The last two months have been a bit of a blur for me. It’s been a lot of training, coaching, streaming, and podcasting. But I figured now’s a good time to post—I’m about to play the 2025 Maia Open, all of my heroes are fighting on chess twitter, and I’ve got a couple hours to kill at Newark airport. Previously, I ended my last post on a cliffhanger (sorry!) going into the 2025 Vigevano Open, a small tournament in Italy where I’d be the #1 seed.
I was quite nervous entering the event, unsure of how I’d perform. My last tournament, the KCT Open, was subpar but not a disaster: I scored 5.5/6 playing down and 0/3 against GMs. So if anything my recent results had been decent against lower rated players, which I’d be facing throughout. That said, there was a lot of pressure to win every game. Anything short of first place would be a letdown.
My main goal was to try to play “simple chess”, as suggested by GM Jacob Aagaard after the Killer Chess Training Camp in May. The game plan was to develop my pieces to good squares, find sensible ways to improve the position in the middlegame, calculate precisely to secure an advantage, and then show good technique to convert, not letting the opponent have counterplay. Simple, but not easy!
I think I did reasonably well according to plan. In the first round I was in real danger of getting myself mated as White. So some games were certainly better than others. But they were all quite interesting! And in general I do think I played well for the most part. I won my first three games, then drew as Black in Round 4 against the strong CM Vahan Nalbandyan after getting into a bit of trouble out of the opening.
I then won a nice game in Round 5 which set up a critical penultimate round against the tournament leader, FM Loris Cereda, who was on a perfect score. I managed to get very lucky and win that game, giving me the sole lead with 5.5/6 going into the last round. A win over WIM Anna Kantane in the final game would clinch it, as I finished with 6.5/7, clear 1st! 🏆
I think I was most proud of my fifth round game, which felt like a textbook victory straight out of Art of Attack:
So 6.5/7, all in all a very satisfying result—it’s a rare but fantastic feeling to win a tournament. Although of course my play could have been improved. Mostly I was relieved. Having gained a few rating points, I ended my Spring Eurotrip on a small FIDE plus (back up to 2357 now).
For those interested in my analysis, I posted a full recap of the games to YouTube:
It’s long but thorough, and you don’t have to watch it all at once! But if you want to get an accurate glimpse into the story of each game, I put it all there.
Since Vigevano, I’ve mostly been home over the summer in St. Louis, with my usual lifestyle of either working in chess or working on chess. I taught at a couple camps in Las Vegas and Atlanta and coached a couple kids from the U.S. delegation at the 2025 Pan-American Youth Championships, but apart from that have been pretty much at home, training, studying, and doing the occasional Dojo Talks.
I can’t say I’ve been working with a huge amount of direction for the past several weeks—my time has mostly been spent on openings while reading a bit of Woodpecker 2 and some Dvoretsky. I still have so much to do, but I’m not too bothered by it, my aim is to gradually work through as much material as I can. For the time being, I’ve been really enjoying all kinds of studying, just playing through random games from the past and collecting the most instructive examples I can find. But I’ve also been playing a lot of blitz and rapid to try and stay in form.
Recent Inspiration
I’d be remiss not to mention a couple of recent chess stories which have inspired me. First was GM Alexander Fishbein’s victory at the 2025 U.S. Senior Championship. A huge underdog win, as Alex’s score against his esteemed opponents going into the event was abysmal. But he ended up winning in the playoffs over previous champions GM Vladimir Akopian and GM Alexander Shabalov. The Dojo had the chance to do a podcast with Alex about the tournament and his training methods leading up to it, published on YouTube. I found the talk exceptionally insightful, as Alex opened up about his intense training methods and shared lots of deep thoughts on chess improvement:
Next, my longtime friend and training partner, IM-elect (!) Tatev Abrahamyan recently crushed it at a norm event in Budapest, scoring 7/9 to achieve her first ever GM norm, all while breaking 2400 FIDE and completing her International Master title!
Having trained for many hours with Tatev, this result was hardly surprising to me. But of course it was still incredible to see years of hard work finally pay off for someone with a huge result.
The 2025 Maia Open starts this Friday, August 22. It’s strong and a bit of a special tournament because I started this blog exactly one year ago, leading up to the 2024 edition of this event. I still have some very clear things to work on (calculation, technique, etc.) in my chess, so once again I am not going into the event with any huge expectations. I just want to play some good games.
After Porto, I’ll be returning to St. Louis to get back to training and content for a couple more months before jumping back into battle towards the end of the year. But first, Maia Open!
Coverage as usual on https://twitch.tv/chessdojo. Recaps as time permits on my YT channel. Occasional updates and food pics on Twitter & IG. Wish me luck! 🙏
GL Kostya, always fun to track your progress!
Inspiring! GL to you in tournament and AMAZING to see Tatev get the IM title! 💖