The Chess Experience
The Chess Experience
Evaluation: A Vital But Overlooked Skill For Club Players w/ GM Eugene Perelshteyn
105 Today’s guest is a huge help to countless adult improvers.
GM Eugene Perelshteyn is a highly regarded coach, author, and course creator.
In more recent years, he went beyond helping his private students and extended his chess wisdom to writing a book and publishing courses.
His 2022 book, Evaluate Like A Grandmaster, is a huge help to almost every club player. And we discuss at length the benefits of improving your often-overlooked evaluation skills in chess.
But this is also a wide-reaching interview…
In our chat, we discuss the recent controversy with GM Christopher Woo at the US Chess Championship and why mental health is a critical topic for competitive players (even amateurs!)
Plus, we cover:
- How studying gambits can make you a better chess player.
- Who is likely to win the World Chess Championship between Ding & Gukesh.
- Hikaru’s trick to playing better competitively that applies to all players.
Follow me on Twitter to win Eugene's "Every Gambit Refuted" Chessable course (and other future giveaways!)
More From Eugene:
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Hi, Eugene. I'm excited to have you on the podcast. How are you doing today?
Eugene:Hi. Yeah, I'm really excited as well. Thank you for having me on.
Daniel:Yeah, it's my pleasure. I've been aware of your work for some time and you yourself, I've been aware of your courses and your presence on Chess Twitter and all of that, so it's exciting for me to be able to have a chance to talk to you for an extended period now and dive into a whole bunch of chess subjects. So yeah, thank you very much for being on the show.
Eugene:Yep absolutely.
Daniel:Yeah, so as we talked a little bit before we started recording that, maybe it was worthwhile to spend a few minutes discussing some of the most discussed chess news right now in the chess world, which is unfortunately a sad incident, but hopefully we can find some meaningful discussion in it. Which, for anyone who's not familiar, in the past week of this recording, at the US Chess Championship, grandmaster Christopher Yu had an incident. We don't know everything yet, but the accusation is that he hit a videographer with a punch. As I understand it, again, circumstances and exact details still seem to be not fully public, and so it's hard to say everything we might want to say about it. But you know it's a major news topic right now and I thought maybe we could give a couple of minutes to discussing that. What have been some of your thoughts and reactions to this news?
Eugene:Yeah, I was actually quite shocked about the news and, uh, as, as you are, like, I'm not really, um, you know, paying attention or that close to christopher you, I just read about it, you know, through twitter and general chess news and, um, you know, some well-respected chess players, like ironian, tweeted about it. I think chris bird, uh, the tournament director, mentioned it and it is absolutely crazy to uh to read about it after chris you, I think, losing three games in a row. And you know, I saw the video where he was tearing up his core shit. Maybe he was not in a good, uh, mental state, but that doesn't excuse, you know, his actions and, from what I've read, even the police report has been filed, so this is really sad news.
Daniel:Yeah, it is very unfortunate. It's hard to see something positive coming out of this, although I guess you never know, but you had mentioned to me that there's likely a mental health component here and that can go along with the pressures of chess at that level, and what kind of support you have for that and what kind of environment you have for that. That can lead to or not lead to something like that. What are your thoughts on that side of it, the mental health side of it?
Eugene:Yeah, absolutely. I think the mental health topic again, whether it's related in this case or not, is absolutely essential, and this conversation is very important because we have an influx of very, very young players into the game of chess. Okay, christopher Yu is not that young. He's been competing for quite a number of years. This is his second or third US championship, so clearly he's a way more experienced chess player. But in general, I do feel like younger players are not as mature enough to deal with the stress of playing over-the-board chess, specifically classical chess, because they're so used to playing online and kind of in an isolated environment, the comfort of their home, and I do believe that they need much better support, of course, number one, from their parents. Parents should be extremely supportive, which, for the most part, in the US chess scene. You know I've met some really amazing parents and as well as coaches. Coaches have to take on that role a little bit as well as teaching chess.
Eugene:And one thing that I should mention that you know, talking about my background, that I grew up playing chess in the Soviet Union. I was born in Ukraine and a lot of chess lessons that I got was in group settings, so I attended chess camps for the talented juniors. I really loved the social aspect of chess. We would play soccer, hang out, kind of deal with all the typical things that kids deal with, but in a group setting, and I think mentally that gave me a lot of strength as I got older and in a more competitive environment. So I feel like us chess should do more. Maybe training sessions with some top grandmasters, for example, livon aronian, comes to mind. I think he's extremely like a great personality for chess and for youngsters and if they are exposed to that kind of setting where an experienced chess player can share with them some of these tough losses and how they've grown from them and learned from them, I feel like this could go a long way.
Daniel:Yeah, I think that's a great suggestion to have some other top grandmasters give some lessons to some of these young top players on dealing with losses emotionally. That's a great idea, and so part of it it sounds like you're saying is that you feel like there's maybe a social isolation aspect that can occur now in the modern era for some of these young top players. That maybe makes it more difficult for them to deal with these losses and how to interact with people about it.
Eugene:Exactly exactly, especially with the modern world. We are past the pandemic, which is extremely socially isolating for kids, followed by playing more and more tournaments online. Obviously, playing online is so easy for everyone. It's great for adult improvers as we'll talk more about them and especially great for kids who don't have as many opportunities to travel from all over the world. But you know, when you do play online and then you go to play classical game in the tournament, it's a completely different experience. Your body almost goes through a transformation and you can probably talk about yourself your experience, because you're relatively new to the world of chess how playing online, even with classical time control, is not even close to the OTB chess.
