chessfeels: conversations about chess, psychology & mental health

Julia and JJ interview their old family friend, Isaac "Ike" Haxton. They catch up on Haxton's illustrious poker career, his less illustrious chess career, and everything in between.

About Isaac: "Born in New York City, the young-looking 32-year-old Haxton (who bears a slight resemblance to Harry Potter) was raised in Syracuse by his psychiatrist mother and English professor father. His father introduced Haxton to various games of skill when Haxton was a young child. In fact, Haxton was playing chess at four years of age and, by age ten, was an avid and competitive Magic: The Gathering player.

Haxton attended Brown University and majored in computer science. However, poker was far more appealing, and Haxton—like many successful pros—swapped college for poker. At the age of 18, Haxton began to visit Verona, New York’s Turning Stone Casino. He started at $3/$6 limit Hold’Em before quickly increasing his stakes. At the same time, Haxton embraced online poker with his first $50 deposit on Ultimate Bet." source

JJ is taking new students, if you're tryna
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A true festivus! (We have a lot of problems with you people!) We also miss you terribly. Today Julia and JJ explore the very depths of h3ll (US chess tournaments). 

We're back! Very proud. We respond to a number of questions from our dedicated fans, solving both chess and mental health in the process.

Also, re audio quality, Julia didn't have her mic on her, which somehow meant that JJ's audio quality was worse. It will be better next time and we're going to start releasing episodes every two weeks. 

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You already know.

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Happy one year anniversary of Julia and JJ starting a podcast! To celebrate, we dig deep into the archives and share the prodigal return of the "convince me" series. Listen as the dynamic duo discuss: Mittens, the dumbest rules in chess, chessboxing, human chess coaches, and whether you're underrated.

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Julia and JJ talk about one of their favorite chess books, as well as what makes a good chess book and how to read a chess book.

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Julia and JJ are joined by the most wholesome man in chess content creation. Try to keep up as the trio talks about everything from the evolution of John's career as an educator to his dating life to his teaching philosophy to his own pet openings.

An example of JB-approved patience from one of JJ's recent games
John Bartholomew's Chess Fundamentals series
John Bartholomew's 1. d4 Repertoire on Chessable
What John's reading now (Mutiny on the Bounty)
Learn the Sicilian Kan
In-vest in your chess
John's recommendation for 2000-ish players

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Julia and JJ are pleased to invite you to the first ever Stouffers' Masters' tournament, modeled off of the...idiosyncratic...Airthings Masters' double elimination format across multiple divisions.

You can register here, but spots are limited, so make your application SHINE.
You can bribe us for spots or beneficial pairings here.

Julia and JJ revisit an earlier conversation about the dangers of setting results-oriented goals, such as the 'annual rating goal' that plagues chess improvement circles every January. Then, Julia helps JJ set a ratings goal for the year in a way that avoids these traps.

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See our full gift guide on JJs substack

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What do chess teaching and practicing therapy have in common? It sounds like a joke, and probably is, but you'll have to listen if you want to find out the actual answer.

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Julia and JJ are joined by WGM and multi-hyphenate US chess champion, poker pro, and author Jennifer Shahade to talk about the future (and past) of social media, the mental side of chess, and the open Sicilian.

Purchase Jennifer's book, Chess Queens!
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You're studying openings bad and you should feel bad! In the first podcast to ever feature two of the four highest rated chess players in the state of Nebraska, Omaha-based FM Nate Solon joins Julia and JJ to talk about how he studies openings and why that makes him better than other people. He also talks about his new book, "Evaluate like a GM," co-authored with GM Eugene Perelshteyn, and why 'evaluation' is an undervalued art in chess study.

Subscribe to Nate's controversial and brave Substack
Buy Nate and Eugene's book on Amazon
Consider buying other books, that aren't only available on Amazon, somewhere other than Amazon
Maybe like bookshop.org
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Julia and JJ solicited scary and "scary" stories from listeners and compiled them for a very spooky episode.

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Julia and JJ continue their conversation about how anxiety can impact your chess. They talk about how to notice when your thoughts turn from 'observational' to more 'reactive' or 'evaluative,' and how annotating your own (slow) chess games can be a great way to practice these observational skills.

JJ mentions the chess dojo training program which is really good
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The Miami Temple Israel would like to remind listeners that they did not condone the message of Drake's music in his 're-bar-mitzvah' music video. 

Julia explains what anxiety really is, and JJ talks about how they see this manifest in several of their students' annotations of their own slow games. You can learn how to, like, do anything about it next week.

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Julia and JJ are joined by Chris Callahan, the community organizer for LiChess.org. They discuss what LiChess does, and could do, about the addictiveness of blitz, how to be more accessible, and, about all sorts of cool stuff LiChess already does.

Follow Chris on twitter and lichess
Join the lichess discord server
Chris mentions the outrageous variants on pychess and visualization training on listudy
See this page for the full list of extensions 

People are still loving our Free Hans shirts
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Julia and JJ talk about The Cheating Scandal, against their better judgment, breaking down the philosophical questions and psychological implications of The Scandal and make lots of jokes about anal beads in the process. Why does it matter that Magnus did not explicitly accuse Hans of cheating? What counts as evidence of cheating? Would the scandal be a scandal if You People didn't tweet so much?

Free Hans shirt
Free Magnus shirt
I Think Hans Cheated shirt
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What should we do when our love of chess and our exhaustion with competition come into conflict? Julia and JJ tackle the question of why competitive and amateur chess players alike make such a big deal out of quitting. What does it mean to 'quit chess' if it's still a part of your life? What could 'recreational chess play' look like? Where does the desire to quit, rather than merely take a break, from playing competitive chess come from? Why do people think the options are 'keep improving' or 'quit playing'? Why are we like this? 

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After a week where chess twitter imploded under the weight of its users debating the value of giving unsolicited advice to other chess players, Julia and JJ decided to unsolicitedly tell everyone why they're using twitter wrong. They're joined by the legend Omar for a heartfelt discussion about how hard it is to hear the hard truth sometimes (stop playing bl*tz).

While we take a break to get ready for season 2 of chessfeels (#2chess2feels), you can
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