, please share this info! Cheers!
The engine is just a very strong player. But you don't have to pay that player to give you an opinion on your game. So it would be silly not to make it tool number 1. Tool number 2 is the database. Scroll to move 10 of your game. Is it in the database? If no then either you or your opponent probably made a real stinker of a game. And then spend the rest of your time grinding tactics and one day after a few years you realize you're a master level player.
For tactics, the engine is prime but for positional ideas like purposely disturbing the equilibrium of the board to throw off your opponent like what Tal does, the engine is absolute crap at it.
@@RealityCheck1 Tool number 2 is the book. The book helps a great deal to keep you out of games that can easily fall prey to tactic. The problem is there's no book for middlegame and endgame so at the end of the day brute force calculation, also called tactics, wins the game