Daniel:Yeah, definitely. I can definitely attest that that was something I experienced over the past couple of years, especially in the first several tournaments that I went to, that it was completely different than anything in person and to some degree you get used to that. But I do think that to some degree that pressure and intensity doesn't ever fully leave. It's always a heightened experience compared to online, no matter how many tournaments you go to. Would you agree?
Eugene:Oh, absolutely. The pressure is immense and because there's an opponent in front of you, you're in a kind of in a social group setting. You don't have anywhere to hide, uh, so to say. And funny enough, I did have that experience.
Eugene:I want to say, a year ago I was playing like a local may local medium-sized tournament in massachusetts, and round one I was paired against the young female opponent. I want to say she was maybe 14 or 13 years old and I blundered the pawn somewhere after the opening that I made a second blunder and I was completely losing at one point. And then I slowly came back but I had no winning chances at all In an end game, two pawns down. But I had a fortress and I offered her a draw and I think she was like 2,000, 2,100. And she thought for a while you know she had the right decision. She declined the draw because she thought she had good winning chances. But the problem is she got into time trouble and we know what happens in time trouble right Blunders can happen and she blundered and even lost the game.
Eugene:And she had a pretty big nervous breakdown afterwards and I talked to her mom and she calmed down, but I could sense that she wasn't able to deal with the emotions, because you can't talk to your coach during a three-, four-hour game. You can't talk to your parents. You have to deal with it yourself and especially if you're young, like a teenager, and your nerves are really high, it's extremely difficult.
Daniel:Yeah, I can imagine that's an interesting story on how that first, how that game unfolded for each of you, but also, of course, the emotional aspect of it for her afterwards. Yeah, I just feel like this is a subject that should be regularly discussed in the chess world.
Eugene:I know that the pressures aren't as high for amateurs and club players, but chess is chess, and when you're at an OTB tournament, the stakes are as high as it can be for any one individual, regardless of your skill level, and I just feel like learning how to deal with that is something that should be taught and discussed for all levels, regardless of someone's skill yep, and especially this one subject of chess that nobody really talks about is psychology, especially when two people are playing against each other in a longer time control game, you know, let's say three, four hours there's a lot of psychology and with the board behavior, with how your opponent behaves, what's what's happening on of psychology with the board behavior, with how your opponent behaves, what's happening on the board with the emotions, how to deal with all of that? I do talk a lot about it with my students. As a matter of fact, I would say 50% of all my teaching to adults are these little psychological tips what to do in any given station or the board.
Daniel:That's really interesting. I wouldn't have guessed such a high percentage, but I think that's a testament to you, eugene, and that you put an emphasis on that. I don't know if enough coaches do that, so that's great to hear that that's a priority for you with your students.
Eugene:Yeah, and this is a very interesting subject. I even have one student who is a doctor.
Eugene:He's actually a neurologist, so he studies, you know, brain and very smart guy and he came to me he was about 1500 plus or something and I quickly noticed that he absolutely has no self-control when it comes to him having an advantage and he just wants to keep playing perfect moves. And the problem is what happens? He always gets into time pressure and when he gets into time pressure he just blunders the entire game away. He can blunder queen or checkmate. And I told him look, there's no need to do that, you can play simply a good move. You don't have to play the best move and just adjust your mindset. As long as you play good moves and don't blunder, you will win the game. Just take it easy on yourself. So little things like that made him go from well. He dropped a little bit after that advice to like 40 high 1400s and now he's 1800. So he jumped really high immediately after. You know, taking care about his mindset and his approach and these little psychological tips.
Daniel:Wow, just from not having to demand perfection in every move from himself anymore.
Eugene:Yep, and of course every student is different, right, like, obviously there are some chess problems as well I need to solve.
Eugene:But I noticed again with adults that a lot of adults have some kind of dogma or some kind of wrong approach, but they don't know that and it's for me to kind of show it to them and look, this is a very easy fix. This is a low level fruit, low hanging fruit that we can fix with your chess, not like trying to get you to play perfect, I don't know, carp of, like middle game or something like that. Like here, this or something like that, like this is something we can do right now and then we're going to work on other things later. So every adult, I would say, has some kind of possible problem, either with psychology or mindset or dealing with emotions or any other of the game situations playing too quickly or playing too slowly. And on top of that you have to add all the typical chess stuff right, tactics, opening work, middle game work, end games. And that's why I love being a chess coach, because it's not like one size fits all. I really have to cater my approach to every individual.
Daniel:That's really interesting and fascinating how you you know how you approach it with your students.
Daniel:Again, I just can't say enough how much I appreciate that you emphasize the psychological, because it is huge, maybe just to close this part of the discussion out and loop it back to what happened at the US Chess Championship. I mean, if there's any silver lining to this, it could be that it wakes more people up to the importance of the mental health side of it and dealing with all of the intense emotions that come from chess, especially competitive chess. Like I said, even if people aren't experiencing and almost no one will the pressures at that top level, there's still intense pressure and I think people just by competing in chess in general, there's still intense pressure. As you said, I think adults in particular put just a lot of pressure on themselves to some degree needlessly on this, and so I think the best thing that could come out of this would be just a greater discussion on this subject. What do you think?
