Notes from the desk.
Short essays on training, tactics and chess culture — written around the board you play on.
The Board Is Open
On 12 August 2026, Vibe Chess 3D became a real public arena: playable, connected and open for its first members — with much more still to come.
The Soul of Chess
Strip a position to its pawns and it cannot lie. On reading skeletons — and the twelve shapes that decide most games ever played.
Train in Order
Chess skills stack — literally. Introducing the Curriculum: six stages, everything in the house, arranged the way a player actually grows.
Blindfold Chess Is a Skill, Not a Gift
Visualisation feels like something you either have or you don't. It isn't. Here is how the blindfold ladder actually builds the picture in your head.
Light or Dark: The Foundation Skill Nobody Trains
Knowing the colour of every square without counting sounds trivial. It quietly underpins bishops, endgames and every calculation you will ever make.
The Knight Moves in Curves
Knights are the hardest piece to see because they are the only one that does not travel in straight lines. Route-finding, trained properly, fixes that.
What Puzzle Rush Actually Trains
Timed puzzle formats are often dismissed as junk food. They train something specific and valuable — provided you know what it is.
Pacing Three Minutes
A sprint is not a race to move fast. It is a budget, and most runs are lost in the first forty seconds by people who are winning.
The Gauntlet Mindset
Survival formats punish tilt more than they punish weakness. Playing one well is mostly a study in what you do after a mistake.
The Opera Game, Read as a Lesson in Development
Morphy's most famous seventeen moves are usually shown as fireworks. They are better understood as the strictest development lesson ever played.
Streaks Without Burnout
A daily streak is a habit engine or a guilt machine, depending entirely on how you set the bar.
Memory Palaces and the 64 Squares
Chess memory is not photographic. It is structural — which is why the techniques that work for memorising positions look nothing like flashcards.
Why Playing Friends Makes You Better, Faster
Anonymous opponents give you games. A regular rival gives you a mirror, a rhythm and a reason to fix the thing you keep getting wrong.
The Ladder, in Plain English
What a rating number actually means, why it moves the way it does, and how to stop reading it as a verdict on your worth.
Choosing an Opening Repertoire Honestly
Most repertoire advice is aspirational. Pick openings for the positions you enjoy defending at three in the afternoon, not the ones you admire.
The Four Endgames Worth Learning First
Endgame study has a reputation for being infinite. It isn't — four positions cover the overwhelming majority of what actually decides club games.
The Etiquette of Playing Strangers
Online chess has manners. They are simple, mostly unwritten, and they make the difference between a club and a queue.
Leaderboards, and When to Ignore Them
A ranking is a good servant and a poor master. The trick is knowing which weeks are which.
The Arcade Is Training in Disguise
Pawn Storm and Knight Runner look like games because they are. Every one of them drills a specific piece of board geometry you will use tomorrow.
See What the Piece Touches
Blunders are rarely a failure of calculation. They are a failure to notice the quiet piece that was watching the square all along.
Forcing Moves First
Checks, captures, threats — in that order, every time. The oldest piece of calculation advice in chess, and the one most often skipped.
Why We Built a Board You Can Feel
An introduction to this journal, and to the argument underneath the whole project: that seeing a refutation played out teaches more than being told you were wrong.
First Edition: A Desk, a Board, and a Plan
The opening note. What this journal will cover, how often it lands, and the single idea holding the whole thing together.
New editions Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.