Starcraft 2 - Legacy of the Void - Balance Update

Blizzard is expected to release the second expansion to Starcraft 2 - Legacy of the Void - at some point this year.

Of course, the SC2 community is in uproar. Even though many details about LotV remain unclear at this point, virtually everybody seems convinced that their race is getting the short end of the stick.

In a recent interview that has already gained some notoriety, the lead designer on the project explained some of the coming changes:

This video cracked me up. Thanks to FrozenImpact, who posted it on Teamliquid in the first place!

On a more serious note though it's always been my conviction that instead of whining about balance, virtually all players have enough potential for improvement of their own game, which would more than outweigh any actual or perceived imbalances. It's also worth noting that "imbalanced" doesn't necessarily mean "unfair".

A Position to Pawnder - Pyre's Reflections on his Journey into the World of Chess

The following is an article written by Pyre, one of my chess students, reflecting upon his transition from competitive SC2 to chess. My thoughts on Pyre's progress will be published here soon.
This article can also be found on TeamLiquid:
http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=429882

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When playing Starcraft, I was very often asked by friends and family, “What is Starcraft?” and “How do you play Starcraft?”. My response was always, “Well, it’s sort of like chess, but faster and more difficult”. On the one hand, who can argue that Starcraft isn’t a faster-paced game? Starcraft is in real time and chess is turn-based. Some Starcraft games end in 5 minutes, while some chess games last for 7 hours! However, I could never have been more wrong when assuming that Starcraft was a harder game than chess. Learning how chess pieces move is one thing, but mastering the art, beauty, and complexity that encompasses it is as different as night and day. 

Pyre used to be one North America's most promising SC2 talents and was consistently ranked among TOP 16 on the GM ladder before he turned his attention to chess

Optional Backstory:

      If you don’t know who I am, it's because I haven’t logged onto battle.net for about 8 months. Back in September, I joined my high school’s chess club thinking that my strategic brain would easily be able to convert my grandmaster Starcraft abilities into grandmaster chess play. I was terrible at first, and the mere thought of eventually becoming good at chess was slowly slipping away. I lost to every single person in the chess club every week and wondered why I was good at Starcraft and not good at chess. But eventually, the constant defeats and humiliation got to me and I decided to seriously train to become better. The same competitive drive I applied to Starcraft in my humble beginnings was being applied to chess. What began as a side-project to Starcraft shortly took over as I regained the desire to become better at something--the same something that attracted me so much to Starcraft in the first place.

      With this ambition, I was lucky enough to fall under RevTiberius's wing and become a chess student of his. Soon enough, I started to see results. It was not long before my first competition happened, which was the culmination of all the high schools nearby and I got third place. Good right? Well, not as good as I had hoped. All this did was tell me that I still had a really long road ahead of me. But after several hours a day of studying and playing from January to now, I can confidently say that my chess is at a decent level (approximately 1800 ELO from 1000 ELO) and I hope to continue at the same rate during my stay at UCSD. 

 "I could never have been more wrong when assuming that Starcraft was a harder game than chess". SC2 GM and chess enthusiast Pyre reflecting upon chess and SC2

      “We ain’t so different you and I”. It’s true. Both Starcraft and chess are similar games where both players start evenly and through smart decision making, the better player should win. There are starting imbalances very similar to that of terran, protoss, and zerg, although I doubt “white” is going to get patched anytime soon. There is a large amount of theory, strategy, and overall knowledge required in both games to be successful. Taking expansions in Starcraft is the same as developing your pieces and castling (bringing your king to safety, while bringing your rook into the game) in chess. Going for a baneling bust, or a 6 pool, is very similar to the infamous “Scholar’s mate” (trying to checkmate your opponent in 4 moves) in chess or even just moving your queen out too early and trying to do damage with it. 

      The strategy in both games is really no different. In both games, you build an army and often there is a main fight that decides the game. For all you positional, quiet players who like to “turtle” in Starcraft, guess what? You can do that in chess, too--just close up the position with pawns and its equivalent to a widow mine and siege tank line! And for all you attacking players who like blink stalker openings, roach baneling busts, and 1/1/1s, there’s aggressive type play in chess as well with what are known as gambits (sacrificing material for hyperaggression). 