Eugene:Yep, absolutely. And even if you look at the top guys, let's say Hikaru Nakamura, he was putting a lot of pressure on himself when he was a full-time chess player and he was already one of the best in the world and I think it was psychological problems that he was again anticipating what happens if I don't win this game, if I don't win this tournament. That started to affect his chess. But did you notice that when he changed kind of careers, when he became a full-time streamer, his chess dramatically improved and the reason why he says that is because of this I don't care attitude? He's like, yep, I'm just playing chess for fun, and that completely that mindset switch from this ultra competitive I to win, I have to do my best to I'm playing chess for fun and I'm enjoying each game. He is back to 2800 right, yeah, I did.
Daniel:I did notice that uh change for him and I think it's one of the most fascinating things that I've seen uh in professional chess is that his abilities grew as he reduced some of the pressure on himself. From that, I mean, it speaks volumes.
Eugene:Yep, and this basically trickles down to every level, right To US championship level, and then to below and eventually to the club level. The attitude and the mindset is just as important in chess as any other sport.
Daniel:Yeah, yeah, absolutely Well, I think we turned that into a pretty positive discussion, in spite of the drama that's going on around it and in spite of the fact that it is a sad incident, regardless of the exact details. So I appreciate your thoughts on that, eugene, and I appreciate you being willing to talk about that aspect of it. So now I'd like to turn to you and your background and just get an overview of that part of your life.
Eugene:I would say that I was quite lucky because my dad was a professional chess coach. He actually had a chess club that he ran and I believe at that time chess was so popular that he was getting paid more than an engineer would get paid. So think of chess as like baseball in the.
Eugene:US. And so as a kid I didn't really, you know, I was just a normal kid, you know, playing outside, my friends running around playing soccer, and then of course, with my dad having a chess club, I would attend, you know, maybe twice a week chess session there. But what happened is that as the time went on, I started to socialize at the chess club, hang out at the chess club, and my dad started to take me with the older kids to chess events like as a team trip, and I loved that a lot, hanging out with older kids doing pillow fights in the hotels, and eventually I just got good through this process of osmosis. I guess I just absorbed chess at a young age. As I got older I was already on that team with older kids and naturally I just progressed from that point.
Daniel:Now I know you came to the US in 1994. And I guess you were a young teen at that point. When you came to the US, what was going on in your chess competitive life at that point?
Eugene:Yeah. So I would say I was already candidate master level, which is, I think, around 2100. And one of the funniest stories that I tell is, um, our very first uscf tournament. They asked me what my feed, what my uscf rating is, and I didn't have uscf rating, nor did I have feed the rating, just like beth harman. I didn't know which section to play. They put me in the unrated section and of course I went down the rated section. That's probably my easiest tournament win ever. But then somebody told me well, you should really be. If you're a candidate master, you should be in the expert section. And so you know the height of my achievement.
Eugene:I went in the 1995 World Open expert section outright and then after that my ratings skyrocketed to 2300 plus. And around that time I also met my coach, roman Dzenjikashvili, or as we call him Dzenji, who used to be top 10 player in the world, renowned theoretician, who was what? Top five in the world. So you know, I went from, you know, just at the peak of my strength as a teenager to this super experienced coach. And of course I just progressed so quickly that already a year later, in the same World Open, but in the Open section, I was playing board one against Jair Molinski for the first prize of 10 grand Wow.
Daniel:So outside of school and the activities that that requires was your whole life chess, basically from when you got to the United States to when you finished high school.
Eugene:Yeah, I would say chess was always something that I did. I wouldn't say that I dedicated all my time to chess. I would do my typical schoolwork. You know, I remember I was on a soccer team and a wrestling team in high school. I just, you know, playing video games like typical kids things, I just I think I just go to chess. Naturally, I don't think I dedicated way more time to chess than you know you would expect.
Daniel:Yeah, than you would expect. Yeah, wow, Well, okay. So I just have one quick question how was it that you didn't have a FIDE rating at that point when you came to the US?
Eugene:Ah, okay, so the FIDE rating is they only started giving FIDE ratings when you're above, I think, 2200 initially, and then FIDE realized that well, there's so much more players under 2200 that they lowered I think that was 2000, and then they just lowered it to even more, so now anyone can get a fida rating, but even if you are a strong master in russia, if you didn't really travel outside of the soviet union, you may not even have fida ratings back in the day.
Daniel:I see, okay, that explains it for sure. Moving forward then along your chess journey. Then I know you went to college and after you finished college it sounded like you were competing full time after you graduated. Is that right?
Eugene:I got a chess scholarship at UMBC, university of Maryland, baltimore County. At that time they, and I think University of Texas at Dallas, were the only two schools in the country that would give chess scholarships. So that's how I got recruited there. In the year 2000, I won the US Junior Championship and I also won this award called the Samford Fellowship, which is basically an award for you to take a year or two off from college and just to play chess, study chess full time.
Eugene:So basically, from 2000 to 2002 is when I had the professional chess career, because I didn't have any school or any work, I see, so I spent that time basically traveling the world taking lessons. I did not become a grandmaster, though, although I came close, but I, you know, after I graduated I had to go back to college, and then, in 2004, I finally graduated college and I immediately got a job. My major was computer science, so I started working in a software company, but I was so focused on chess that I was one of the few players in the country who was doing every major chess tournament while working full-time every major chess tournament while working full-time, taking every vacation. I could get to travel that. Shortly after that, in 2006, I became a grandmaster.
Daniel:I see, okay, that's really interesting. I didn't realize that you were still doing a full-time job while doing all of that competing. So at what point after that did you ultimately make chess a full-time career for yourself?
