Late 2 Chess

L2C 027:  Our 2026 Candidates Fantasy Chess League - plus a bit more Since we had a shorter episode this week, we wanted to give you a double dose of chess content this week and exceed our weekly goal of 1 hour of podcast goodness.  Bill introduces the good Doctor to one of his favorite books that has helped him in many areas of his career and life.  Then we apply this technique to chess, we are a...

L2C 026:  How to Improve in Chess - And Many Other Areas of Life/Work Since we had a shorter episode this week, we wanted to give you a double dose of chess content this week and exceed our weekly goal of 1 hour of podcast goodness.  Bill introduces the good Doctor to one of his favorite books that has helped him in many areas of his career and life.  Then we apply this technique to chess, we are...

L2C 025:  Listener Questions - Ep. 1 On this terribly fun episode, we discuss a recent series of listener questions.  If you want your questions to be the subject of an upcoming episode, please let us know.  These episodes are great fun.   Did we get something wrong?  Were we remiss in not asking a question or discuss and area you are interested in? Let us know at Late2Chess@gmail.com If you have...

L2C 024:  LadyBug Joins us From the ChessDojo We are joined by another adult learner from the ChessDojo for this episode.  She played when she was younger and she resumed playing again last year and has progressed steadily since then.  We cover her story and wander around aimlessly throughout the episode. Did we get something wrong?  Were we remiss in not asking a question or discuss and area you...

L2C 023:  Sofa Time with The Doctor ep. 1? We often work together on our games and thinking about chess.  Here is a sample of what we do with (to) each other.  If you like it, we can even start this as an ongoing mini-series.   Did we get something wrong?  Were we remiss in not asking a question or discuss and area you are interested in? Let us know at Late2Chess@gmail.com If you have any thoughts...

L2C 022:  Sweatgland - A True DCP Sweatgland from the Chess Dojo joins us for a great episode.  We talk about his chess history and his road to where he is currently  We also meander around (to the surprise of no one) and discuss wide variety of chess training, growth of players, methods, etc.  And far be it for us not to take advantage of his knowledge of our games and find out what he sees as ou...

L2C 021:  The Tao of Chess - Chapter 2:  The Pieces We continue our discussion on the Tao of Chess with the second chapter covering several of the principles related to the pieces.  We had a bit more trouble discussing this one and that may reflect some limitations of our current game understanding.  Have anything we missed?  Please let us know and we can pass it on.   Did we get something wrong? ...

L2C 020:  The Importance of Confidence In Chess After last weekend's tournament, the good Doctor said we should have a short episode on the importance of confidence in chess.  So what started as a short bonus episode quickly grew into a full fledged episode.  Apparently we may be long winded, lol.  Did we get something wrong?  Let us know at Late2Chess@gmail.com If you have any thoughts, topics an...

L2C 019:  GM Jesse Kraai - Our First Ever Guest We are humbled to have GM Jesse Kraai on the podcast.  Many of you will probably know him as a Grand Master in Chess, or as an excellent instructor on chess improvement, or as one of the three sensei's that started the ChessDojo.  We have been working in the Dojo for the past year and working directly with Jesse for the past 4 or 5 months.  We asked...

L2C 016: Book Review: The Tao of Chess - part 1 We started a new book review series with a Chess 101 book called The Tao of Chess. While it is a book centered on many of the most common chess principles that you may or may not have heard. What we did find though was that while this can be thought of as a fairly simplistic study into chess, it has as surprising amount of depth, and at this point it...

L2C 018: Tournament Recap of the 25th Annual Mountaineer Open  We are releasing this one out of order, again, but we received so many emails about the hoped for summaries, we thought we'd do it as fast as we could.    On this episode, we go into the Dr's  tournament this weekend. Plus a surprise or few.  What did we miss? Did we get something wrong? Let us know at Late2Chess@gmail.com Welcome to t...

L2C 017: Emergency/Bonus episode - The Good Doctor's Pre Tournament Prep for This Weekend We are releasing this one a bit early and out of order, but it needed to be done.  On this episode, we go into the Dr's preparation for his upcoming tournament this weekend.  We may be able to get updates throughout the weekend and that would not make any sense without releasing this one first, so here it is....

L2C 015: Our Most Excellent Road to 1500 and Beyond - Part 2 A bit faster than we expected, but here is part two in our series "Senior Chess: Bill & Dr Pop Pop's Excellent Adventure to 1500 Elo. At the last minute, Bill's schedule opened up and he played in his first over the board live tournament of 2026. The tournament was in central Pennsylvania and , well you have to listen for more details, l...

