#6 - Interview with Braden Laughlin about his road to NM

Welcome to the 228 new subscribers who have joined recently. The newsletter now goes out to 2,494 chess fans.

Also a special thank you to the first who signed up as paid subscribers! Really appreciate it.

If you haven't already subscribed you can join for free. New subscribers get a 50-page pdf with the 14 annotated games from Capablanca’s classic book ‘Chess Fundamentals’.

Also, join the new Chess Substack Readers Club on Lichess. The first tournament is on Saturday (3 PM EST / 9 PM CET)!

---

The podcast includes an interview with Braden Laughlin, 23, from Canada. Braden is working really hard on his chess and aims at NM. As you can see from his rating gains he is taking steps in the right direction each month.

Braden has also joined The Say Chess Training Group and is tracking his training.

The interview focus on his most recent tournament and how it went, and the lessons learned.

Last year I also lost two 20+10 games against Braden, which we briefly talk about during the podcast (I need a rematch soon).

We also talk about John Nunn’s Puzzle Book. Braden is currently working on it. I have previously written an article based on the difficulty of the book (it is hard!), and if it is beneficial to solve really hard tactics vs. solving easier tactics.

ARE CHESS TACTICS TOO HARD? 📈

Braden also share his OTB games on his YouTube channel, which I can recommend following and subscribing to. Here is his first-ever OTB game:

I hope you will enjoy the episode, and if you have any questions for Braden please ask in the comment section:

/Martin