Eugene:Sure, yeah, I always loved teaching chess. So even when I was a teenager or young adult, I would teach chess for fun on the side, and so when I was working full-time, I had maybe one or two students on the side, and then at some point there was a major chess boom chesscomcom, online chess and I got more and more students and also I was able to kind of make that decision that you know I've been doing software for a long time, so around 2013-2014, I decided that why not give teaching chess a try? And I never looked back after that.
Daniel:Yeah, yeah, that's amazing. So your full-time career basically began with coaching being your primary activity within that right.
Eugene:Yeah, I would say I would make money by coaching chess. Of course I would play actively as well, but I would say that playing tournament chess versus coaching chess is completely different things. Coaching, I'm actually getting paid. Tournament chess it's kind of like a 50-50. You may win a tournament, you may do badly, you may do somewhere in the middle, but nobody guarantees you you're going to get paid. So I think I kind of realized that I cannot focus purely as a chess player you know to to make a living. But because I was really loving teaching chess, to me it was actually quite an easy transition because I knew that kind of like what hikaru said with streaming that he's got the streaming career and he plays for fun. I had my coaching career and I play for fun.
Daniel:I see. And then eventually, you started expanding beyond only coaching and moving into other areas to help others with their chess, like books and courses. I believe you began with a book first. What led to that decision to say, okay, I want to author a book now.
Eugene:Yeah, it actually happened all the way back around 2005 when I was still international master in college, that roman ginger, my coach, told me that he wants to write a very ambitious project repertoire, because he's a big guy. Back then, roman forum dvds I don't know if you remember, for for some of the audience they may still have those dvds. So he was a big, big internet teacher, a chess teacher back in the day, like levy rosman is now. So every, every one of the chess world knew of roman forum chess videos and so naturally for him would be to team up with me.
Eugene:And then we also teamed up with a very big, famous book author, chess book author, lev Albert, to write two books. One is called Chess Openings for Black, explained, and it's Sister Book, chess Openings for White, explained. So two complete repertoire books. And we published that 2005, 2006 timeframe and that was a great success. I think they were bestsellers. They were sold like in Barnes and Nobles all over the country, and so that was my sort of first experience with writing the book. But I can tell you that writing that book helped me become a grandmaster in 2006.
Daniel:Because the openings that I used.
Eugene:I eventually used them to become a grandmaster. So I feel like that kind of work because I love opening work was an actual next step for me. When Chessable came along, I started to write for Chessable. I published my first Chessable course on the Grand Prix attack, which is against the Sicilian E4, c5, knight C3 move, and that was quite successful. And then I wrote a lifetime repertoire for Chessable on the Hyper Accelerated Dragon, my pet opening that. I've done videos in the past and my most recent course was Every Gambit Refuted.
Daniel:I I see, was there quite a gap then between when you wrote those first books back in 2006 and then when you started publishing more I think I didn't really focus on books after that.
Eugene:After 2006, my only physical book was with nate that we're going to talk more about.
Eugene:Evaluate like a grandmaster because I actually had a feeling that nobody reads chess books anymore and especially with chessable coming out, I thought this would be the natural platform to share my knowledge. But I did open my own website, uh, based on my original book, chess openingsessOpeningsExplainedcom, which I update now, quite you know, not as often probably as I should, but basically I took that knowledge in the video format for members to get access to updates about the openings about the book, because you see, chessable, you can make a quick update right away and everyone will get access to it, whereas with a physical book, as you know, chess theory evolves. It's much more difficult.
Eugene:That's why I love chessable more when it comes to opening work.
Daniel:Yeah, that makes sense and I know that's their bread and butter on their platform is opening courses, and I love using them for that. I definitely want to talk more about now your book Evaluate Like a Grandmaster, which you published in 2022. That is a fantastic book. As you mentioned, you and Fide Master Nate Salone published that book back in 22. Now, what interests me when you pick a topic like that is that it's so different from all the others. I mean and maybe I'm answering the question as I ask it but what inspired you to choose that topic amongst all others you could write about?
Eugene:Yep, it's actually a funny thing because we initially did not plan to write a chess book, but it sort of happened that at the same time there was a big chess revolution with the neural engines, so AlphaZero, and then there was a book written about it by Matthew Sadler, the British grandmaster, and I think he mentioned either in his book or in an interview that what really shocked him is how good Lila, which is basically like AlphaZero version but publicly available, how good Lila, which is basically like alpha zero version but publicly available, how good Lila plays when you take away any calculation.
Eugene:So basically it doesn't even calculate, it just plays on instinct, and that sort of opened my mind. Oh, so if you just evaluate really well, your level should go up quite high. And there's not any kind of chess literature that talks about that process, how to evaluate in chess. Occasionally you see it in a book here and there, but it's not like a dedicated subject. And when we talked about it with Nate, we're both really big fans of neural network engines, big fans of Matthew Sadler work, and we're like, oh, how come there is no such book? There's all these tactics books, but there is no books that train calculation, and so that was how the project was born.
Daniel:I see, yeah Well, I'm really happy that you had the inspiration for that, because it is a fantastic book. I see, yeah, well, I'm really happy that you had the inspiration for that, because it is a fantastic book. I've gone through some of it. I'm going to continue to go through more of it, but what I've gone through has really impressed me. A question I have for you. Typically, what you hear from a club player's perspective having been in this world now for several years myself is that we should focus on and improve our calculation skills. We hear that over and over and over again and I definitely don't disagree with that advice. It's a really important skill, but it's rare that you hear evaluation emphasized. I don't see tweets on chess Twitter too often that say hone your evaluation skills. So is evaluation a skill club players need to emphasize more in their chess practice.
