Perpetual Chess Linkfest #165, May 8, 2026

FM Dalton Perrine offers some great advice about handling draw offers from higher rated players. “If a higher-rated player thought they were winning or had serious chances in the position, why would they offer you a draw? They wouldn’t. The draw offer itself is information.” (Chess Chatter)

Dr. Nick Vasquez writes about how his approach to openings has evolved. “I have come to believe that opening study matters to improvement, perhaps even a great deal.” (Chess in Small Doses)

Kamryn Hellman wrote about training to run a 5k even though she has always hated running. Maybe there is hope yet for me to study queen and pawn endings. (The Little Pawn)

How much of a difference does a clock advantage make in LiChess blitz games? Julian takes a quantitative look. (The Chess Engine Lab)

Chess.com announced that members can now access its massive database of player games. (Chess.com News)

GM Axel Smith is going to try to break the record by playing 49 blindfold games simultaneously. Here is Tarjei Svensen on some of the memorization techniques he will utilize. “As an example, he described how he encodes one specific opening: "If game 30 starts with 1.d4 e6 2.c4 Bb4+, it's Gandhi during the Salt March (1930), reaching the playing hall in the Swedish Championship… using a sword (a check)." (Chess.com News)

Returning to the story from last week of Webster University shuttering its powerhouse chess program, NM Anthony Levin provides an explanation from its the university’s head of P.R., Patrick Giblin. “The program never met its stated objective goals of raising donations or attracting significant numbers of students to the St. Louis campus," (Chess.com News)

“KevinChessSmith” continues a series on GOAT chess authors, and writes about Irving Chernev. (Chess.com Blog)

Legendary GM Judit Polgar shared some interesting thoughts about the use of AI in schools. “For Judit, a generation interacting heavily with AI engineered to validate them, may grow up with an underdeveloped tolerance for being wrong, being challenged, or sitting with discomfort.” (Dan Fitzpatrick for Forbes)

Since the demise of ChessBomb and Chess24, many have lamented the challenges of following professional games on apps. GM Vasif Durarbayli is stepping into the void with an app called ChessEver. (Rasika Ratnaparkhi for Chessbase India)

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GM Noel Studer-

GM Studer has published two popular courses- one with the goal of getting you to 1200, and the second designing a study

Check out Noël’s updated course on studying chess the right way here (https://courses.nextlevelchess.blog/courses/simplified-chess-improvement-system?ref=bc4be0)

Thanks for reading and catch y’all next week- Ben