L2C 014:   Our Most Excellent Road to 1500 and Beyond - Part 1  It started as a discussion centered around a homage to Gotham Chess's Road to GM or Dina Belenkaya's Road to IM series.  We know we aren't good at chess, yet.  So, we brainstormed some really terrible names.  It started with "Road to"...., like Road to Mediocre Chess, Road to Decent Chess, Road to Not Terrible Chess, Road to Average C...

L2C 013:   The Magic of Development (in Chess) Dr Pop Pop and Bill discuss one of the key tenants of good chess:  Piece Development.  Bill views it as one of the magical principles of chess and tries to convince our good doctor. What did we miss?  Did we get something wrong?  Let us know at Late2Chess@gmail.com If you have any thoughts, topic and/or guest ideas, or solutions, please let us know.  ...

L2C 012:   OTB Review – Bill Played a Tournament and Then at the Club Bill was able to get out and play in a tournament on Friday and then went to the Harrisburg Chess Club for a few friendly games.   DrPopPop interrogates Bill with a fairly deep review of how the tournament went on Friday.   The good news, Bill lost only 1 Elo rating point.   The bad news, he lost all three games.   Takeaways inc...

L2C-11:  Nerves In Chess with Dr Pop Pop On this episode, we talk about the common issue that many face, nerves in chess.  For some reason, we both are more nervous ot play online than over the board/live.  Why?  No idea.  Does it help our games?  Definitely not.  Are we the only ones?  Not by a long shot.  How to deal with it?  We have some thoughts and ideas but this is still a work in progress...

L2C-11:  Time Sucks (to avoid) In Chess Improvement Dr Pop Pop returns to talk about things that we have learned (the hard way) that do not offer the best nor most time efficient path towards improving our chess games.  This is not to say that these items aren't helpful or can't help someone improve their game and knowledge, but these are items that if you are under around 1,000 Elo may not help y...

L2C-09:  Tournament Recap Part 2 with Dr Pop Pop On this episode, our guest and I review his first live OTB chess tournament in several decades.  We played together at the West Virginia Senior Open a few weeks back and I thought it might be a good idea to get a second perspective on the tournament and how it was to play in his first live event this century.  We also talk about the group game revie...

L2C-08:  Tournament - First and Latest Work and then flu impacted the release of this weeks episode.  I had several in the queue but held them off for this one and then got hit with some nasty bug and couldn't talk (bad for podcasting, lol).  This episode started out with an earlier version where i went through a recap of my first ever OTB tournament, but then i thought that it would be better to...

L2C-07:  Top Ten Things That Helped Me - The Final Four I wrap up my top ten list of things that helped me get to 1,000 Elo.  On this episode, I discuss one of the more hotly contested topics of openings with a somewhat unique take on what worked best for me.  Then i cover tournament, rated games, and playing over the board live chess.  I then discuss the importance and benefits of gradually findi...

L2C-06:  Top Ten Things That Helped Me - Game Annotations, Books, and Long Games On this episode, I cover three more related areas that have helped me to progress up to around 1,000 Elo.  The first topic we cover is annotating your game and also reading annotated games by other players and masters.  I have found this to be very helpful in improving my understanding and thinking during a game and a...

L2C-05:  Top Ten Things That Helped Me - YouTube and Podcasts On this episode, we go through two more things that have helped me most to this point in getting better at chess, YouTube and Podcasts.  I recommend the YouTube channels that I have found to be most helpful to me on my journey to 1000 Elo, as well as several podcasts that I subscribe.  One important thing to know is that listening to a...

L2C-04:  Top Ten Things That Helped Me - The ChessDojo Vicki rejoins the podcast to bring everyone up to speed with my chess history prior to 2025.  It isn't much, but helps us to establish the starting point for my current chess journey.   Welcome to the board. We hope you enjoy the show! For a link to the podcast, please use:   https://tinyurl.com/Late2Chess04   Also, if you'd like any topics, g...

L2C-03:  Rediscovering Chess Sorry for the delay, we had some technical difficulties getting the podcast feed setup, but we should be good to go now.   On this episode, I go into the trials and tribulations that I went through as I began my chess journey.  What went well, what went poorly, and some of the challenges of learning this game on my own.   Welcome to the board. We hope you enjoy the sho...