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Hello, everyone, and welcome back to perpetual chess.

We have the very first guest returning, although he's been back a bunch of times, but somehow it's been some years since his last visit.

And we were going to introduce him in a second, but first I'm going to quiz him.

So I wanted to thank,

as always, our sponsors, jessable.com. So some of you may have heard my interview with Grandmaster Jan Gustafsson about the supposedly real Austrian defense against 1D4. Jan is sticking with

this story. Even after that interview, Greg started messaging him with me on the message about,

hey, can an I.M actually play this opening? Is it not totally bogus? And Greg, what did he say?

Well, first of all, what did Young say in the podcast about the opening? He said it's not totally bogus.

You know, these days you can play anything. Computers are very strong. It's true. So you probably, it's probably playable. You just have to know some. I haven't looked at it at all. I'm telling you what it probably is. It's probably very playable opening. But there's some very slightly worse end games at the end of it where the engines like 0.15 or white and you know if you know some

accurate moves you're going to draw. But you know the thing is I already play an opening looks good. Like how many good openings do you need? Like against D4, there's probably like different things you can play that are. I might look at it someday because it's like prize weapon. I'm sure it's not. It's not as popular as other openings.

Napa more I played it recently, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And in fact, Greg, your brand is, I'm sure it's not as popular as other openings. Nothing more I played it recently, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And in fact, Greg, your brand is one of our interviews you talked about how you just should play good openings and spend your whole life learning them. And I quoted you in my book, I believe, saying that. So anyway, we're going to formally introduce Greg now, but thanks to Chespo for supporting the pod. and if you sign up for Chesa Poo Pro, be sure to use the link in the description.

So Greg Shahadi, in addition to the distinction of being the original perpetual chess guest, is also one of my oldest friends in chess, but more importantly, quite accomplished as a player, three-time national champion, as a scholastic player. He's a trainer. He's founder of the U.S. chess school. So in previous interviews, he's talked about teaching a young Hans Nieman and Christopher Yu and basically all the

Sam Shanklin. His name all the troublemakers. A wonder liang. Yeah, good. Yeah, no, no,

no misdeeds by a wonder Liang or Sam Shanklin and, yes, the list goes on.

So that's still going strong. He's also an organizer, founder of the U.S. Chess League, which had an amazing run and subsequently became the Pro Chess League. We miss it dearly.

But our friend is still involved in chess. He does not play OTB chess as far as I know.

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