This week’s episode of the New In Chess Podcast features an interview with British grandmaster Matthew Sadler. Often called “the strongest amateur in the world”, Matthew, a two-time British chess champion, has retired from playing full-time with a more-than-respectable FIDE rating of 2694.

Despite his inactivity as a player, Matthew is far from done with chess. In addition to his own writings (the most notable of which is Game Changer, a game analysis of Google’s AI-powered AlphaZero engine), Matthew also actively reviews the work of other chess authors, from highly technical endgame books to biographies and more personal chess stories. His review column in the New In Chess Magazine is amongst the publication’s most popular rubrics. Interviewed by Dirk-Jan ten Geuzendam, Matthew talks about chess literature, his own personal favorites, and his process for reviewing the work of other authors, among other things.

0:00 – Intro

2:05 – Matthew’s work in IT

5:08 – Why Matthew hasn’t played since COVID

6:47 – The role of (chess and non-chess) literature in Matthew’s upbringing

12:20 – Matthew’s music taste, his brother’s career in music

15:55 – The chess books that molded a young Matthew

21:13 – Why the quality of chess literature has drastically improved

26:20 – How should a chess author explain playing styles of less accessible players?

28:06 – How much time does Matthew spend reading chess books?

32:02 – Top players creating their own material, the effects of the computer age

34:54 – Does reading chess biographies help a player become stronger?

40:13 – AD BREAK

40:45 – Why young players should be wary of old literature

46:01 – Should we replace the “one-to-five-star” system with a rating system?

48:15 – Matthew’s favorite chess book of all time

56:19 – Matthew’s other favorites

59:19 – Where does Matthew think chess literature is headed?

1:00:01 – Writing Game Changer

1:05:03 – Which book still urgently needs to be written?

1:07:32 – Outro