      Both games have gone through changing times and changing ideas throughout their existence. In the beginning of Starcraft 2 in 2010, everyone (including zergs) opened on 1 base and it remained that way until even the 7 minute mark. Struggling, zergs eventually realized that they needed the extra larvae and they needed the extra base, so they started going hatch first. As a response, terrans started making reactor hellions to start putting pressure on the expansion. These are examples of trends. From the 1500s-1800s, chess players strived to control the center immediately and valued fast development. However, at the dawn of the 20th century, ideas changed and certain people (called “hypermodernists”) decided that as a response, chess players could let their opponent control the center at first, but then flank attack it later! This idea had never been seen before, but it changed the way people thought chess was played and it led to even more innovation further down the road. 

      Tournaments are seen in both chess and Starcraft 2 at the professional level and the amateur level. One of the most intriguing things I had found out about when I first started getting into chess was the fact that most local chess tournaments have sections. This was a new thing to me, as no Starcraft tournament I ever went to had a “diamond-only” section or a “platinum-only” section with cash prizes for them too. This seemed genius to me. Everyone who participated in these chess tournaments had something to play for. They weren’t just going to get “beat by a gm, then watch”.

      There are also chess pros, just like there are Starcraft pros. The “Flash” of chess would be either Garry Kasparov or Bobby Fischer. Both of these chess players are legends of their time and have been internationally recognized outside of the chess world. The “Taeja” or “Mvp” of chess would be Magnus Carlsen. Magnus Carlsen is currently the world #1 at only 22 years old! He is a superstar in his own world just as Starcraft players are in theirs.

      If you’re a fan of just one of these games, then I highly encourage you to try the other. As a non-Starcraft player, if you feel intimidated by the speed at which Starcraft is played, let me assure you that you don’t need 450 APM to be good. Plenty of successful Starcraft players, like Polt, are able to out-think and outplay their opponents purely out of strategy, tactics, and immense game knowledge. If you play Starcraft and have never gotten into chess, then just imagine you’re playing Starcraft except without the APM and constant movements--just the strategic portion. Nothing can match the pleasure of beating someone in a game of raw intellectual strength.

Bad Manner in Online Chess and Starcraft 2

One thing that has always puzzled me is a noticeable difference in the BM ("bad manner") I encounter in online chess and Starcraft 2:

Starcraft 2
Basically, in Starcaft 2 I got BMed in at least 50% of my games. As far as I could tell I got BMed pretty much across the board from players who were clearly better, about my level, and clearly worse. Here's a sample of the kind of trash talk that I'm sure anybody who plays online video games is only all too familiar with:

A classic

This one actually made me laugh

This came out of the blue at the beginning of a game

I never understood how someone who just lost a game can call you a "noob"

A classic... must have heard this about 1,000 times on Battlenet...

My all time favorite...

Chess:
Overall, there's clearly a lot less BM in chess compared to SC2. I've always found this a little surprising because it seems to me that in chess, there's even more ego at stake than in SC2. Losing in chess is definitely more humiliating than losing in SC2.
The fact there is noticeably less BM in online chess might be explained by the fact that in both online and offline chess you're clearly dealing with an older and more sophisticated and mature crowd. Of course there are exceptions, but it is clear that a 40-year old corporate lawyer in a chess tournament won't trash talk nearly as much as a 17-year old kid in an SC2 tourney who's cowardly hiding behind the anonymity of the internet and thinks he or she can get away with anything.

Even more surprising to me however, is the fact that in chess, I only get BMed by players who are much much worse than me, usually rated at least 300 points below me. Here are some examples:

I should have my second comment on Control + C at all times so that I can always paste it when necessary... 

