Perpetual Chess Podcast

GM Mauricio Flores Rios' first book, Chess Structures, is a modern classic which is seemingly recommended on a weekly basis on Perpetual Chess. After nine years of work, Mauricio has recently released its follow-up, Chess Imbalances: A GM Guide. Like Chess Structures, it is a highly instructive book with a beautiful selection of games and useful guidelines to aid one's chess decision-making. We discussed the following:  His opinion on the value of the bishop pair, as well as bishop vs. knight  The surprising reason that his book often featured the games of Magnus Carlsen When to switch from “objective mode” to “survival mode” in a game  We also discussed freestyle chess, and the impact of machine learning on chess. Mauricio is a statistician by trade, who recently launched a chess instruction site called ChessMind A.I., so he was particularly insightful on this topic. There is always lots to learn from chatting with (and reading) GM Rios, and this conversation was quite informative. Times