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Today we will wrap up our series on endgames from the US Championship. Here is a selection of examples where your task is to find the best plan. The topics vary but include converting an advantage, defense, creating and attacking a second weakness... | Read More
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Once when I was at a tournament in Chicago, I was sitting in a restaurant in the hotel, analyzing chess with somebody. A waiter came over and said “Uh, excuse me fellas, but there is no gaming allowed in the restaurant area.” I guess he figure... | Read More
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Today, possibly 90% of chess is played on the internet and possibly 90% of the chess games on the internet are played at fast time controls. Classical chess is still the Gold Standard, but fast games seem to be coin of the realm.
... | Read More
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IMPORTANT: [At the end of the puzzles, you should click MOVE LIST so you can see my instructive notes and variations. If you are having trouble solving a problem, just click SOLUTION, and then MOVE LIST. Even if you solve everything, DO click MO... | Read More
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Earlier this year, I decided to take part in one of the strongest chess competitions in my country, the 34th International Open Bulgarian Chess Championship “Georgi Tringov Memorial.” This was a tough tournament which happened to ... | Read More
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This is a rather intriguing game. First of all, both players appear to miss a three-fold repetition in the middlegame (or they both choose to ignore it). The ending is quite crazy. Both players rush to queen their pawns, and at one point, there ar... | Read More
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[previous article]
Today's article is dedicated to the endgame Ramirez - Robson from the US Championship. This is the battle between two players who won the prestigious Samford Fellowship - Robson at the age of 14 in 2009 and Ramirez this year. T... | Read More
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Have you ever seen one of those situations – let’s say on National Geographic or some other nature show – where a group of hyenas are trying to steal a lion’s fresh kill? One hyena jumps in and the lion bats him away, but meanwhile another... | Read More
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No time to study opening theory? Shock your opponent with an SOS! With an SOS you deviate early (usually before move 6!) from regular lines in mainstream openings. So you will reach positions you have actually studied without having memorized tons... | Read More
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IMPORTANT: [At the end of the puzzles, you should click MOVE LIST so you can see my instructive notes and variations. If you are having trouble solving a problem, just click SOLUTION, and then MOVE LIST. Even if you solve everything, DO click MO... | Read More
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I have a student with whom I work mainly on openings. He is a decent player, has all the IM norms, and understands the game well from a positional and tactical point of view. He knows a lot, and has read a lot of books. And still, while analyzing,... | Read More
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Today we'll talk about a relatively common chess idea known as a "Rook Lift". When you do a Rook Lift, a Rook usually moves from the initial position to the third rank (or sixth rank for Black) and then jumps to the opposite side of the board almo... | Read More
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Name: Evan Ju Title: Fide Master (FM) &nbs... | Read More
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When I first started playing chess, my favorite strategy was to wait until my opponent castles, and then castle on the opposite side and start a pawn storm! It was exactly what I liked about chess. This way of playing would promise a very ex... | Read More
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Today we will continue with the article series on endgames from the US Championship. The topic of today's article is the endgame from Shulman - Robson. Usually, I prefer to look at more than one endgame at a time but this endgame proved so full wi... | Read More
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The city of Mar Del Plata is located on the coast of the Atlantic – its name means “Sea of Silver”. It is one of Argentina’s biggest fishing ports.
One alluring thing about chess, for those just beginning, is the names of the openings. Fa... | Read More
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BREAKING A WELL-KNOWN RULE
luke-duke (1206) - bagpiper123456 (1198), chess.com (14 days per move), 2012
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6
Here White usually plays 4.Ba4, keeping the tension. However, the Exchange Variation (4.Bxc6) also had/has many ... | Read More
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As the old chess legend goes, in one of his games GM Alexander Ivanov played Nf3-g5 and after his opponent answered with h7-h6, Alexander realized that the only reasonable move he had was Ng5-f3. After pondering for a while, GM Ivanov said "Russia... | Read More
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By IA Eric Schiller
I propose a new time control to speed up games while preserving quality. Most games these days don’t require time in the prepared portions of openings or in technical positions in endgames. One minute per move is enough. Howe... | Read More
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Here is another game that is full of pins. Radjabov uses several of them in succession around his twenty-fifth move. They are quite unexpected, and his opponent has no way to avoid losing his queen. The rest, as they say, is a matter of technique ... | Read More
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Today we will continue our look at interesting endgames from the recently-concluded U.S. Championship.
I especially like the next example because it is almost like an endgame study.
Onischuk is famous for his exchange sacrifices resulting in fa... | Read More
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Grandmaster Lev Polugaevsky was a complicated chess player. Although – ironically – his name means “lion”, it has been said that he was a very timid kind of guy, and that this was the reason he was never able to directly compete for the wo... | Read More
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THE PROS & CONS OF SICILIAN NAJDORF MEGA-THEORY
[As you can see, I did something a bit different this week. Other than the fact that I like to keep people guessing (you never know if you’ll get tactics, Tiny Tim, positional lessons, or... | Read More
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Mikhail Tal once described a typical case in his book. In 1959, at the Candidates Tournament (which was won by him, and which gave him the right to challenge the world champion at the time Mikhail Botvinnik) Tal was leading by 2.5 points ahead of ... | Read More
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Last week we analyzed games where Anatoly Karpov suffered because his opponents used the dynamic power of their "criminals" and with a timely push of their central pawns completely destroyed Karpov's position (http://www.chess.com/article/view/smo... | Read More