Eugene:Oh, absolutely. I would say that calculation skill is important, but eval skills are also important. It's kind of like apples and oranges.
Eugene:You cannot do only apples. And if you have to do oranges and nobody does oranges, then whenever you finish any calculation line right, at some point you come to a stop. You have to do an eval right. So if you never work on your eval skills, that's not good. Vice versa, if you only work on your eval skills and you don't do any calculation work, that's not good. Vice versa, if you only work on your eval skills and you don't do any calculation work, that's also bad. So I think those two areas in chess are absolutely connected and it's hard to separate them. But specifically for the exercises we chose in our book, you don't need to do that hardcore calculation or hardcore tactics. It's usually just, you know, maybe a little bit of calculation, like a very light calculation, just to make short-term factors and lots and lots of these little considerations. We'll talk in detail about what they are in the book and how one should evaluate.
Daniel:Yeah, it seems like evaluation is almost just right on par there with calculation in terms of the importance of a skill, and yet my perception at least, is that it's a 10 to 1 in terms of being discussed. As you said, evaluation as a category of books in chess doesn't really quite exist, right, because there's not enough of them to really say that. So why such little emphasis on evaluation when it's so important?
Eugene:That's a good question. When I was growing up, I was reading chess books by Nimzowich and the concept of blockade and an outpost, how to play against an IQP typical middle games. It was always present in chess literature but nobody talked about the actual word like how do you value the position? So I feel like it sort of like fell behind in some ways, and you know, there probably have been books.
Eugene:You know, updates, sims Dimsavich on like positional factors in chess and breaking down each positional factor and you know. But in general, like there's not a whole lot of books that dedicate only to eval in chess, and I feel like we, with our book, we sort of like show to the world that, yes, this is a very important subject. It's plus, it's a fun book to read, it's not as difficult as your average calculation book that you have to really work through the exercises. This is more about. Each puzzle should take you on average, sometimes five minutes or less, and if you don't get it within five minutes, probably there's something that you need to work on with your skills.
Daniel:Yeah, and that leads me to my next question, which is if you could describe a bit of the structure of the book. How does it flow? For example, sure?
Eugene:yeah, it's a very kind of natural flow where you're given a position, the site, you move and your job is to suggest the move and to evaluate. And another chapter would be candidate moves. So, for example, you're given two moves. So we try to make it as practical as possible to real-world game situation where you're looking at the position, two moves come to your mind and you have to do comparison, one move over the other. So there is a comparison part of the book.
Eugene:Then we kind of ask you a little bit more difficult combining calculation and visualization skills. So we'll give you maybe a sequence of moves and then you have to visualize that position and give an eval. And at the very end we did something completely new that I don't think any chess book has done before, done before, is we kind of give you similar concept but like in four different diagrams, and ask you to evaluate. So make slight changes within the position, right, and then we ask you to evaluate that and that is kind of a new concept in the world of chess. And that is kind of a new concept in the world of chess.
Daniel:Yeah, and I mean I appreciate just how well structured this book is and that it gives you the tools that you need in the beginning to work through everything.
Daniel:So you know, when I was learning about this book and before I'd actually dived into it, I was wondering well, do we get a template of you know, a set of criteria on how we should be evaluating? Because that's often been a struggle for me, and I know for other club players, is what should we be evaluating? But I like how, in the beginning of the book, you tell the readers exactly what criteria they should be looking to assess, and then, of course, as you go through the puzzles and read your explanations, you learn better and better how to assess those criteria.
Eugene:Absolutely, and you know it's not. I would say that it's set in stone. Usually, even grandmasters have a hard time evaluating positions. So what we try to do for this book is go from simple to complex. So each chapter starts with relatively simple eval exercises and they grow into more complex where even myself, who is a grandmaster, or other grandmasters like, for example, Magnus Carlsen, made the wrong decision in their eval. So it tells you that, just like calculation muscle, your eval muscle should be worked on, should be improved on, and as you get better and better in chess, you kind of get exposed to more positions and more factors and you will naturally get better at the eval.
Daniel:Right, yeah, so I mean in my mind there's two big questions that I often have when it comes to evaluation. One is how should I evaluate a position? Maybe this particular position or, but more broadly, any position, and I know your book does a phenomenal job with teaching that. But another question that I often have, as someone who's trying to get better at chess, is when should I be evaluating? How would you answer that question?
Eugene:Well, that's a million-dollar question. Even I sometimes struggle with it. Usually certain things kind of trigger we call them critical moments in chess when you should spend a little bit more time and go a little bit deeper. For me, um, it's every time there is any major shift in the position. Like you know, you calculate a line, maybe some pawn move or some trade. Those are obviously important moments, right, because that sets the trend for the game. Let's say, if you allow your opponent to make a trade and double your points, right, you're making a long-term weakness we call it a static weakness but you may get dynamic compensation, let's say, two bishops, and then you have to make that decision. So those are the kind of obvious moments where I would really try to focus and do proper calculation and evaluation. And then I'll give you an example, actually from my relatively recent tournament.
Eugene:I played in Washington International in August, which is a big, open tournament, and there's one game I remember clearly. I was playing like a 23-50 player, you know, strong master and I had this dream position. Out of the opening I had two beautiful bishops, nice attacking possibilities and my opponent had zero counterplay. And what did I do? I relaxed and instead of calculating a sequence, that I sacrificed material a beautiful sacrifice with a rook and I go for checkmate. I played like a careless and proven move. As a result, I let my advantage slip and had to try to win the game all over again. And when I started analyzing this game and of course, with the modern engines, engines showed to me like plus five advantage, that I could go for the simple sacrifice and win the game it didn't occur to me that I should be looking for a tactic.
