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As I checked out the news items that chess.com offers, one game from the Spice Cup caught my attention. The opening featured a Maroczy-bind type of structure, which I play and therefore was interesting to me but what really was interesting was the... | Read More
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The game begins, and within a few moves your opponent pitches a pawn. It’s not considered the most correct gambit, and might even fall into the category of “cheesy”. But by taking the pawn, you are playing “his” game.... | 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 MOVE... | Read More
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Four years ago my wife Shelly and I were having our anniversary dinner at a restaurant in downtown Philadelphia. The meal was rather sumptuous, so afterwards we decided to take a walk. After we strolled a while Shelly made an unexpected suggestion... | Read More
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I bet that you are no longer surprised to learn that the Bulgarian team championship took place on the Black sea again. The differences are the names of the resorts that hosted the event and the dates. After two years in the north part (Albena) th... | Read More
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In the first two installments of this article we mostly discussed positions where a Rook was fighting against two minor pieces in an opening or a middle game. Today we will talk about endgames. The good thing is, unlike openings and middle g... | Read More
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There´s a lot to be said about this week´s target for a Player Profile interview.... What you probably don´t know is that he lives in a village with less than 200 people, he is a husband and a dedicated father of three ... | Read More
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"Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."- Mark Twain
I feel like this saying fits perfectly as the theme of many chess games. How many chess players are romantics at heart and go after a dr... | Read More
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One of the main questions on tonight's show involved "How much does X help my chess?" where X was Chess960, Correspondence Chess, or something else.
My first reaction is that everything that is "chess work" helps your chess, but the real question... | Read More
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Breaking down a passive fortification can be difficult, even when you have a large positional advantage. If you have seen my article “A Fatal Compulsion”, you know that one of the methods is to use Zugzwang – your opponent’... | Read More
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SEE FOR YOURSELF HOW AN SOS CAN SHOCK AND CONFUSE! Every month, the editor of the SOS Secrets of Opening Surprises book series (published by New In Chess), IM Jeroen Bosch, annotates a game which was recently played with an SOS-variation.
Visit t... | 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 MOVE... | Read More
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Analyzing your games is one of the main ways of improving in chess. During this procedure you will be able to pinpoint your typical mistakes, as well as weaknesses & strengths. Your games are your business card in the world of chess.
Each per... | Read More
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It is common knowledge that in openings, as a rule, it is not a good idea to give up two minor pieces for a Rook and a pawn. The explanation is very simple: there are not many open files for your 'extra' Rook to work on and therefore such a sacrif... | Read More
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Today's endgame is from Sao Paulo and features a fight between Caruana and Carlsen. Carlsen playing black captured the initiative in the late middlegame and tried many resources to capitalize on it. In the end with two consecutive mistakes he let ... | Read More
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There is a funny thing about chess: to succeed, you only need to be good at it. Up to a point, Fate can turn its back on you, but you can override it by simply playing really well. The upshot is that in the chess world, there are some great player... | 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 MOVE... | Read More
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In Part II I described a rather tough period for our team: we made three draws. This allowed China to take the lead by one match point. What could we hope for? Win all our matches, while China loses at least a point? This scenario was not very lik... | Read More
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I cannot even tell you how many times I had to discuss the subject of ' A Rook vs. Two Minor Pieces' with my students. Usually it starts in a position like this:
And I face the same problem again: how do I explain that the trade of a ... | Read More
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Even though today´s featured interview subject hasn´t played a serious game of chess in over a decade, he is an obvious choice for a presentation here on Chess.com. He is an International Master of chess and he has won the U... | Read More
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A blunder at the end of the game... is it an accident or something one can predict? Wang Hao had to defend against Gelfand for a large chunk of the game and at last equalized only to lose a move later. We will not try to do neuroscience here and e... | Read More
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At the end of today's show, one of my steady viewers asked if I should create a FAQ file at Chess.com so, if I kept getting the same questions, I could just refer the questioner to the file. My reply was "No, but I do get a lot of 'I am 1400. What... | Read More
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Last week we learned about miniatures – short games where one player heads home early. It is much more common for the player having white to win a miniature; and we normally imagine that miniatures are sharp, attacking games with a lot of ta... | Read More
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White had been trying to keep the position closed since he feared activating black’s two Bishops if he opened things up. The first and foremost question in any position should be, “Where is my play coming from? Which side of the boar... | Read More
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Round 5 was the last one before the first rest day. We were paired with the co-leader, France (8 match points). I had a free day. When everyone left the hotel, the Internet finally started working fine. I managed to watch a movie online and then w... | Read More