Late 2 Chess

L2C 072:  H1 from the Chess Knowledge with H1 podcast H1 joins us for a wide ranging discussions of his chess history and various aspects of chess improvement and study.  Plus he gets a new nickname.   We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we did and get as much from the discussion. Remember we are currently offering this "chess prescription" service to you and if you'd like our opinions, plea...

L2C 069:  Opening and Endgame Study methods, and Other Listener Questions We love our listener questions and we catch up with some from the past few weeks: 1)  How best to study Openings 2)  How best to learn Endgames 3)  How we learn from chess books 4)  How we use Chessable/YouTube/Chessly etc. and related sites 5)  What we think are the best time controls to learn and improve with (some answers...

L2C 068:  Getting Better vs Winning vs Elo Pursuit - and some of the hazards of each Bill surprises The Doctor with one of his weird soapbox issues.  It starts with a discussion of chess improvement versus Elo increases versus an obsession with winning.  As always, we bounce around and discuss several different aspects of these areas and many other subjects related to chess improvement. One of the...

L2C 074:  Emergency Episode - Bill's Latest Tournament (Debacle) Bill played in a tournament this weekend, as some of you may know from our Instagram posts.  It did not go well.  He did not play well.  It was a tough one and we discuss it on the pod and what the plan of attack will be for the coming weeks.  Chess can be a tough game and Bill tends to be a bit tougher on himself than may be appropr...

L2C 071:  Emergency Episode - Our 2026 Gift Bag Contest With the recent popularity of The Doctor's grab bags, we have sold out (for zero dollars so is it really a sale?) of The Doctor's current book stash, but we wanted to go out with a bang so here are the details of our year end, holiday gift bag.    Good luck! Remember we are currently offering this "chess prescription" service to you and if yo...

L2C 070:  NM Robert Ramirez - Chess Coaching Deep Dive - Part 1 of... We were very happy to have Robert Ramirez on the podcast and we had so many topics to discuss with him and then he started a whole new website and a structure to his chess paying and instruction.  So we ended up with about 5 episodes worth of questions, maybe more.  We cover his new to us method of logically explaining a methodo...

L2C 067:  Prescription for Chess Improvement - Listener Code Name Grasshopper To the surprise of many, a listener took advantage of our offer to review their game and suggest a few things to work on.  Thank you to codename "Grasshopper" for their games and details.  If you ever want to have us look at your games and make suggections, the offer remains open.    Did we miss something or get anything...

L2C 066:  How to Study Puzzles and tactics to Actually Improve Your Chess Game If you have ever listened to any chess improvement advisors, you have undoubtably heard that to improve at chess you need to improve your tactics, especially early on in your chess journey.  Some have even said that chess is 99% tactics at this point or that tactics is all/everything you need to do to improve.  We aren'...

L2C 064:  Our Chess Prescriptions For Each Other It is here, the episode where The Doctor gets to tell Bill what to do to improve his chess game.  And, Bill gets to tell the Doctor what he has to do to improve his.  The best part about it is that they both have to do what the other says.  Since we both know each other's games very well, this should lead to improvement in how we paly or at least fi...

L2C 065:  Listener Emails and Bill's Latest OTB Tournament at Marywood The Doctor (and I) love nothing more than emails from our listeners.  This episode starts off we a few of our more recent emails, including one from our first listener prescription request.  We then go into a quick review of Bill's latest OTB tournament at Marywood.    Also, remember we are currently offering this "chess prescr...

L2C 063:  Dr Can Kabadayi on Learning Chess World Class Chess Instructor and prolific author of multiple award winning Chessable Courses Dr Can Kabadayi joins the podcast and we discuss a few of the more important aspects of learning chess by applying Dr Can's background in cognitive science and experience as a chess coach to help you get better at the game of chess.  It was a fantastic episode an...

L2C 062:  Our Top Ten Things That Did Not Help Our Chess - Yet Top ten lists seem to be popular, so we decided to list the Top 10 Activities that we all have heard and likely tried that have not helped our chess game or helped our chess game the least to this point.  This may not be the case as we improve, but to this point, here is our list.     Did we miss something or get anything wrong? Were w...

