Perpetual Chess Podcast

This week I am joined by one of my favorite modern authors, Grandmaster Axel Smith. Axel is a two-time Swedish Chess Olympiad member, who is probably best known for co-authoring the 2017 book, The Woodpecker Method with his fellow Grandmaster, Hans Tikkanen. Axel has written a few other books, which are excellent guides for more advanced players. They are Pump Up Your Rating, e3 Poison, and his latest offering from Quality Chess, Street Smart Chess. In our interview we discuss all of these books, and touch on topics like the origins of The Woodpecker Method, Axel’s own experience with using spaced repetition, and his improvement advice for ambitious club players. There are lots of useful nuggets in our conversation, so I hope you will enjoy it. Please read on for more details, timestamps, and relevant links.   0:00- We begin by discussing what is probably GM Axel Smith’s most popular book, the famed The Woodpecker Method, which he co-wrote with GM Hans Tikkanen. The book is available from Amazon and is very