This week's episode of the New In Chess Podcast features a narration from "The Essential Sosonko", a collection of chess portraits based on personal stories authored by chess grandmaster Genna Sosonko. The subject of this week's episode is Latvian chess master and trainer Alexander Koblenz.Â
A four-time Latvian national champion, Alexander Koblenz (1916-1993) is best known as the coach of another, more famous Latvian: the eighth World Chess Champion, Mikhail Tal. Born into a prosperous Jewish family, Koblenz discovered at an early age that his profession would deviate from the well-trodden path laid out for him by his parents. At the age of nineteen, he began writing his first chess book, a hobby he would maintain for the rest of his life. There was also tremendous hardship: his mother and sister perished in World War II, and the annexation of Latvia by the Soviet Union brought its own set of challenges.Â
Enjoy this week's episode of the New In Chess Podcast!Â
This week's episode of the New In Chess Podcast features a narration from "The Essential Sosonko", a collection of chess portraits based on personal stories authored by chess grandmaster Genna Sosonko.
This episode is the second in a two-part story about late Soviet grandmaster Semyon Abramovich Furman (1920-1978). As the formative influence in the career of future World Champion Anatoly Karpov, Furman's own skills as a grandmaster have not always received the attention they deserve. At the age of 56, only eleven years after becoming grandmaster and a year before his death, he finished third in the Bad Leuterberg tournament of 1977, which was won by Karpov.Â
He also had many other interests. When bridge became popular in the 1960s, "Syoma" became obsessed with it. He was also an avid radio listener, a sometimes frowned-upon activity in the totalitarian former Soviet Union. But amongst all of his hobbies, chess always remained number one. And even after some of his pupils overtook him175
This week’s episode of the New In Chess Podcast features an interview with Dutch IM Willy Hendriks, one of today’s most entertaining and interesting chess authors. Willy Hendriks’s debut Move First, Think Later was an instant success. In a highly original and witty manner, the book looks at the sense and nonsense of methods to improve in chess. The book won the 2012 ECF Book of the Year Award and was runner-up in the 2012 ChessCafe.com Book of the Year competition. In the meantime, Hendriks has written three more books, page turners that challenge the traditional view of chess history. All three have met with wide acclaim. First there was On the Origin of Good Moves (2020), which was followed by The Ink War, Romanticism versus Modernity in Chess (2022), starring William Steinitz and Johannes Zukertort, and most recently, The Philosopher and the Housewife (2025), a riveting tale about Tarrasch, Nimzowitsch and the evolution of chess expertise.Willy Hendriks is interviewed by Dirk Jan175
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