Another peculiarity about trash talkers on chess servers is they frequently lie against all evidence. This screen shot is an example of a message a pretty weak player sent me after a game. As the next screen shot shows, I did not "get owned" by him. Incidentally I believe Idra was banned from EG for a comment like "hope your death is slow and painful"

This speaks for itself

I really have no explanation why I only get trash talked by players who are, honestly, trash. From time to time I get clearly outplayed by players my level or better, but it is extremely rare to get some BM from them afterward.

Is it because these "noobs" are so disappointed because they think they are keeping their games against me balanced for longer than they actually are? Is it because they think they "almost" had a draw?

This is the only "BM" I ever engage in. This line has come in handy many many time in SC2 and chess 

I'd be interested to know if any reader has some theories on this. I for my part have decided to no longer accept challenges from players rated below 2000. This has also had a very positive effect on my rating which is something I'll blog about next time.

Magnus Carlsen Wins 2013 Candidates Tournament

Magnus Carlsen after winning the 2013 Candidates Tournament

The 2013 Candidates Tournament is over. MagnusCarlsen won and is now the official challenger of Viswanathan Anand. I have been following international chess for almost 20 years now, and I can unequivocally say that this was one of the best tournaments I've ever seen. Many great games, unexpected results, and lots of drama till the very end. What more could chess fans have asked for?

Thanks to the internet and live streams it's also become much easier to share in the excitement of top level chess tournaments. I remember when I first got into chess and my parents bought me a one year subscription of a chess magazine, it just wasn't the same. Without the real-time experience, all the drama is lost. In fact I find watching chess tournaments online even more exciting than the seemingly more fast-paced Starcraft 2 events such as MLG.

I'm not surprised that Carlsen won the whole thing, but I certainly didn't expect it to come about the way it did. I thought I would see a neck-and-neck race between Carlsen and Kramnik all the way. Instead, the first half of the tournament saw Carlsen and Aronian pulling ahead of the field while Kramnik failed to convert his many promising positions into a single win.
And just when I thought Kramnik was out of the running for sure, he pulled a pretty impressive comeback while Aronian completely collapsed at the beginning of the second half of the tournament.

Many in the chess community seem relieved that there will not be a rematch of Anand - Kramnik 2008. I am not so sure. Leaving aside the fact that rematches are kind of fascinating in themselves, I do think that a second encounter between the two would have produced much more interesting chess simply because Kramnik was clearly out of form in 2008.  Foto by Fred Lucas.

Magnus Carlsen: I'm not surprised that he won the candidates tournament. I am surprised however that he managed to squeeze so many points out of drawn positions, especially in the first half of the tournament. It's really instructive to see how he so "effortlessly" keeps accumulating tiny advantages until he's got enough to convert the position into a win. I often have "dead drawn" positions just like he has, but of course I lack his superb positional skills. My play is just too inaccurate to capitalize on tiny positional imbalances the way Carlsen does.

Some commentators - rightfully in my opinion - pointed out Carlsen's comparatively weak opening repertoire. While his skill to win drawn positions is remarkable, it is equally remarkable to see that a player of his calibre more often than not fails to get any advantage out of the opening, especially when playing white. I know it is his strategy to deviate from well-known theoretical lines early in order to render his opponents' preparation useless and force them to start using up time early. On the other hand though this approach does allow his opponents to equalize without much effort.

Against a well-prepared Anand, Carlsen will most certainly have to show better opening preparation. At this tournament, Carlsen got most of his wins from the lower half of the field. In the match with Anand, there is no lower half.

Magnus Carlsen and Boris Gelfand at the 2012 Wijk "Super Tournament". Maybe Carlsen has really bad body odor. Or maybe Gelfand simply had a cold. Foto by Fred Lucas

Vladimir Kramnik: one of my personal favorites and the tragic hero of the tournament. He's been criticized for having lost his interest in chess after getting married and having two kids a few years ago. In fact similar things are being said about Anand. Kramnik however showed fantastic chess in London, and this tournament has been called "maybe his best performance ever" by Garry Kasparov. I think Kramnik is still a very serious contender for the world championship title, and might very well win the next candidates tournament, especially if Carlsen beats Anand later this year.

