Pascal Mäser is an Associate Professor at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute and the University of Basel. In addition of being a brilliant scientist and a great guitar player, he is also a very good chess player! With the recent success of the Netflix miniseries “The Queen’s Gambit”, chess sales have skyrocketed in the last few weeks. I used this opportunity to invite Pascal onto the show and ask him all my burning questions I had about chess!

TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE:

• To be a good chess player you do not need patience rather you need to be good at stress and crisis management.
• There are different types of chess games depending on how much time is given to each player in total.
• As a beginner progress can be made easily by learning a few key principals.
• Maybe it does not need a special women’s chess federation but rather more encouragement for girls to start learning to play chess at a young age at the same numbers boys start playing chess.
• There are a few great movies and novels written about chess (see below in the links).
• There are two types of chess players: The ones who play the opponent’s chess pieces and the ones who play the opponent!

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Connect with Pascal on LinkedIn

The Elo rating system

Book by Walter Tevis The Queen’s Gambit

Netflix miniseries The Queen’s Gambit

The Guardian’s article on the success of the Netflix miniseries “The Queen’s Gambit”

Book by Vladimir Nabokov The Luzhin Defense

Movie The Coldest Game

Play online chess on lichess.org

Online chess and tutorials on chess24.com

Chess players mentioned: Carol Partoş Garry Kasparov Judit Polgár Magnus Carlsen Fabiano Caruana Bobby Fischer

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