One of the events of the Botvinnik Memorial held recently is a senior tournament. There were ten players in a round robin. Viktor Korchnoi came in clear first with 5 wins and 4 draws. The particpants are listed with their ratings, scores, and birt...
In 1985, Anatoly Karpov was challenged by Garry Kasparov in their first championship match with a fixed number of games. Instead of an unlimited match, which was stopped when they played the year before, there would be only 24 games. In this match...
Akiba Rubinstein (1882-1961) was a Polish Jew born when Russia ruled most of Poland. He learned chess at the age of 16, which is now considered too late. Within five years, he gave up his studies to become a rabbi to play chess. It took him anothe...
The long competition between the world champions Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov reached game number 162 in round ten at Linares in 1993. Karpov as White opposed Kasparov’s King’s Indian Defense with the Saemisch Variation. In order to not face ...
The games of the final Candidates match of 1977 between Viktor Korchnoi and Boris Spassky in which the positional lines of the French Defense, Winawer Variation were played will be shown. These are the games without 7.Qg4. Instead 7.a4 or 7.Nf3 we...
The final match of the Candidates in 1977 was between Viktor Korchnoi and former World Champion Boris Spassky. Korchnoi won 10.5-7.5. Two-thirds of Korchnoi’s three point lead came from the French Defense, which he used in two-thirds of his games ...
Tigran V. Petrosian (pictured) lost the World Championship to Boris Spassky in 1969. It was Petrosian’s second defense to the same challenger. A brief opening review shows that the plus two margin of victory for Spassky came with the white pieces....
Winning the World Championship was no walk in the park when Boris Spassky challenged Tigran Petrosian. Spassky earned the opportunity to meet Petrosian in 1966 in a 24 game match which required the challenger to be ahead after 24 games. A score o...
The great rivalry between Boris Spassky and Viktor Korchnoi had turned in Korchnoi’s favor. Halfway through their Candidates match to determine which one would face Anatoly Karpov for his title, Korchnoi was five points ahead. After ten games, Kor...
Viktor Korchnoi was born March 23, 1931 in Leningrad, USSR. He was a candidate for the World Championship ten times from 1962-1991. He won the USSR Championship four times from 1960-1970. Korchnoi never won the world title, but has been considered...
Boris Spassky became the challenger for the World Championship held by Tigran Petrosian after a successful campaign in which he defeated Keres, Geller, and Tal in Candidates Matches. The title match was held in 1966 and resulted in Petrosian winni...
Paul Keres and Boris Spassky met in the quarterfinals of the Candidates’ Matches in 1965. It was to be the last campaign Keres made to reach the world championship. For Spassky, it was his first drive that achieved a match with the world champion,...
At the tournament in Stockholm held in 1966-67, Paul Keres finished in clear first place with a score of 7/9. In doing so, he produced a number of fine games. The following example of his style and talent shows his handling of the white pieces aga...
Alisa Maric and Mirjana Maric were born January 10, 1970 in New York. They moved to Belgrade and each became a Woman Grandmaster. In addition, Alisa became an International Master. Alisa has been a candidate for the Women’s World Championship. She...
In 1951, David Bronstein was the challenger seeking Mikhail Botvinnik's title as World Champion. The rules provided for a match of 24 games with the champion retaining the title with a score of 12-12 or better. In game 21, Bronstein had the black ...
In my last article, http://www.chess.com/article/view/karpov-beliavsky-tilburg-1986, Alexander Beliavsky played the black side of the Exchange Variation against Anatoly Karpov. This time, Beliavsky plays the white side against another top player, ...
Alexander Beliavsky was born December 17, 1953 in Lviv, Ukraine. He won the World Junior Championship in 1973 and the USSR Championship in 1974, 1980, 1987, and 1990. In 1983, Beliavsky lost to Garry Kasparov in a quarterfinal Candidates match. He...
Paul Keres (1916-1975) was a great player from Estonia. He was one of the world’s leading players from the 1930s to the 1960s. Keres won the AVRO tournament in 1938 and became the leading challenger to World Champion Alexander Alekhine, but a matc...
David Bronstein (1924-2006) earned his international grandmaster title in 1950, the same year that Ljubomir Ljubojevic was born. In 1951, Bronstein lost his challenge for the World Championship by scoring 12-12 against Mikhail Botvinnik. In 1970 L...
Robert James Fischer (1943-2008) won the world championship in 1972 from Boris Spassky and stopped competing, except for a match with Spassky twenty years later. He became a legend and is considered by some to be the greatest chess player ever. O...
The tournament at Linares in 2002 was called a Super GM event. There were seven players in a double round robin playing twelve games. The results were: Kasparov 8, Ponomariov 6.5, Ivanchuk 6, Anand 6, Adams 6, Vallejo Pons 5, and Shirov 4.5.Kaspar...
Geza Maroczy (March 3, 1870-May 29, 1951) was a Hungarian grandmaster who was one of the world’s top players in the early twentieth century. His opponent in the game shown is Georg Marco (November 29, 1863-August 29, 1923), who was a Romanian w...
Arturo Pomar Salamanca (pictured) was born September 1, 1931 in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. At the age of 11 he won the championship of the Balearic Islands. He was able to draw a game at age 13 with his teacher, Alexander Alekhine. He was the yo...
The tournament organized by the Dutch radio company, A.V.R.O., in 1938 is still considered one of the very strongest ever held. Its purpose was to find a challenger for the World Champion, Alexander Alekhine. The winner was to be that challenger. ...
A sideline of the Queen’s Gambit Declined is arrived at by 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5 c5. This is not the Tarrasch Defense in which Black plays 3...c5. It is sometimes called the Pseudo-Tarrasch. White has options, but no need, to avoid 5.cx...