They also used a new chess set at the Candidates Tournament. I agree with the criticism voiced by some of the players that the pieces are a little too big for the board.

Episode IV - Pyre Wins His First Trophy

It was only 2 months ago that I started teaching chess to SC2 Grandmaster Pyre. Therefore I was very surprised when he emailed me the following picture:

Pyre won his first trophy at a local high school chess event. Though I realized his talent very quickly, I did not expect him to score so well at over-the-board tournaments so soon. Of course most of the credit belongs to Pyre, but it is very gratifying to see that as his coach I seem to be doing something right, too.
I'd like to take this opportunity and take a closer look at the current state of Pyre's game:

Current State of Pyre's Game:

I regularly go through the games Pyre plays on chess.com to look for things that spark my interest. The following six positions I think exemplify Pyre’s recent progress very well, and also indicate where more work needs to be done. Pyre’s account on chess.com is [b][red]3hitu[/b][/red]. What I find most significant about the following examples is that they show that [b]Pyre has begun transitioning from simply making moves to formulating and executing plans[/b]. The very fact that he is already making short-term and long-term plans is significant progress indeed even if some of his plans are ill-advised or tactically flawed. . This kind of progress is far more important than fluctuations in his rating. I really don't care much whether Pyre's rating is 1100, 1200, 1400 or something like that. What I care about is improvements in his game.

In this position Pyre “saw” the hanging rook on d6 and took it. He won the game soon after, but 34. Qg8 checkmate would have been better instead. This is a good – though extreme – illustration of Emanuel Lasker’s recommendation “when you see a good move, look for a better one”. However, this is not just a problem for beginners. I’m very familiar with this kind of mistake, too.  I frequently overlook excellent moves after finding a good one.
In this example, Pyre’s move didn’t change the outcome of the game. It’s really quite frustrating when it does.

This position is a good example of how Pyre’s ability to formulate and execute plans has increased since the beginning of the year. In this position, he is a pawn down, but has a very strong attack against Black’s king. Pyre played 20.Ng4 which is a move that I am certain he could not have made 2 months ago. The idea behind it is to distract the knight on f6, which is the only defender of h7, where Pyre is threatening mate. I was very pleased indeed when I saw him play 20.Ng4.

In this position, Pyre’s bishop is under attack, and I’m sure that until recently he would have simply retreated it to maybe d4 or f6. In the game however, Pyre played 23.Qh6, threatening mate on c1. An interesting choice I find. I’m not sure if he simply overlooked 23. … Qxh2 or whether he didn’t like the response 24.Qh3. In any case, I was impressed by the fact the he put some thinking into the position and came up with something other than an obvious move with the bishop.

In this position, Pyre got really lucky. Black had sacrificed a knight on g4, and Pyre was imprudent enough to take it. Note to Pyre: In these kinds of positions taking a knight on g4 is almost never a good idea if Black gets an open h-file in return. Mate is usually inevitable. In this case, too. However, Black was too impatient and went for 10. … Qh2+, a useless check that allowed Pyre’s king to slip away via f2. Had Black played 10. … g3! first to block White’s escape route, there’s nothing Pyre could have done to prevent mate on h1. As the great Bobby Fischer said: “Patzer sees a check, patzer plays a check”.

In this position, Pyre has a nice bishop/queen battery on the diagonal b1-h7, and he eventually managed to win the game through an attack on the kingside. This position, however, is significant because both Pyre and his opponent overlooked a great defensive resource for Black. Pyre now played 11.e5, which is the right idea at the wrong time, because it allows Black to play 11. … Nb4!, forking Pyre’s queen and bishop and thereby trading Pyre’s important bishop on d3. So when you line up your pieces on that diagonal, it is important to make a prophylactic move like a3 first to make sure no knight shows up on b4.

