EP 303- Adult Improver Kyle Boddy- A Pioneer in Sports Analytics and Peak Performance on His Approach to Chess Improvement

The Adult Improver Series of Perpetual Chess returns with an insightful guest with a passion for openings and tournament chess. Kyle Boddy is the founder of an influential and successful baseball performance training company, Driveline Baseball., which started as a one-man operation, and now boasts 50+ employees and many professional athletes as clients. Having been introduced to chess as a kid, Kyle actually regained his interest in the game in recent years while working in a Major League Baseball clubhouse. In our conversation, Kyle discusses why he loves chess, and compares it to his other competitive interests of poker, Magic the Gathering, and of course, baseball. We also tackle questions such as: How does a sports data expert approach chess data? Why does he love openings? Why does he love tournaments? What does he do to promote chess in his community? This was a fun conversation with an innovative thinker. You can find timestamps and links to topics referenced below.

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0:00- Links -

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5:00- Kyle Boddy joins the pod and shares his unique chess origin story, which began in his childhood and gained steam when he started playing with a few well-known major league baseball players.

Mentioned: NY Times Article about NFL Players Playing Chess

7:30- Kyle’s favorite chess content creators

Mentioned: GM Daniel Naroditsky, IM John Bartholomew, IM Alex Banzea

10:00- How did Kyle learn to stop depending too much on the engine?

Mentioned: Kyle’s blog

12:00- What is Kyle’s chess study routine? What tournaments has he played?

Mentioned: IM Marc Esserman

15:30- What is Magic the Gathering?

Mentioned: FM Stanislav Cifka

18:00- Kyle’s approach to online chess

19:00- Perpetual Chess is brought to you in part by Aimchess.com. Aimchess’ algorithm reviews your games and gives you actionable advice on how to improve your game. Check it out for free, and if you choose to subscribe you can use the code Perpetual30 to save 30%.

Or use this link for the same discount:

https://aimchess.com/try?ref=benjohnson12

20:00- How does Kyle balance a desire to improve with just wanting to have fun?

Mentioned: Hanging Pawns YouTube

22:00- Is MLB star Joey Votto studying chess much?

23:00- Might Kyle be studying openings too much?

26:00- What openings does Kyle play? Why did he choose 1. D4?

31:00- Perpetual Chess is brought to you in part by Chessable.com. You can check out all of their latest offerings here:

https://www.chessable.com/courses/all/new/

32:00- If you are interested in getting free Chesskid.com premium memberships for any new school chess program you can email Ranae Bartlett at ranae at chesskid.com

34:00: Kyle discusses the community outreach he is doing in Seattle, WA.

38:00- As an innovator in data science, does Kyle see any innovations that could be made in the chess world?

Mentioned: Filter Openings for rating via the Lichess Analysis Board

44:00- Does Kyle read many chess books?

Mentioned: Mayhem in the Morra (also on Chessable)

46:00- What are Kyle’s long-term chess goals?

49:00- Kyle tried bullet chess to help him learn to make quicker decisions OTB, did it help?

53:00- How did Kyle develop strength as in endgames?

Mentioned: Endgame Bootcamp with IM John Bartholomew

55:00- Has Kyle traveled to any huge weekend Swiss tournaments yet?

Mentioned: Hikaru Nakamura on the Lex Fridman podcast, WIM Megan Lee, Larry Hedder

57:00- Patreon mailbag question: How does Kyle deal with “chess tilt”?