L2C 061:  Patience in Chess Bill gets up onto his soapbox for this one and tried to explain why patience in chess is so important but often overlooked in most chess areas of chess learning.  The Doctor is underwhelmed initially and you will have to listen to find out if he eventually comes across to Bill's side of the argument.  Please be prepared as Bill had done way too many tacticas on this day...

L2C 060:  Tao of Chess and Bill's Latest OTB Tournament On this week's episode, we try to squeeze in a double shot.  We cover the chapter in the Tao of Chess on tempo.  Then we go into the latest OTB tournament for Bill.  Plus there is a few surprise items and Bill continues to lobby for The Doctor to go to the Charlotte Chess Center in October for a live, over the board tournament.  Did we miss s...

L2C 059:  IM Kostya Kavutskiy We were honored to have International Master Kostya Kavutskiy on the podcast.  We talked all things chess and the ChessDojo, as well as our usual digressions.  Hopefully this will be a great introduction to Kostya and part one of many to come.   Did we miss something or get anything wrong? Were we remiss in not asking a question or discuss an area you are interested i...

L2C 058:  AI Assistance in Chess Improvement and Listener Questions The Doctor has been hard at work on his game and has become a big fan of working with AI to review his paly.  He is primarily using a new to us website called ChesSigma and we he has found to be helpful to improve his game.  Hopefully, we can go over the website in more depth in the future.  We also go through a few recent listene...

L2C 057:  Chess Camp with the Chess Dojo The Chess Dojo announced that they would be holding a camp helping players chess games.  We were immediately interested but life schedules led to Bill being the only one of us to be able to attend.  He had such a good time and learned so much, we had a need to share the experience the night the event ended.  We apologize if Bill was more of a babbling idiot...

L2C 056:  Visualization and Mental Processing with Aiden Rayner All chess players can agree that thinking is a large of our game and a key component in our success at the board.  What if there was a way to optimize not only what we think but how we think?  Do you think that your game would improve?  Would the game be even more fun?  While our guest for this episode cannot guarantee that your Elo w...

L2C 055:  Welcome Back - To The Doctor and OTB Chess for Bill Summer is rapidly coming to a close and The Doctor has returned to the podcast from his sabbatical, lol.  In addition, we cover an OTB tournament after a long layoff for Bill.  What has The Doctor been up to and how has his game been progressing?  How did the tournament go and did any of the recent work payoff?      Did we miss somethin...

L2C 054:  How to Annotate and Analyze Your Game (101) with Claude Fried It is often said that in chess one of the best ways to improve is to study your games, often annotating them is the method suggested.  But what exactly does that mean exactly.   Claude Fried returns to help Bill walk through a recent game and help him to annotate and analyze the game.   While we made every effort to make this...

L2C 053:  Bill on the Sofa - State of the Union Update as of July 2026 Bill reviews what he has been up to and how his chess game and study have been progressing over the past few months.  Has his Elo gone up?  Has it gone down?  What has he been spending his time doing?  Studying vs playing.  Plus a fun idea for another contest that involves you, our esteemed audience, if the Doctor approves.   D...

L2C 052: Claude Fried Returns to Answer (Some) of Bill's Dumb Questions Many/Most/All(?) chess players seem to be obsessed over chess openings. In an effort to help, Claude Fried returns to offer some very good advice to us about what to do when looking to start a new to you opening. In addition, Bill can't help but ask some more of his ridiculous questions. Claude is way too good of a player to p...

L2C 051:  Space:  Our Tao of Chess Book Series Continues Our Tao of Chess series continues with this episode focused on the importance of space when playing chess.  Don't worry, this is not the final frontier of the series.  We have a long way to go.   Did we miss something or get anything wrong? Were we remiss in not asking a question or discuss and area you are interested in? Let us know at Late...

L2C 050:  Non-Chess Factors to Improve Your Game We started off with a simple listener question:   What do you think are things that are not directly related to chess playing and studying that could help your chess game, especially for a tournament.  Bill thought it was a 5 minute pre-episode discussion.  The Doctor had other ideas.  As usual, the Doctor was correct.      Did we miss something or...

L2C 049:  Speed Runs / Slow Runs One of Bill's favorite soft learning activities is to watch slow runs/speed runs and we go into several that he has found to be most helpful and how he tries to get the most value from them.  The Doctor then goes through a similar process that he uses to actually simulate a speedrun for himself.  Then we talk about a few ways that we may add these to our podcast's...