This position is from the same game. Pyre now chose to play 19.Kh1 in order to play Ng1 to open the d1-h5 diagonal for the queen, a plan that ultimately resulted in Black’s resignation. Of course this was not a forced sequence. Black could have done several things to prevent this, and Pyre could have found a better way to activate his queen – one without moving the knight in the wrong direction. Nevertheless, I was very pleased when I saw this maneuver because it shows that Pyre is really developing the skills to formulate sensible plans. This is because while one should always look for the best move, from a practical point of view it is equally if not more important to have a realizable plan even if that includes moves that are - objectively speaking - not the best.

Bad Manner

Thankfully there is not nearly as much BM in online chess as there is in SC2. However, I noticed there’s a special kind of BM that I frequently encounter when I play someone who's much weaker than me.
Here are a few examples:

I'd be curious to know how much BM other chess players have to put up with. In top level chess tournaments rules around BM are very strict and players forfeit their games if they even just refuse to shake hands. This is a clip of the famous handshake incident at the Corus 2008 grandmaster tournament between Nigel Short and Ivan Cheparinov:

In my next article in this series I'll take a look at typical salaries of SC2 professionals compared to chess grandmasters. Any SC2 GMs or chess professionals willing to offer their thoughts on this are welcome to contact me.
I will also talk a little bit more about the theory behind formulating plans in any given position.

Episode III - Keeping up with the Kardashians

When former World Chess Champion Boris Spassky was asked in an interview whether he preferred chess or sex, he famously replied “depends on the position”.

A few days ago I was checking some chess news websites, just minding my own business, when suddenly I saw something that almost made me choke on my coffee:

Kim Kardashian wants to learn chess. Have we really sunk this low? I guess she got interested in chess when she heard that mating is the objective of the game…

So now the question is: Can Pyre keep up with Kim Kardashian? Of course he can. It may or may not seem that way to him, but over the past month or so I have already seen him make significant progress. Some of his recent thoughts and analyses are evidence of a much better understanding of the game compared to, say, 4 weeks ago.

[b]The ugly truth is that improvement in chess comes slower than improvement in SC2[/b]. I think Pyre once mentioned that he started in Gold League and became a Grandmaster within a few months.  Unless you are a prodigy, making comparable improvements in chess takes much longer.  One of the main reasons is I think mechanics. Even if you can’t play SC2 any “better”, you can always play “faster”. In chess, if you want to play BETTER, you need to play BETTER.

I think one of the reasons why chess is so fascinating to Pyre is that it must be so much easier for him to improve his chess compared to SC2. He already plays SC2 at a very high level, and for him it must be much harder to get the joy of getting better in SC2 compared to chess.
In my experience though I enjoy being good at a game very much, I enjoy getting better at a game even more.

Pyre recently already started showing initial success at offline/over-the-board tournaments. In my next article I’ll probably showcase one of this recent games to highlight some of his improvements.
And I’m gonna make sure he’ll always be better than Kim Kardashian…

Pattern-Recognition:
The ability to recognize recurring patterns is an important skill of strong chess players. A significant part of my decision making in a chess game is based on intuition and experience rather than calculation and analysis.

For example, in one of my recent games I reached the following position:

I had just played Rook f8-h8 to counter White’s lethal threat Queen e3-h6. Generally speaking my position is a mess, White has a very strong attack and his Knights have two excellent squares on f6 and g5. Whether White’s position is objectively winning is unclear, but from a practical point of view his position is much easier to play than mine.
Now White committed a terrible blunder and played King e1-e2??, undoubtedly to activate his rook on a1. However, after my devastating response Bishop b7-a6 check the game is quickly over because to counter the check White has to either sacrifice his Queen on d3, or move his back on to the 1st rank, which disconnects the rooks again, and after I take on h1 it’s checkmate.