Eugene:right, nobody's going to tap me on the shoulder and say, oh, there's a winning tactic here, so this is a difficult moment in chess and as a grandmaster I too get carried away with sort of the natural flow of positional chess and may miss a tactical sequence that may win the game on the spot. So that's a very simple example.
Daniel:Yeah, that's a great example. There's another question I have for you. This one was not in my my list that I had written out, but I want to ask it anyway because I I love this subject of of um evaluation. You're probably familiar with uh national master and coach, dan heisman. Uh, you know he's.
Daniel:He's big in chess education circles yeah, and and when he taught a template for a good thought process in chess particularly when you have there's a position in the game that requires calculation, your next move requires considering some candidate moves that are going to require some deeper calculation. He said that strong players don't spend most of their time calculating, but rather most of their time trying to figure out and evaluating at the end of those lines which position is better. I'm curious if you would agree, and if so, I think that it's a testament to the importance of evaluation.
Eugene:Yes, well, first of all, whenever somebody says there's a template, I always have to be very careful about it, because strong players like grandmasters there's no template that they go through. First, I'm going to decide to do this, then this, then this, like five point plan right it all happens organically for us, I see.
Eugene:So whenever there is a position in front of us, we immediately form some sort of you know through probably subconscious, you know all the years of training some kind of evaluation and course. We immediately start calculating some basic tactics. So for amateurs it's easy to say well, here's what you should do. One, two, three, four, five, go through all these steps. But the problem is chess is not a scientific game as much as a practical game. What I mean about that is you know, you can read about all the factors, right like a book about chess, but when you go and actually play the game it's not going to be easy to apply it. So chess is akin to learning a language or riding the bicycle learning a language or riding the bicycle you have to do it to understand and to improve. Like you have to play a lot and you have to learn from the games. So it really is more like organic at my level than a template level when you look at the position.
Eugene:Granted the thoughts that are going through my mind, such as pawn structures, uh, advantage in the opening or in development, weak squares, control over the center, it's all happening at the same time. The difficult part is when there are multiple factors competing right, you know. Let's say I have an advantage in development but bad pawn structure. Then I have to use calculation to sometimes determine whether or not this is good or bad for me. And again, that's more of an intuitive feel. I have a good sense of timing. Let's say, if I have a big development edge, I will tell myself that, look, everything is irrelevant, I'm just going to go for initiative and checkmate. Or when, let's say, the kings are on opposite castle station, who cares if there's a weak square somewhere in the board when you're about to checkmate your opponent or get checkmated yourself? So certain factors become way more important in various positions.
Daniel:I see, so I'm not sure if I'm actually answering your question.
Eugene:I'm maybe like rambling a little bit here, but maybe the thought process of a grandmaster is not easily put into a template format.
Daniel:Sure, sure, yeah, I mean I bring it up more just as something that I thought of as I was going through your book, which is just the importance of evaluation. I remember him saying that evaluation is where strong players spend a lot of their time. I mean meaning specifically when comparing different lines. It's more time is spent rather on evaluating what happens at the end of those lines than each move within them.
Eugene:And actually a funny thing that I just remembered the story. I think Kramnik told the story to somebody I may not know it exactly like, if it's true, how chess has changed over time. So, for example, kramnik was playing I think it was in the candidates in Berlin was playing I think it was in the candidates in Berlin I want to say what? 2018?
Eugene:When Fabi won the candidates and he challenged Magnus and Kramnik who is old school player, let's call him right. He evaluates quite well and has good feel for the game. He was playing Ding Lirank, who is now, of course, the current world champion, and we're going to talk about Ding and Gukesh, the different generation. But, just to give an example, kramnik felt he had an advantage. You know, he intuitively felt it and he just couldn't make it work. And eventually, again, the game was drawn. And then, after the game, kramnik is talking to Ding and again, this may not be accurate, but I think I heard it somewhere, but I thought it was kind of funny to show two different generations at play and Kramnik basically says ah, if I do this, this and this, then I'm probably better. But then Ding says well, if you do this, this and this, I have this move which saves me and I'm okay, ah.
Eugene:Kramnik says ah, okay. And then Kramnik says ah, but then I have this other idea, this, this, this, and they go and rattle over variation. Dink says ah, I saw that. But now I have this move and I'm okay. And so basically Dink's eval is very concrete and if he's okay in every line, then the eval, he is fine. But then Kramnik says but what if I do this other move and the Dink's like ah, oh, yeah, then you win, ah, okay, then you must be winning.
Eugene:So you see, it's like modern FES has changed so much that the players are so concrete probably inspired by the engine that their eval is very much fine-tuned with the calculation, whereas the old-school players don't calculate as much and, kind of like, do generic evals. But the problem is that they may miss those rare cases where calculation will prove them wrong.
Daniel:That's interesting. That's really a fascinating example. I like that a lot. So, eugene, I just want to close our discussion on your evaluation book with just one final question who is this for in terms of skill level?
Eugene:Yeah, that's a good question. I would say that when you stop blundering pieces in one move, then you can already enjoy this book, Because every chapter starts with the simpler eval skills and it kind of progresses from there. Even if it's a little bit over your head, just reading the explanations why you're seeing certain eval will make a lot of sense to you. So I would say that once you stop blundering pieces, you can already enjoy this book.
