After a long break from blogging due to a lot of work on other fronts, I am back with a small post about my weirdest chess experience, which happens to also be my most significant chess achievement so far. As regular readers of this blog know, I...
Hi all, As stated in this post last week, my new chess resolution is to do a double analysis, at least once a week. That is, first going through the game as slowly as possible without any computer. I want to take notes, make guesses of when the bl...
Hi all,After a long time in blogging and chess limbo, I am back with the first of a possible new series. Because work has been a bit demanding, I have put chess in the back of my mind during the last few months. Of course, I played a lot, but not ...
The chess game of old has been many things. Aristocratic, when players like Ruy López de Segura played with kings. Romantic, when Fisher took on the soviet juggernaut from the streets of Brooklyn. Futuristic even, when for the first time a ...
Hi all,I am back today with a small opinion piece inspired by a comment on one of my other posts. We were discussing tactics and @little_ernie mentioned his past love of mathematics, which got me thinking about the link between math and chess. I...
Hi all, One more small post before the end of my vacations to share a frustration I am sure most online players felt at least once. Let's start from the begining: some days, you will play bad chess. Maybe you are tired, maybe bored and playing...
Hi all, Back today with a post about tactics. As always, when I make recommendations to beginners, I need to state the usual caveats: I am no GM. I only share ideas and semi-wisdom I acquired through my chess journey over the past four yea...
Hi all, I am taking advantage of some vacation time to be a little bit more active, so I am back today with the third (and probably last) post following my little statistical experiment. If you didn't read the first or second installment, I us...
Hi all, I am back with a new post to celebrate my "top blogger" status (thanks chess.com) about endgames. I did an early post on tactics and another one on openings below 2000; it was time to talk about endgames. Before I start, I want to put ...
Hi all, I am back today with the second part of my little statistical analysis from chess.com's data, looking at popular openings per elo. Last time, I focused on the first moves by white, so today, I will look at the first response by white. ...
Hi all, I am back today with a somewhat different post where I analyze what openings are played by who and with what success rate on chess.com. Like a most avid chess player, I tend to notice patterns on openings while playing: "I feel like I a...
Hello all, Another small post today sharing one of my games with a dual purpose. First, it's a mini-celebration as this game put me above 2150 for the first time and second because the game was bad. Both my opponents and I made some huge and easi...
Back today, with a small post to present a cool game, I came across doing a "tactical toolbox" for the king's gambit (KG). It was played in the 1985 candidate tournament between the former world champion Boris Spassky (white) and Yasser Seirawan ...
The chess.com's drills are one of those things I like, and I don't do as often as I should. They are usually fun, challenging, instructive, and, perhaps most importantly, unrated. This last quality means that, for once, we can practice chess onli...
Today, I am idea hunting against the dreaded London openings. Before, I want to do two small parentheses: Parenthesis 1: As always, when I talk about openings, I will (selfishly) try to solve a weakness in my repertoire to illustrate my point. B...
Today I want to coin a little concept; the tactic fallacy. It's an idea that comes to my mind every time I see a comment of the kind: "at that elo, all you should study is tactics." I am sure most of you saw this idea at least once before: Whet...
First, let me apologize for the dumb thumbnail... As Mr. Wild once said, "I can resist everything except temptation." I am back today with a very small post about something that always makes me smile: cheaters. And more precisely, being accused o...
Back today with a new post for people who want to improve while having fun. For those of you who didn't read my original forum post, I started playing chess seriously 4 years ago with an elo of 1000 in blitz on my good days. A few days ago, I rea...
In my first post on this blog, I suggested ways to work on openings for non-master players. This morning I lost a game, and in the analysis, I realized it was quite one good to highlight a few of the main concepts I proposed, namely: how studyin...
A few days ago, I posted on the forum a little piece on my recent progress in elo and what advice I had to somebody who started the game and wished to improve. Two people in the comment suggested I could expand on it in a blog format, and I liked ...