A few days later, I reached the following position in another game:

My opponent’s position is clearly better than mine: he has launched a very strong attack against my King. His Bishops and his Queen are targeting my king side, I was already forced to weaken my pawn shield by playing Pawn g2-g3. Black has just played Pawn h7-h5 with the intention to play h5-h4 to undermine my pawn shield even further and to open the h-file for his Rook.
To counter these very serious threats I had just played Rook a1-c1 to open the c-file, maybe in conjunction with Knight c3-b5 in order to force Black’s Queen off the critical diagonal b8-h2.
My opponent completely mishandled the position and a few moves later we reached the following position:

I don’t need to analyze this position in great detail for you. Suffice it to say that my next very strong move Bishop b2-a3 prompted Black to erroneously sacrifice his Queen to counter the check. Of course he lost the game soon after.

The lesson from these two examples is that I immediately recognized an important pattern in both positions: I had a fianchettoed queen side Bishop, and my opponent’s King was forced to come forward to e2 (or e7).  In these kinds of position I know that the Bishop check on a3 or a6 is usually lethal or at least very unpleasant.

I know this pattern, and when it occurs, I don’t have to calculate much because I’m already familiar with the implications. This also means that I never “overlook” a move like Bishop a3: while beginners have to “find” moves like Bishop a3, I already “know” it’s there and can immediately analyze its consequences when this pattern occurs in a game.

This also distinguishes a chess Grandmaster from a strong amateur player like me. A Grandmaster’s knowledge of typical patters greatly exceeds mine, and in many positions a Grandmaster simply “knows” what to do while I have to think about it.

Retroanalysis:

I want to finish this article with a little retroanalytical problem. Typical chess problems ask you to solve questions like “Find Mate in 3” or “How does White win a piece?” Retroanalysis seeks to answer questions about previous events of a chess game. To solve such problems, you don’t have to be a strong player. Basic logic is all you need. For example, in the diagram below the question is

Has at any point a pawn been promoted in this game? The answer to this seemingly impossible question is surprisingly simple. I’ll post it here in my next article. Enjoy~

Episode II - Initial Observations and Insights

This is the second in a series of articles about my efforts to teach chess to Pyre, a high-ranking North-American SC2 Grandmaster

I’m now about 3 weeks into my project to teach chess to SC2 Grandmaster Pyre.

As I described in the first article in this series, my initial task was to figure out how much he already knows about the game. To this end we’ve played a number of games and I’ve also observed some of his games against players at his level.
My initial assessment of his skills is this:
For someone who picked up chess fairly recently, he has a pretty good understanding of beginner level strategies and ideas. At the same time his knowledge of tactics is limited and as a result most of his losses are due to losing material to standard tactics such as forks and pins. This is by no means unusual. In fact it’s quite normal and the reason why in our sessions I mainly focus on tactical themes. I noticed that Pyre has quite a good understanding of what needs to be done once I've explained a position to him, but he's sometimes lost when he tries to make sense of a position on his own. That, too, is perfectly normal, and I have no doubt that over time he'll develop his "game sense" to know what needs to be done. It's a combination of experience and intuition, and it takes a while to acquire.

One of the very common tactical themes we discussed so far is “deflection”. The basic idea is to deflect one of the opponent’s key pieces – usually through sacrifice or check – so that it can no longer fulfill the task assigned to it. It so happened that in one of my own recent games on chess.com a very interesting example of this came up (you may have to click on the diagram and enlarge it):

I was White, and I had sacrificed an exchange in order to reach this position. My thoughts were kind of like this:
- Black’s King is still in the center and kind of naked
- I have a rook on the open f-file
- My Queen is threatening to take on e6
- My knight can easily join the attack via f3 and then either to e5 or f5
- Other than being an exchange up on me, Black has no immediate threats

I wanted to take on e6 with my Queen, but realized that after Black plays Queen to e7 in response, I have no further checks and no way to continue the attack.  But still Queen takes on e6 is obviously the way to go, so I had to find a way to distract Black’s Queen temporarily. And here I brilliantly (though I say so myself…) found the move Pawn d4 takes c5. This move activates my previously useless Bishop on b2 and pins the Black Queen to the rook on h8, thereby inviting the Queen to take my Bishop. And that’s what Black did, but after Queen takes Bishop, I take on e6, followed by Rook to f7, and Black has no defense against checkmate. A nice little example of how powerful the deflection of a defending piece can be.

