Alex "Gus" Gustafson

alexjgustafson.blog · English

rss2 wordpress content media atom dc sy

Open the feed

https://alexjgustafson.blog/feed/

Last post: Jun 6, 2025
Posts in 24 h · 7 days · 30 days: 0 · 0 · 0
Our last check: Answering
Served from: United States
Text score at discovery: 5,231
Format: rss2
Features in the feed: content, media, atom, dc, sy
Community: wordpress

Posts

What our queue read from this feed. Open one to read it here, or go to the site that published it.

Kentucky Open 2025 Pre-Tournament Thoughts
Jun 6, 2025 · original
This weekend’s Kentucky Open will be my first chess tournament since the Cincinnati Open in April. As of this writing 116 players are registered for both the Open and Scholastic sections, a new record number of participants in the KY Open previously set in 2007. Taking a look at the field comes with a pretty big asterisk: the registration form was just confusing enough I bet a number of players signed up for scholastic or open incorrectly. They offered a discounted entry fee for scholastic players and players under 1200 rating. To make this happen, the section select field online had three options: a. “Open” b. “Scholastic Open” c. “Scholastic and Players Less 1200.” Option C means you want to play in the Open section, but qualify for the discounted fee. Option B is for Scholastic players only, playing in their own separate section from the Open. If you hovered your mouse over the option
New post on chess.com: Move Your Knight Up the Career Ladder
Apr 27, 2025 · original
Chess middlegames are hard to codify. When I was six years old I could’ve rattled off some rules for the opening: control the center, develop your pieces, castle early. But if I had the misfortune to play someone who also could play a reasonable opening, we ended up in a middlegame where there were no more rules, only choices. One strategy has begun to hit me over the head more often when I find myself with choices: find your knight a good square. Read the full post at https://www.chess.com/blog/alexjgustafson/move-your-knight-up-the-career-ladder
Next Round of Chess Study
Apr 17, 2025 · original
These will by my main (Chess Dojo approved!) efforts: Annotating games from Cincinnati Open (and some other non-tournament classical time control games) How to Reassess Your Chess by Jeremy Silman Chess Tactics from Scratch by Martin Weteschnik Polgar mate-in-2s Less important studying, but will be around: Chess Life magazines as they come USCF Official Rules of Chess (I recently became a Club TD and want to keep reviewing to get the book in my bones before next fall’s scholastic season where I can assist.) Drinking coffee and staring at the beautiful chess table and pieces I got for Christmas
Cincinnati Open 2025 Tournament Review
Apr 15, 2025 · original
This weekend’s chess tournament was a success. Travel to and from Cincinnati was smooth and uneventful. The event was well-run and all but the last round started on time. I was fortunate enough to meet up with a fellow Chess Dojo member, Carl, and we reviewed a couple games together and got to talk between rounds. We ended up sitting at adjacent boards in the last round so we caught a little of each other’s final game. I would enjoy playing in this tournament again! Games Game one on Friday night was sufficient for me to happy, really. I was paired with the third-highest rated player in the field and confidently held my own the whole game. In our endgame I felt I had a winning position going into the final time control (shown below.) While I was a little bummed not to find a strategy to convert, I kept enough control to secure the draw once I decided I could not force the win. White to p
Cincinnati Open 2025 Pre-Tournament Thoughts
Apr 9, 2025 · original
I’m two days out from my first chess tournament of 2025, the Cincinnati Open. We’ve been saving up all chess-related money since December so that I can play the three-day schedule with two hotel nights. I identified this tournament as a good one where I could have a weekend away without the travel expenses being too extravagant, and would be my first-ever opportunity to earn a FIDE rating. As of this writing, I’m in the 40th percentile of my section. Players can register or withdraw all the way up until Saturday morning. This is the “FIDE Class” section restricted to 1400-2000 rated players. Since I’m just under the median of the section, I will likely play someone rated 1900+ in the first round. Naturally, I have no result expectations in that first round. Instead I’ll mentally prepare to give it my best, quickly wind down afterwards to get a good night’s sleep, and start fresh again on
I Accidentally Did 100 Days of Chess
Mar 13, 2025 · original
In online chess communities there’s a common challenge to do “100 days of chess.” Usually it’s some program of tactics, studying a book, and some number of games that the player dreams up. The intent is always to work that program every day of 100 days straight. It wasn’t my intention to do the challenge but today I realized… I hit 100 days of chess. The last day I haven’t done some amount of chess was December 2nd, 2024. Several of those days were only 10 to 15 minutes doing tactics, but it was something every day. Some of those days were tournaments or single games that lasted hours and hours. Counting all the games, all the studying, all the tactics, all the time at chess club with Grace – I spent 10,005 minutes. That’s an average of 1 hours 40 minutes a day. My activity heat map on the ChessDojo Training Program. There wasn’t a point where I decided to start going on a streak necessa
The Career Lesson I Keep Re-learning
Feb 20, 2025 · original
Sales is difficult. Multiple times I’ve started projects where success ended up resting almost entirely on sales. Each time I was confident that the rest of my marketing mix would be sufficient to overcome any selling problems. Each time I was wrong. Sometimes I’ve even had the hubris to think I’m good at sales despite evidence to the contrary. What I’m starting to understand is that when I face difficult tasks my instinct is to start blocking out the world. I want my desk and calendar cleared so I can focus and think. I want hours in a row with no other expectations or distractions. And definitely no phone calls or messaging with anyone. This has served me well in coding and planning but in sales is an absolute wreck. It’s a social sport and persuasion happens emotionally. Emotional connections are not improved by going into a cave of productivity. So there are two parts to the lesson.
Coaching for 5-Years-Ago-Me
Jan 23, 2025 · original
Five years ago, I still struggled with barbell math. I knew nothing about making a training program, but I appreciated being told the underlying ideas when I was given one. Most of my effort was still about just showing up. I was still coming to grips with the fact that even if I trained well, I had missed the best time of my life for training. I still had no idea why you couldn’t outwork a poor diet. But five years ago I finally let coaches tell me what to do instead of flailing on my own or arguing what they had to say. I’m running my own little gym now. And I want to serve others the way those coaches served me. I’m not a gifted athlete, but that serves me well with a lot of people. Because all the problems I’ve had to solve and all the mistakes I made and all the little victories I’ve won… it’s normal people stuff. It’s the stuff for folks that groan getting out of the recliner. For
Seen on StartingStrength.com
Nov 22, 2023 · original
Had the pleasure of attending a Squat and Deadlift seminar at Starting Strength Indianapolis, and a photo from that seminar was used for a recent article on StartingStrength.com. Strength Training Will Force You to Fix (Almost) Everything
2021 Reading Review
Jan 1, 2022 · original
Unlike 2020 I didn’t have any goals around reading, but I did try to keep books around as much as possible. I listened to some audiobooks while running, always had a book in progress on my phone, and since we take our daughter to the library all the time I’d make sure to pick a book for myself each time too. In the end I read more than 2020, so there ya go: habits beat goals again. Young Guns: Obsession, Overwatch, and the Future of Gaming by Austin Moorhead Probably says a lot about me that I’d read a book about video games just as soon as play one. To be honest though I did play a lot more video games in 2021 too. The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu Real trip of a story. Tough to read through translation at times but loved thinking through it. First of a trilogy so will plan to hit the 2nd book in 2022. Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh So so funny. Hilarious even. Get a tast

Discovered by the rss-feed-index crawler, which checks each feed at most once a month.

Same record as JSON: https://api.agentalog.com/api/feeds/fd_alexjgustafson_blog_47e47d20ea692424. More from this site: alexjgustafson.blog in the Feeds tab.