David Bronstein (1924-2006) was one of the best four players in the world from 1948 to 1958. He was one of the youngest Soviet players to be awarded the national master title. He was the winner of the first, and perhaps strongest, Inte...
It's rare to see four queens on the board at once and remain on the board until the game is over. But that's what happened in this French Defense game where International Master Bernard Zuckerman lost to National Master Louis Levy in...
John Peters was born in Boston, Massachusetts on February 10, 1951. He was champion of New England in 1971, 1974, and 1975. He was a USCF life master at the age of 22. He was Massachusetts State Champion in 1974 and 1975 ...
In 1914, Jose Capablanca travelled to South America for several exhibition games. In Buenos Aires, he played the best chess players in the city and won all his games. Here is a charming miniature in which Capa played the Four Knights D...
Reuben Fine (1914-1993), an American grandmaster, was among the top eight players in the world from the 1930s to early 1950s. Despite all his chess success, he never won the U.S. Championship and only one New York State Championship (1941).&...
In the Bogoljubow Variation of the Queen's Gambit Accepted (1.d4 d5 2.c4 dxc4 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 a6 5.e4), Black tries to defend his pawn structure after winning a pawn. But this usually leads to quick development for White. In this g...
Marlon Brando (1924-2004) was born on April 23, 1924 in Omaha, Nebraska. He grew up (1930-1938) in Libertyville and Evanston, Illinois, a town northwest of Chicago. He learned chess as a teenager and tried to teach his friend, W...
Jacques Mieses (1865-1954) was a German-born player who was awarded the Grandmaster title at the age of 85, in 1950. At the time, he was a naturalized British citizen, making him the first British chess grandmaster. In his early years,...
An endgame of Rook and Knight vs Rook and 2 Pawns should be a draw in most cases. Here is a game by two of the world's leading chess players of the 19th century, and both players missed better moves that could have won or drawn the game....
The Benko Gambit (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 3.d5 b5) has been around since the 1930s. In the USSR, it was called the Volga Gambit and plyed by Opocensky in the 1940s. Pal Benko started playing and analyzing it in the 1960s, and wrote his book, ...
The Leningrad (perhaps we should call it St Petersburg) variation of the NimzoIndian (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.Bg5) was a favorite of Boris Spassky (from Leningrad). It was also played by Alekhine,Reti, and Korchnoi. This game, fro...
The Giuoco Piano (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5) means "Quiet Game." Up until the 19th century, the term applied to any opening that was not a Gambit. Here is a game that is certainly not a quiet game. White sacs his Rook...
Pal Benko is famous for his chess compositions. He is also a strong grandmaster. Here is one of his own games in which his endgame was voted as the best in the tournament. Benko has the more active Bishop against a cornered Knigh...
Akiba Rubinstein (1882-1961) was one of the world's top 5 players from 1907 to 1922. Before World War I, he challenged Lasker for the world championship title, but negotiations fell through. After World War I, he challenged Capabla...
The move 1.b3 is known as Larsen's Opening, or sometimes called the Nimzo-Larsen Opening. That's because Aron Nimzovich played it through transpostion. He would play 1.Nf3, then 2.b3. Here is an example of one of his earl...
Here is an interesting endgame with Rook, Knight, and Pawn vs Rook and 2 Pawns. It was won by Yugoslav Grandmaster Boris Ivkov. the winner of the first World Junior Championship in 1951. He won the championship of Yugoslavia in 1958, 1...
Here is a classical endgame between Kasparov and Karpov. It's from the 6th game of the marathon world championship match in 1984-85 where 48 games were played before the match was called off. The 6th game was considered the most dr...
Wilhelm Steinitz (1836-1900) was world champion from 1886 to 1894. In 1862, he played in his first international tournament in London, which was the first British Chess Federation Congress. Steinitz took 6th place. The event was ...
Saviely Tartakower (1887-1956) was one of the top 10 players in the world in the 1920s and 1930s. He was a Jew of Austrian and Polish parentage who lived in Russia, went to school in Switzerland, moved to Vienna, became a German master, serv...
The Benoni Defense, 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5, can be a good choice for Black if he likes a crampled game for awhile. Ben-Oni is Hebrew for child of my sorrow. In this game, Black was sorry he played this opening, as White sacrificed on the kin...
The Keres Attack in the Sicilian Defense, 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 d6 6.g4!?, is an aggresive opening for White. There were a few correspondence games with this opening in 1900, but it was Paul Keres who first employ...
Michael Adams of England, born in 1971, became one of the strongest players in the world. His father taught him the game of chess at the age of 6. His father had intended to teach him checkers, but Michael wanted to play the game with ...
Former world champion Anatoly Karpov, born in 1951, started playing chess at age 4, and joined the Zlatoust Pioneer's Palace around age 9. There were many endgames in his early games, and here is one example. Both sides missed chan...
Here is a nice game where Black declines the King's Gambit. Chigorin, playing the King's Gambit as White, finds a nice combination with a Rook sacrifice to force the win. Chigorin never feared the King's Gambit. This ...