It has to be said though that Black, instead of taking my Bishop, could have and should have played Pawn to e5 to close the dangerous diagonal. However, this move is not so easy to see as evidenced by the fact that both I and my opponent (both of us pretty strong players) overlooked this move during the game. I only discovered it after I spent some time analyzing the position after the game was over.

In any case, this game was another important example that tactics really are the “mechanics” of chess, and that one must have a good understanding of chess tactics in order to become a good player.  Also, “Deflection” is closely related to the idea of “Decoy”, which is a maneuver I’ll introduce to Pyre in our next session.

I can’t emphasize enough how important it is as a beginner to study chess tactics. Doing just one or two chess puzzles a day can make a really big difference.
A 1500 player doesn’t really play “better” chess than a 1000-1100 player like Pyre, he just makes fewer tactical mistakes.
The same holds true for me, too. I’m a 2100 player, and most of my games are won and lost on tactics. Bottom line: practicing tactics is like taking the Elovator…

But of course we don’t just do tactics. We are also looking at famous chess games. So far I’ve shown Pyre 2 classics:

Nigel Short – Jan Timman, Tilburg 1991
Anatoly Karpov – Victor Korchnoi, FIDE Candidates Final 1974

I picked these games not only because they are brilliant achievements by the players and really fun to go through, but more importantly because these games are based on straightforward strategic plans and feature many of the tactical patterns we have already discussed.

One of the next games I’d like to show him is one of Capablanca’s positional masterpieces as an illustration that one doesn’t always have to launch an all-out attack in order to win the game.

Tactics in Chess = Mechanics in SC2?
I’m not trying to say tactics in chess and mechanics in SC2 are the same thing, but I think it’s an interesting comparison. Without solid tactics, one will never be a good chess player because one will keep losing too much material needlessly. Tactics are the foundations upon which a good player executes his strategies and plans.
Similarly, in SC2, strategies and build orders are useless if one doesn’t have the mechanics to execute them efficiently.

Transferable Skills?
Pyre is undoubtedly a very strong SC2 player.  But does that make it easier for him to learn chess? And are chess players predestined to become strong SC2 players? I don’t think so. Though I think it is fair to say that if one likes strategy games in general, it wouldn’t be unusual to enjoy both games, as different as they may be.

Chess Software and Videos
So far I’m not introducing chess software in our sessions because I think this would be a great disservice to Pyre. That’s like giving kids in first grade math a calculator.
I believe it is essential – especially for beginners – that one reaches one’s own conclusions as erroneous as many of them may be in the beginning. If you use chess engines too early in your development you’ll distrust your own judgment and never build up the confidence necessary to make it through complex calculations.
I also have mixed feelings about watching chess videos. Of course they are entertaining and do help to some extend. But at the end of the day it’s like watching Day9’s SC2 commentary. It’s fun, it’s instructive, but unless one actually plays SC2 and practices what he preaches, watching his videos alone won’t make one a better player.

Having said that, I think among all the material that is available on YouTube, Daniel King’s channel clearly stands out:

http://www.youtube.com/user/PowerPlayChess/

As much as I recommend Daniel King’s videos, it’s just no substitute for practice. Chess is fun, but there’s no denying that it also requires some work.

Feedback
Feedback and suggestions to my articles are highly welcome. Especially from people with experience in online coaching. I have a lot of experience in both coaching people at chess as well as being coached, but I've never done it online. I'd like to hear from people who have experience in online chess lessons.

I’ve been asked why I’m teaching Pyre for free when an experienced chess coach of my skill level typically charges about $40/hour.
The answer is quite simple. In my chess career I’ve already played hundreds of serious tournament games and literally thousands of blitz and bullet games. While I keep enjoying this, my marginal utility (yes, I have an econ degree among others) of PLAYING chess is somewhat decreasing. On the other hand, TEACHING a friend to get better at chess gives me more satisfaction than simply winning a few more blitz games. And when I pursue my hobbies, I have no financial interests. It kind of defeats the purpose.