The 14th world chess champion Vladimir Kramnik reflects on his remarkable career, telling David Cox about his championship battles with Garry Kasparov, Peter Leko, Veselin Topalov and Vishy Anand, and why Kramnik finally ran out of motivation for the game.
After more than two decades at the top, Vladimir Kramnik shocked the chess world earlier this year by announcing his retirement at the age of 43. A prodigy, and former student of Mikhail Botvinnik’s chess school, Kramnik went on to...
Jeffery Xiong qualified for the final of the Chess.com Junior Speed Chess Championship on Thursday as he beat Parham Maghsoodloo 14.5-10.5 in their semifinal match. Xiong will face either Wei Yi or Alireza Firouzja for the title.
The first semifinal was a very close match in both the 5+1 and 3+1 segments. Xiong ran away in the bullet, after a disconnection had disrupted Maghsoodloo's mindset. The Iranian GM was the slight favorite beforehand, but eventually had to acknowledge...
There is a well-known chess joke (or maybe not even a joke!) that it is much more difficult to sacrifice a pawn than a queen.
Indeed, in most queen sacrifices you get huge dividends right away, since it is difficult to imagine a player sacrificing his queen just to get (for example) a good square for his knight. Therefore, it is relatively easy to predict the outcome of many queen sacrifices, like the next one:
From the other side, most pawn sacrifices are done for positional gains and so it...
If you've followed the Tarrasch lessons so far, you know that it's a serious opening with many important variations. In this video, learn how to play the main line with the exchange of pawns on c5.
Whew.........I'm writing this as I just reached 1900 blitz on chess.com after a lot of ups and downs . I've been playing a lot of blitz lately, with the aim of reaching 2000 rating on chess.com, and this's almost become an addiction for me. I know I've been a blitz maniac this week, and hopefully, I can change! And, before I go any further, I would like you to have a look at my game vs. @GeorgMeier .
MY GAME AGAINST GM GEORG MEIER
Was I bad? I was worse
As you can see, I could've...
The semifinal matches commenced on day seven of the FIDE Grand Prix in Riga, Latvia. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov has one foot in the final as he beat Wesley So in a wild Catalan while Maxime Vachier-Lagrave vs. Alexander Grischuk started with a draw.
So has to win on demand as White while Grischuk will try to push Vachier-Lagrave in Friday's second classical game. After a grueling first three rounds, the players will have a rest day (or two) after these semifinal matches.
Mamedyarov vs So...
This month we are pleased to meet Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, known as MVL, the French number 1 and member of world top 5.
Chess.com France will follow closely his quest for the world title that will require being qualified for the next Candidates tournament. Thus, the next Grand Prix will be crucial. That's why we will watch it carefully on our channel. Jurmala Grand Prix (a seaside resort near Riga in Latvia) will take place from July 12 to 25, and our pair Vlad Tkachiev and Kevin Bordi will comment...
On Wednesday, the Ukrainian GM Stanislav Bogdanovich (@Padenie_Zvezd) and the French GM Marie Sebag (@Etoilegeniale) qualified for the 2019 FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss in Isle of Man.
The two grandmasters each defeated three other men and women who all earned their way to the qualifier with top performances in the four previous Chess.com Titled Tuesday events.
Bogdanovich had won the round-robin portion convincingly, scoring 5/5 after starting with a loss to the runner-up, the Vietnamese...
What is pawn structure?
From my online glossary, I define it as “the positioning of the whole pawn mass. Also referred to as the pawn skeleton. This positioning of the pawns is what usually dictates the types of plans available in a given position due to open files, space, pawn weaknesses, etc.”
In my previous article (Learning Basic Pawn Structures), I showed how important (and fairly easy) it is to use pawns. Here I will give you structures that are more complex. However, whether...
