The Abysmal Depths of Chess

Black to play A chesser walking into a stalemate from an overwhelming position is a bit like a batsman getting hit in the box. Just as painful and similarly musing to absolutely everybody save for the person on the receiving end.

White to play Yusupov - Kasparov, Linares 1990 This, as you can see, is a position from one of Artur’s own games. He went on to lose but the game but he certainly went down fighting. If found it in Boost Your Chess, Chapter 9: The Use of Traps . Coincidentally it was the chapter turned out to be next on my list the day after I saw a tweet from Neal Bruce   talking about the importance of resilience in chess ... but that's only half the story.

Working your way through Yusupov is what happens to you while you’re making other plans. Fortunately that’s of no importance for would-be adult improver chessers. The only thing that matters is GTFWD. Get. The. Work. Done.

When you realise that you've got a lot of free time coming up and nothing specific to do with it ... you might as well throw yourself into chess, right?