Fra forordet

For my entire adult life, I have been both a professional chess player and a professional chess trainer. I have always had clear priorities, and my main ambitions lie behind the board. Playing comes first, training others comes second. In my early twenties, my main activity on training others was with helping private students. Every now and then, I would write a short article or record a brief video. But everything changed in late 2017, when I wrote my first book, Small Steps to Giant Improvement.

This book took me about six weeks to complete. That was all I did in this time, and I logged many hours every day. I did not keep a precise count of how the hours were proportionally spent. But I would estimate that it was about 90% on researching the topic of pawn play, looking for examples and trying to properly understand them; 10% on writing. I chose the topic because it was something I wanted to study. Most of the work I did towards completing the book was improving my understanding of chess. It did not feel like I was writing a book; rather, it felt like I was doing my normal training and inviting my readers to come along for the ride.

Perhaps it was just a coincidence, but right after doing my work on Small Steps to Giant Improvement, I experienced the biggest breakthrough of my adult life. In early 2018, I won the US Championship ahead of three top-ten players and followed it up with wins at the Capablanca Memorial and American Continental. I shot to 2730 and finally reached Super-GM status, after being stuck in the mid-high 2600s for the previous five years. Furthermore, I was seeing many themes that I had written about showing up in my tournament practice. I was handling the positions much better than I used to.

Ever since then, I have focused a lot on creating content. I wrote a follow-up book for Quality Chess on mastering passed pawn play, Small Steps 2 Success. I also published a full opening repertoire series on Chessable. Every single word I have written for both publishers has been done with the same stated goal in mind: to make myself a better player. Successful books that help supplement my income and help others improve their chess is just icing on the cake