Daniel:Excellent, excellent. So, yeah, I want to briefly also discuss a course that you recently published with Chessable, called Every Gambit Refuted, and, knowing that you're a coach, I couldn't help but wonder, in terms of the inspiration for this book, if it was at all inspired by seeing your students struggling with Gambit.
Eugene:Absolutely. Yeah, this is a fun little course that I did and you know I can't tell you the exact inspiration. It was Eric Rosen's video on this Gambit, which is kind of like semi-dead and nobody plays it, but Eric started playing this, which is e4, e5, knight f3, knight f6, knight takes e5, knight c6, knight takes c6, d takes e, where black gives up this central pawn and I was shocked when I first saw this video by eric.
Eugene:I mean, he's a famous streamer, right, eric rosen, and so I was like wow, this guy is recommending giving up a central pawn and he's winning so many games, right, because, because you know he's playing, he's showing his cool little line against, you know, sometimes even grandmasters.
Eugene:And I'm like wait a second, wait a second, let me take a deep given that I'm like I love openings and I love to analyze openings I decided to do deeper dive, and so that was the inspiration for me to go into this gambit. As a result, I had to find refutation for this gambit, and that sort of promoted me to thinking about other gambits, and so the Stafford gambit is the gambit I'm referring to with this line is what really was the inspiration.
Daniel:I see, yeah, that was fascinating that it came from seeing Eric Rosen do that. Just a quick aside, I had the pleasure of playing him over the board and he played his Stafford Gambit and I did reasonably well to begin, but then ultimately he beat me because he's an international master and I'm not. But, yeah, the pleasure of losing to him in that line. So I needed your course, apparently. Speaking of which, one question about it, which is you know, I know you cover a lot of different gambits in that course. If someone was doing this course, would you recommend that they only study the gambits that you cover that are relevant to the openings that they're doing, or is there value more broadly in just understanding how to defeat gambits in general?
Eugene:Oh yeah, that's a great question. I would say that if you do face certain gambits, like if you have a local chess club where your opponent, let's say, loves the grab attack move 1g4, or somebody has been really watching a lot of Eric Rosen stuff- so, then I would probably recommend you to start with something you're more likely to face over the board.
Eugene:But then overall I did notice a trend especially with my recommendation against gambits is sometimes I give back the material.
Eugene:So what my course is really teaching you is not necessarily how to refute gambits, which is the point of the course, but more about the concept of material versus development. A pawn worth in terms of number of tempeh lost to win that pawn, these kind of bigger pictures, bigger questions arise when you look at all these gambits and I feel like once you start digging deeper and going gambit by gambit by gambit, you're realizing one very important trend we grab sometimes a pawn and material, but the first opportunity to gain huge advantage in development we give it back. So a lot of the gambits involve grabbing material and give it back at the right moment. And there's some gambits that we don't even grab the pawn, like the Banco gambit is a great example. I think it's one of the most sound gambits out there. I actually recommended a very simple line where you don't take the pawn on b5. So if you're a d4 player and you know that there is a Banco Gambit possibility, I think this is a very simple solution from my course.
Daniel:Excellent, excellent. So, eugene, I want to just ask a couple of questions on behalf of my followers. Typically that just means adult club players, but in this instance we also have a question from well-known podcast host Ben Johnson of the Perpetual Chess Podcast, which we'll get to in a moment. We'll start with a fellow club player, david Newland's question, and he asked just broadly on what advice you have for analyzing games, and he's on the lower end of rating at about 1,000, but maybe I don't know if it necessarily has to be tailored to that, but just whatever advice you feel is helpful, just maybe a few key things to know for analyzing games.
Eugene:Right. So first of all I would say I would kind of echo the words of Botvinnik If you want to get better in chess, you have to learn how to analyze your games. Jesse Cry, shout out to the Chess Dojo guys is a big proponent of that. But you know what, if you are 1,000, the tools that you have right now to you, which is like the engine analysis tool in Leachess or Chesscom, is not going to be good, not sufficient enough, because a lot of the things have to be noticed by the coach. So I would say that you probably want to take a couple of lessons from a higher rated player or coach. They can kind of guide you what to pay attention to when you analyze your own games, because a lot of the why you play certain moves may not be obvious initially to you, whereas an experienced player will say ah, obviously like you're lacking certain knowledge of certain structures or certain approach, or just you know some specific tactical oversights. So I would say.
Eugene:Number one is game analysis is important, and number two is it's not as easy to do on your own. If you've never done it before, you probably want a little bit of guidance.
Daniel:Sure, sure. So on to Ben's question here. So just to preface, for people who don't know, you have a course, as you said, on the hyper-accelerated dragon. Ben wants to know why you think the hyper accelerated dragon is popping up more at the top level well, the answer is simple they all bought my course.
Eugene:No, I'm just right. Um, well, here's the situation. A hyper accelerated dragon, first of all, is a quite rare opening, but it's been my, you know, lifetime favorite opening as black against e4. So e4, c5, and after white plays knight f3, or knight c3 for that matter, I play the move g6. And again, if you want to delve into that opening, you can even watch the intro video of my course, or get a free copy just to get an overview. But the reason why top players are picking openings that are not as mainstream is for a very simple reason To avoid opponent's prep and try to surprise their opponent early. Granted, the modern chess engines are so good that before, maybe like 10 plus years ago, certain openings were considered dubious because the engine said so. But the modern engines are so good that even the so-called dubious openings are now playable these days.
