About this episode

Gaurav Datta shares personal stories and insights from Jeremy Silman's final work, Silman’s Chess Odyssey.

The Perpetual Chess book discussion series Chess Books Recaptured returns with a personal, funny, and heartfelt episode. Gaurav Datta, a longtime student and close friend of IM Jeremy Silman, joins me to discuss Silman’s Chess Odyssey: Cracked Grandmaster Tales, Legendary Players, & Instructions and Musings. This memoir and collection of writing was Silman’s final work, and it beautifully captures his deep and enduring love for chess. As Gaurav shares, he was an ordinary club player who repeatedly emailed Silman until Jeremy reluctantly agreed to take him on as a student in the late 1990s. What began as lessons soon turned into a decades-long friendship. Jeremy did not care much about Gaurav’s rating, but he appreciated his sense of humor and his ability to tell interesting stories. Throughout the conversation, Gaurav interweaves touching and often hilarious personal memories with insights from the book, offering a glimpse into Silman’s life and teaching philosophy. I greatly enjoyed reading Silman’s Chess Odyssey, and hearing Gaurav’s stories added a whole new dimension to understanding one of chess’s most beloved teachers. 0:00 Intro + overview of Silman’s Chess Odyssey Thanks…

People in this episode

Host: Ben Johnson

Guest: Gaurav Datta

Topics covered

• chess
• memoir
• teaching philosophy
• friendship
• personal stories

Keywords

• chess
• Jeremy Silman
• Gaurav Datta
• Silman’s Chess Odyssey
• teaching
• memoir
• friendship

Sponsors

Chessable.com

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Silman’s Chess Odyssey

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