At the Nordic Championship IM Axel Smith was entirely fantastic and celebrated his new book Pump Up Your Rating with excellent play. Not only did he get a GM-norm, he only took the title of Nordic Champion as GM Peter Heine Nielsen lost his game in the last round.
For those wanting to check out Axel’s performance, go here.
Very impressive play…Go Axel!!! and congrats!!!
đŸ™‚
Excellent result! Has anyone read his book yet and what did they think about it?
Congratulations! Fantastic result đŸ™‚
I received the book two days ago.
First impressions are very good!! There are a lot of ideas and in the second part there is a structured training plan.
I am very happy with the purchase
@Ed
A very good book. It’s let you know how to work on your chess education.
What to do, how to work, where to have the focus etc.
If you read regular on this blog the tips that Jacob Aagaard gives, and also the Q&A with Yusopov, then you will see it all fit together.
@Peterm
I’m not sure that everything fits together. The woodpecker method advocates repeating and repeating the same exercises. It is not my understanding that Aagaard has the same attitude to this.
@Paul Brøndal
My attitude is simple: there are many ways to do almost everything. If people say “this is the only method” they are usually selling you something ;-). This is why I am very happy with publishing ideas I do not personally support or use – I am sure that there will be someone for whom they will be a perfect fit.
Great score, Axel truly deserves this GM-norm. Hopefully his earlier misfortunes (there’s a lot of pain there) with GM-norms will come to an end and perhaps the other two norms will come soon. As for the book, it is simply splendid. I love it.
Thanks for the congratulations! And I am happy that you like the book.
@Jacob Aagaard
One of the first things Jacob told me was: “I would recommend to argue your corner with less strong words – it’s possible to argue for other positions.”
Of course he is right, and I’ve been trying to be open-minded throughout the book. About repeating exercises: I strongly believe in it, but it’s still only a belief, not a science.
I wrote some words about the tournament on http://www.pumpupyourrating.com