Originally published at: https://killerchesstraining.com/2026/09/01/setumadhav-yellumahanthi-scores-his-maiden-im-norm/
Dear Friends,
We will have an online camp between the 24th and the 27th of September. It will be held by GM Renier Castellanos, who will explore the games of José Raúl Capablanca and his enormous influence on positional play.
Capablanca is often remembered as the great simplifier and endgame master, but his greatest strength was arguably his extraordinary positional understanding. His famous exchanges and effortless endgames were often the result of brilliant piece play, accurate evaluation and a deep understanding of strategy.
Training will start every day at 5 PM UK time and will include three sessions of 1 hour each. There will be two 15 minutes breaks between sessions. More details about the camp can be found here.
New and renewed yearly members between the 26th of June and the 24th of September will receive this camp for free, as a welcome gift. Everyone else who would like to take part in the camp will need to purchase the camp in our shop. The price for participating is €148 for existing members of Killer Chess Training and €297 for everyone else (includes a month’s complimentary membership of the academy).
Click here to become a yearly member and get this camp for free or here to purchase the camp.
Markus, a former member of the academy, is organizing an IM norm Round-Robin tournament in Tallinn, Estonia, in November. If anyone is interested, please contact him for more details and a special discount for KCT members. You can find the current list of registered players, as well as Markus’ contact details here.
We received awesome news from academy member Setumadhav Yellumahanthi, who scored his maiden IM norm at the Kanizsa Open! He needed a win in the last round, and he didn’t fail to deliver – he defeated GM Wan Yunguo from China, rated 2507, earning his first classical win against a GM. He finished the tournament with 5.5 points out of 9 rounds, a 2479 rating performance, and a gain of 69 rating points. Check out his tournament performance here.
He has been studying hard over the past few months, although he usually can’t attend the live classes due to tournament travel and time zone differences. Instead, he has been watching the class recordings and making full use of all the available material to improve his chess. Setumadhav’s performance is a great example of how much progress you can make through consistent work, even when you’re unable to attend the live classes. Big congratulations to him!
Eli and Szymon both gained some rating points in Sants Open. They even faced each other in round 6, with Eli coming out on top in their Killer showdown.
Miguel is doing well after 5 rounds in the Spanish Amateurs Championship. You can follow his games here.
The Spanish Team Championship – Primera Division is still underway in Linares. Renier is defending the 3rd board and Alejandro the 5th board for the Granada “SIDN-Civica-Nazaries-Trevenque” team, while Julen is playing on Board 4 for Andreu Paterna. Although the top spot has already been decided, both teams are still fighting for the second and final qualification spot. Follow them in the final round tomorrow, starting at 4:30 PM CET.
Brendan Lyons is playing in the European Senior 50+ Team Chess Championship in Crete. Good luck to the Irish team for the last rounds!
We know that many of you are busy playing. Let us know where you are, so we can follow and root for you!
Your friends from Killer Chess Training