Blindfold Chess Podcast

Nowadays, we may hear about Vladimir Kramnik as someone highly suspicious of chess cheating including accusing high level players of misconduct, but that has not always been the case. He was the youngest person to ever reach world number 1 in ratings, he was a World Champion for 7 years, and was a 2 time Chess Oscar winner. So let’s dive into this chess legend’s career. A career that included - be...

Chess is everywhere around us. Its been a game that has resonated with billions of people for almost 1500 years. A game about strategy, hierarchies, players that don’t know it rising to the top of the game, humans that break barriers while playing it - everyone who plays this game has their own stories to tell - be that the games that got away, the games that will go down in their memories forever...

This week, we are looking at the rising star Vaishali Rameshbabu, the 3rd woman in India to achieve the Grandmaster title. She and her brother are the first 2 siblings in history to be Grandmasters, to play in the Candidates, and to play in the Candidates in the same year.  For today though, we are going back just a couple of years to the 2022 Tata Steel Blitz tournament - Vaishali Rameshbabu vers...

This week, we are looking at the tumultuous and impressive life of the 4th World Champion - Alexander Alekhine.  Alekhine’s fingerprints are all over the game we know today - he had many openings named over him including the: Alekhine Defense (e4 Nf6), Alekhine Variations found in the Budapest Gambit, Vienna Game, Ruy Lopez, Winawer Variation, Sicilian Dragon, QGA, Slav, Queens Pawn, Catalan, and...

Welcome back! This week, we are taking a closer look at someone that Garry Kasparov has praised for her calculation skills, a 20 time US Women’s Chess Championship participant, 4-time US Women’s Champion, and someone who helped the United States win their first Olympic medal(s) - Anna Zatonskih.  For today’s game, we are traveling back to the 2nd round of the US Women’s Championship of 2017. Anna...

This week, we are looking at not only the current Women’s World Champion, but the 5 consecutive time Women’s World Champion - Wenjun Ju.  Her journey to the top of the Women’s World of Chess started at the age of 7 when it was something interesting to do after school. In an interview with Chessbase from November 2020, she said:  “My parents didn’t know too much about the game because chess doesn’t...

**There is an error in the first puzzle of the episode: the bishop should be on c4 (NOT c5)**  Thank you @brianmartin5571 on Youtube for letting me know!  Hello, and welcome back to another episode - as per tradition, we will be looking at some puzzles this week.  I will give you the location of each of the pieces on the board then I will give you some time to solve it before we walk through the s...

Today, we are looking at a sometimes overlooked player in chess history. An individual is rumored to have learned 14 languages, he founded a chess magazine, has an opening named after him, and someone who played in the first World Championship - Johannes Zukertort. In London, members of the St George’s Chess Club heard of Zukertort’s victory and offered money for him to come play against the unoff...

Nowadays, we may see this gentleman as a commentator on large scale events such as the US Championship and the World Championship, but he has had a groundbreaking career including participating in the US Chess Championship and becoming the first Black chess Grandmaster. We are of course talking about -the Tiger Woods of Chess - Maurice Ashley.  He joined the Black Bear School of Chess - a chess gr...

This week, we are looking at a 5-time US Women’s Olympiad participant, a 2-time Women’s World Chess Championship participant, a 21-time US Women’s Championship participant, and a lover of all things penguins - Women’s Grandmaster Tatev Abrahamyan.  Born in Armenia, Tatev learned to play chess at the age of 8 when her father took her to the Chess Olympiad of 1996 which took place in her home countr...

Hello everyone, this week we are looking at the youngest Alberta champion, at one point the highest rated bullet player on Chess.com, the highest rated active Canadian player, and a founder of the Youtube and Twitch channel the “Chessbrahs” - Eric Hansen. A couple of years after he started playing chess, in 2003, he participated in the Alberta Provincial Under 12 Championship where he scored 1st w...

This week, we are looking at the long career of the 10th World Champion, the youngest person to become Grandmaster in history (at the time), the youngest Candidate to the World Championship (at the time), and the famed opponent of the 1972 World Championship against Bobby Fischer - Boris Spassky.  Spassky learned to play chess at the age of 5 on a train evacuating Leningrad during the Siege of Len...

This week, we are looking (at the time) the youngest Women’s World Champion, a 13-time Olympiad Gold Medal Winner, the second Woman in history to be awarded the Grandmaster title, and a Women’s World Champion for 13 years - Maia Chiburdanidze.  She was born in Kutaisi of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic of the USSR in 1961 where she learned to play chess at the age of 8.  She played (and won...

