Since Bobby Fischer won the world title in 1972, many have referred to him as the best chess player who ever lived. But after Garry Kasparov became the youngest world champion ever at the age of 22, the ‘Best Ever’ designation gr...
This blog is inspired by Ambrose Bierce’s 1911 book The Devil’s Dictionary, an example from which is the following.Christian: One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.For more of...
In 1932 Max and David Fleischer created the first chess cartoon with the Betty Boop classic, “Chess-Nuts”. In the course of 6 minutes and 20 seconds we witness not only a fanciful chess game but also bowling, football, boxing, up...
It is a startling truth, but there is only one thing that separates you and me from a grandmaster. The GM can select the best of 5 candidate moves more often than can we. To the extent that we can close that gap we will inch closer to ...
In a story that hit the newswires this week, it seems that Leonardo da Vinci may have created some illustrations (one is shown here) for a Latin manuscript of chess puzzles written around 1500 entitled “Of the Game of Chess”. (Ex...
If you are like me and have an appreciation of the mental, as well as the martial arts, then you are in luck. If you have ever been frustrated to the point of anger because your opponent forked you, you are also in luck. Become a...
The knight is a forking monster. (Be careful who is standing nearby if you say this out loud.) To master this particular ability of the knight you must thoroughly understand the knight’s manner of movement. There are variou...
Here are some member-submitted combinations that are not only instructive, but which also illustrate why chess is artful beauty. In a recent blog, I asked members to submit games which they won through a deliberate sacrifice of material.&nbs...
[Please disregard this blog now. I have already posted the brilliancies that were sent in. -KG] This is a reminder about my previous post regarding the Brilliancies Project. Send me your games that illustrate your best combinations, pe...
Not long ago I went into a coffee shop and saw a couple playing chess. My chess addiction winning over my caffeine addiction, I sauntered over to watch the game a bit, which was in its ending throes. The three of us were staring int...
"Chess is 99% tactics", said Richard Teichmann (pictured here). And combinations are the soul of tactics. Silman defines a combination in his marvelous text How to Reassess Your Chess where he writes, "A combination is a sacri...
Since Bobby Fischer died on January 17 much has been written about him because much was accomplished by his genius. One of his legacies is a chess variant called “Fischer Random Chess” (FRC), which he created in 1996. ...
I have witnessed first-hand two activities which I consider to be humanly impossible, and yet there are a few rare individuals who do possess these supernatural abilities. One of them is real-time spoken translation of languages. The o...
In Part 1 of this blog, I explained how a chess program plays the opening, and I also outlined the Minimax procedure that is used to play the middle game. This blog continues the discussion by revealing the primary difficulty faced by a comp...
Introduction: Trees and Master Forest RangersI assume that you are not a computer geek, or you would probably already know how your computer chess program works and would therefore not be reading this. Since you are not a geek, I will ...
In 1915 there was purportedly a very odd game played in Moscow between Alekhine and an unknown opponent in which a position was reached where there were no less than 5 ladies on the board. This would be remarkable were it not for the fact th...
In a previous blog, I wrote about my favorite chess sites, and today I wanted to share some of the free audio-visual chess resources that I have come across on the web. AudioLet’s begin with a collection of radio interviews that Bobby Fische...
The unfortunate, but universal truth is that we have all lost games by blundering. The reason for it is that we are human, mortal and fallible, as the great writers since Sophocles have well documented. Thus, when we see the games by m...
[Note added on Jan 15, 2007: Max Wootton (mxdplay4 here on chess.com) has discovered some errors in my calculations. We corresponded on this topic, but never quite determined the true result. If I feel ambitious, I will resume the work to sati...
The term “Six Sigma” comes from statistical quality control and refers to a quality process so robust that you can manufacture goods with only 3.4 defects per million, which is six standard deviations (sigma) from the average in a &lsq...
Chess is a game of small advantages and large numbers. For example, according to the U.S. Census Bureau population clock (http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/popclockworld.html) there were 6,637,552,653 people living on the earth on December 14, 2...
Every beginning chess player who aspires to become better has asked this question. The author of one introductory openings book that I read suggests that you find an opening that suits your style, and learn that. But my immediate react...