Daniel:Right, right, even the so-called dubious openings are now playable these days, right.
Eugene:And the simple example is VD against Prague from the candidates, where Prague played the delayed Schliemann and won the game with black. And of course, if you were to tell me at the World Candidates Tournament somebody is going to play Deleuze Schliemann and win 10 years ago, everyone's going to laugh at you. But I feel like the surprise factor in modern chess is way higher because of just overall generic knowledge that top players are booked up.
Daniel:I see. Yeah, I want to get your thoughts on the upcoming World Championship. Again, we're talking kind of current, relevant topics. We talked earlier about the situation with Christopher Yu, but, as pretty much the entire chess world knows, we have a World Championship coming up in just a matter of weeks really. So my first question for you on that is is there a player that you're rooting for?
Eugene:um, I would say gucci against ding. I don't have a favorite um. I think I was rooting for ding in his last world championship match because I really loved his sort of like honesty and just like he was very likable. He had this underdog mentality that I like.
Eugene:But generally speaking, for this match, what I do want to see is I want Ding to come out of his shell because he hasn't been himself lately and just play freely and play the kind of chess he loves, and then it's going to be just a fun match for everyone, because Gukesh is just improving so quickly and getting so good that we don't want to get a one-sided match. So all I'm really rooting for is a very fun match, and for that Dink has to really come out swinging and just play freely and not care, and then we're going to probably have a fun match. On the other hand, we have the strongest player in the world. Magnus Carlsen decided to step down from defending his title, which he did a while back. It's not a surprise, but it is definitely not as fun when you have the best player in the world competing. I would have loved to see Magnus play against Gukas, for sure.
Daniel:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Given that it's Ding versus Gukasash, do you have an opinion on who you think will win, or is it too close to call?
Eugene:well, in the words of eric aisi, I think he said it's going to be a massacre. Uh, so what he's saying is that if ding doesn't show up, gucash is going to like absolutely destroy him. I don't think it's that clear to me because Gukesh is so young he's 18 and the nerves when you're at the biggest stage in the world do play a role. He's never played a world championship match before. Dink has been there before.
Eugene:So I'd like to see Gukesh do well, but also he may not adjust as well, initially at least, because the match is long it's 14 games. He may probably overcome any kind of nerves and eventually start playing really well, but the first one or two games it's not so easy for me to automatically say oh yeah, gukes is the favorite. But what I do see if he does win the match, first of all, he's going to be the youngest world chess champion ever and second of all, this huge wave of strong players from India is going to get even bigger because we're going to have, after Vishay, we're going to have another world champion from India, and that can only be positive, because more and more people are going to take on chess and such a big population in India. We're going to have huge growth with sponsorship, with tournaments, with events. So you know, I wish Glukash well.
Daniel:Yeah, yeah, great points. So, Eugene, I just want to finish our interview with a segment that I do regularly on the show now. It's a series of just more fun, somewhat easier questions, kind of rapid fire questions, although I've loved everything that we've discussed so far. So my first question for you in this segment is knights or bishops?
Eugene:I'd say two bishops.
Daniel:Good answer. I like the qualified answer there. What's your favorite time control?
Eugene:Classical.
Daniel:Follow-up question on that. Do you have a specific time control within classical that you like most?
Eugene:I do think. Add in 30 minutes after move 40. I would prefer that. That would give me a chance to reset and go to the bathroom, whereas the constant time pressure with no end games because you're in time pressure, makes a little bit tougher. So, you know, add in 30 minutes, helps.
Daniel:Who is your favorite player of all time?
Eugene:Oh, that's a tough one yeah that's the one tough question okay, I'll say Petrosian.
Daniel:I have so many favorites, but for now I'll say Petrosian sure, if you could play any of the top players in the world right now, who would it be?
Eugene:I've already played Magnus, so I'm not going to say him. Let's say either Gukesh or Eri Gaisi. Nice, what's your favorite opening? As white, as white, either Gukesh or Eri Gaisi Nice.
Daniel:What's your favorite opening as white?
Eugene:As white. These days I don't have a favorite favorite because I'm both E4 and D4 player. But for the rapid fire I'll answer with a Grand Prix attack.
Daniel:Excellent, and I think we discussed this already, but I'll ask it anyway what's your favorite opening as Black?
Eugene:Oh, that's an easy one HyperXceler Dragon against E4 and King's Indian against D4.
Daniel:Nice. If you had to choose a career other than chess, what would it be?
Eugene:Well, I sort of already had a career in software. If we were to take software out of the equation, what would I be?
Daniel:hmm, maybe history teacher. Oh nice, I like that. And my final question for you and I'm aware that you did like a platform slash software with that was called chess genie, so it's a little funny that I'm using this phrase all right right but uh, if a chess genie existed and could grant you any one chess wish, what would you wish for?
Eugene:Well, if it comes to chess improvement, maybe more time spent with the greats of the world. I already had access to some of the great coaches, but just interacting with them when I was younger would have been greater.
Daniel:Yeah, that's fantastic. I love it. Well, eugene, this has been a phenomenal conversation. I loved all of your thoughts on the various topics that we talked about. Could easily talk about all of this stuff for several more hours, but I appreciate the time that we had together and I'm just very honored that you came on the show. I loved all the wisdom that you shared and I encourage everyone to check out your book Evaluate Like a Grandmaster, as well as your testable courses, and we'll have links to all of that in the show notes, and I just want to say thank you again for being on the show.
Eugene:Sure and thank you for having me.
