David Smerdon is an Australian chess grandmaster and economist. He is the second highest ranked chess player of Australia. Smerdon has played for the Australian team in the Chess Olympiad since 2004. He is now a lecturer at the University of Queensland, with areas of research in Applied Economics; Economic Development and Growth; Experimental, Behavioural, and Evolutionary Methods.
5/4/2019 – Australian Grandmaster and Ph.D. in Economics DAVID SMERDON recently published a thorough analysis regarding how female participation rates differ across the world. The results are surprising: countries that rank higher in gender equality do not have a higher rate of female participation — quite the opposite, actually! The author suggests some hypotheses to explain this phenomenon. A must read. | Pictured: Judit and Sofia Polgar in 2017. | Photo: Alina l'Ami
8/21/2018 – Australian Grandmaster DAVID SMERDON is semi-retired from chess after getting married, returning to his hometown of Brisbane to take up a professorship in the School of Economics at the University of Queensland. He still blogs occasionally and recently published a fascinating two-part story about a trip to Kenya, which we bring you with kind permission of the author. | Pictured: Chess players from Alliance Girls’ High School, Nairobi, who sometimes play against their brother school, and they enjoy playing — and beating — the boys. | Photos: DavidSmerdon.com
12/22/2017 – Other chess reviewers have been at best dismissal and at worst harshly critical of The Secret of Chess, by Lyudmil Tsvetkov. However, according to GM David Smerdon, this book is a one of a kind work that legitimately has the potential to revolutionise how we think about chess. | Photo: Smerdon at the Tromsø Chess Olympiad, by Andreas Kontokanis CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
In this insightful video course, Grandmaster David Navara shares practical advice on when to calculate deeply in a position — and just as importantly, when not to.
The Trompowsky is especially suited for faster time controls as you don‘t have to memorise endless lines of theory, and you push your opponent out of their comfort zone after your second move.
Trompowsky Powerbook 2025 is based on 53,000 computer games from the engine room of playchess.com as well as 49,000 games from Mega and correspondence chess.
Trompowsky Powerbase 2025 is a database and contains a total of 8727 games from Mega 2025 and the Correspondence Database 2024, of which 316 are annotated.
2025 European Championship with a German double victory and analyses by Bluebaum, Svane, Rodshtein, Yuffa, Navara and many more. Opening videos by Engel, King and Marin. Training sections “The Fortress”, “The Trap” and “Fundamental Endgame Knowledge" etc.
In this insightful video course, Grandmaster David Navara shares practical advice on when to calculate deeply in a position — and just as importantly, when not to.
The Trompowsky is especially suited for faster time controls as you don‘t have to memorise endless lines of theory, and you push your opponent out of their comfort zone after your second move.
Trompowsky Powerbook 2025 is based on 53,000 computer games from the engine room of playchess.com as well as 49,000 games from Mega and correspondence chess.
Trompowsky Powerbase 2025 is a database and contains a total of 8727 games from Mega 2025 and the Correspondence Database 2024, of which 316 are annotated.
2025 European Championship with a German double victory and analyses by Bluebaum, Svane, Rodshtein, Yuffa, Navara and many more. Opening videos by Engel, King and Marin. Training sections “The Fortress”, “The Trap” and “Fundamental Endgame Knowledge" etc.
Powerbook based on more than 618 000 games in which White already sidesteps the main variations of the Sicilian on move 2.
€9.90
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