GM Avetik Grigoryan is the founder and lead trainer of the education chess website Chessmood.com. I last interviewed Avetik in 2020, and his company has seen explosive growth since then. We discussed what Avetik has learned about growing a chess start-up, but also what he has learned about the challenges adults face in trying to improve at chess. Whereas previously Avetik thought the biggest obstacle was that people set unrealistic goals, now he sees a few bigger issues. We also talked about how artificial intelligence will impact chess improvement in the future and some of the tools Chessmood is working on to make improvement easier. As always, timestamps of topics discussed are below.

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2:00- Avetik’s World Championship Thoughts

Mentioned: GM Kevin Goh Wei Ming

5:30- Chess Improvement: Why did Avetik write that “Chess improvement has never been so easy, but never been so hard?”

Mentioned: NM Robert Ramirez

Avetik’s post regarding “Study, Practice, Fix” is here:

https://chessmood.com/blog/how-to-get-better-at-chess

24:00- Avetik discusses the AI-enabled chess study tools that Chessmood is launching soon

41:00- What is it like to run a chess startup like Chessmood?

45:00- Avetik’s (non-chess) book recommendations:

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