TalentOffer: Training with Grandelius

Laurin Perkampus, a member of our talent program TalentOffer, recently participated in a training camp with other talented players from the club.

Besides Laurin, Lara Janželj, Ellen Fredericia Nilssen and Eirik Aarnes all took part in the 12-hour online camp with Swedish no. 1 Nils Grandelius.

Throwback: A young Laurin with a smug Magnus Carlsen


Laurin wrote an excellent report from the camp which we will bring to you unaudited - and there is a beautiful puzzle at the end of it.

Enjoy!

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Laurin: - Demanding, but fun

The topics we dealt with during the lessons reached from attacking chess
to finding deep defensive ideas - and in general all themes were very
instructive!

In the days before the training sessions I was very excited since I had
not yet worked with such an elite player. But Nils made us instantly
feel comfortable during the lessons. Nevertheless, the exercises we had
to solve were very demanding. Then again when looking back at them now
they had also been fun.

Ellen Fredericia Nilssen and Lara Janželj also took part. Here with Conor O'Donnell from the Offerspill Nordic Invitational.



At first it took me some time to adjust to this next level of handling
chess positions but after some time I got used to the very deep way of
thinking. This was one of the many things I took from the sessions and I
will hopefully be able to apply this to my upcoming games and to my
overall chess working style.

The training sessions had been very intense, and we were able to learn a
lot and I am sure this experience will have a big influence on our play
for all of us.

I want to end my report with a nice mating exercise we came across
during the analysis of the game Topalov-Kamsky from 2006. Feel free to
try it out, it is certainly one of the easier tasks we have to solve but I consider this one to be quite aesthetic.

White to move and win

White to move and win.


You can find the solution here.

Finally I want to thank Nils Grandelius, the Offerspill sjakklubb and my
fellow teammates for these very exciting weekends!