This week, we are taking a look at who CNN has called the “David Beckham of Chess” - the former World Rapid Champion, World Blitz Champion, World Chess960 Champion, former 2nd highest rating in the world, and 5-time Candidate for the World Championship - Levon Aronian. In 2004, he played in his first FIDE World Chess Championship - a 128 player knockout tournament. The winner of the tournament bec...

In Season 1, we looked at one of the Polgar sisters - Susan. Today, we are looking at the youngest sister - Judit Polgar. Prepare yourself for a large list of records and milestones. Judit was born in 1976 in Hungary as the youngest of her two other siblings - Susan and Sofia. They grew up as part of an educational experiment carried out by their dad - Laszlo Polgar - with the hypothesis of - “Gen...

Hello everyone, welcome back to the third season of the Blindfold Chess Podcast.  This week, we will be looking at a name synonymous with the chess community - Howard Staunton. If you have been around the game for any length of time, you may have heard of him as an unofficial World Champion in the mid-1800s, or you’ve heard of his opening - the Staunton Gambit of 1. d4 f5 2. e4, or you’ve heard of...

Hi there, its me Cassidy, I’ve been the writer and voice of this podcast for a couple of years now. I have enjoyed doing the podcast, but life is starting to creep up so this will be my last episode before taking a hiatus.  I appreciate each and every one of you who download and listen to me. The listenership has been so far beyond what I could imagine for.  I was hoping to hold off on making an e...

This week, I wanted to look at a relatively new branch of chess - chess computers.  The first ‘chess machine’ built in 1770 was called the Mechanical Turk. The supposed machine would play challengers with various indications that it was a functional machine. In reality, a human operated the machine using ‘The Turk’ as a sophisticated marionette.  You have to jump almost 150 years in the future for...

This week, we are looking at the opera writer and musician who documented chess books and endgames so well we are still using them today.  Francois-Andre Danican (Dan-ee-con) Philidor came from a well known musical family. His grandfather was given nickname of Philidor by King Louis XIII of France because his oboe playing reminded him of the Italian oboist Filidor.  When he was 6, Philidor joined...

This week, we are looking at one of the most influential names in chess - Yasser Sierawan.  Yasser was born in Damascus, Syria to his Syrian father and English mother. At the age of 7, his family immigrated to Seattle, Washington. He didn’t start playing chess until the age of 12 - this was in 1972, right in the thick of the Fischer Boom that was happening in the United States. The next year, at t...

This week, we are looking at the Indian prodigy - Dommaraju Gukesh commonly known as Gukesh D. Born in 2006, Gukesh D learned how to play chess at the age of 7.  Two years after he started to play chess, he won the Under 9 Asian School Championships in 2015 with a 1770 rating.  He did not stop there, with his rating rapidly climbing - his father gave up his career as an ear, nose, throat surgeon t...

With a birthday less than a week ago, this week, we are looking at Spanish-Swedish star Anna Cramling.  Anna has a very strong chess background - her father is Grandmaster Juan Manuel Bellon Lopez - the 5 time Spanish Chess Champion and 11 time Spanish Olympiad player. Her mother is - Pia Cramling - the 5th woman to ever to have earned her Grandmaster title, the number 1 woman player in the world...

Passing away in late 2023, International Master Jeremy Silman made a lasting impact on our game through his playing, his consulting, his writing, and his coaching.  Born in 1954, Silman didn’t start playing chess until he was 12 where he went to his first tournament, ending with a rating of 1068.  In high school, Silman expressed to his guidance counselor that he wanted to go to “Moscow University...

Fabiano Luigi Caruana, the chess phenom who was the youngest American to earn his Grandmaster title, the youngest to win the Italian Champion, the current top US player, and the number 2 player in the world… - his accomplishments go on for a while, but currently - he is playing in his 5th Candidates tournament aiming for the World Championship.  Born in Florida in 1992 to his Italian parents, he m...

Welcome back to another episode!  In today’s episode,  I will be providing you with the locations of the different pieces on the board. It is your job to figure out the solution by pausing the podcast before moving on. Today, we will be looking at 3 puzzles each around a different endgame theme starting from Easy and working our way to Hard.  Here is your first puzzle - White has a king on e5 and...