Howdy! It’s The Chess Friends! Today we are sharing the article we contributed to the May issue of Northwest Chess magazine, where we recapped our adventures in Iceland, playing in the Reykjavík Open and exploring Icelandic culture! Many thanks to Icelandic Chess Federation (Skáksamband Islands) and their photographers, including Tómas Tandri Jóhannsson, whose photos we used for our article, with permission. Howdy! It’s The Chess Friends! If you read our blog, chessfriendsbooks.com/blog,...

Howdy! It’s the Chess Friends! Today we’re going to take you on a journey through one of our favorite elements of the chess life: PUZZLES! Puzzles are also one of the oldest elements of chess! They have appeared in ancient Indian and Arabic works for millennia, like in the famous Book of Chess, or Kitab ash-shatranj by philosopher Al-Adli al-Rumi in 840, popularizing the Knight's Tour (read about knight tours and other math on the chess board in our early blog here!). Though his original...

Howdy! It’s The Chess Friends! It’s the Legend Vivaan here! Did you know Peshka is an amazing athlete? We're going to show you why! Today we’re going to talk about why a bunch of professional athletes play chess. They do it to keep their mental game sharp and to lock in before games. In chess, you must be laser focused and calculate plans and tactics very quickly. This is the same in sports. Quick decision making is everything on the basketball court. Fun fact: basketball is my favorite sport...