You have to admit, my dear readers, that the title of this article probably made you think that I was going to talk about GM Bobby Fischer's famous book for beginners. And you would be wrong! While this book is decent, with all due respect, there ...
Today we are going to discuss a common tactical idea that usually starts an immediate attack against your opponent's castled king. Here are the elements of this pattern: Your opponent castles to make their king safe They play h7-h6 (or h2-h3 ...
The title of this article probably sounds absolutely crazy to you since gasoline makes fires stronger. Yes, in real life it is absolutely impossible to put out a fire with gasoline, but here we are talking about the wonderful world of chess, where...
GM Hikaru Nakamura's qualification for the Candidates Tournament came as a big surprise for the chess community since it appeared as he had pretty much retired from competitive chess. Yet, Nakamura's hunger for serious tournaments after a long per...
Last week I had one of the worst nightmares a chess coach can experience. No, none of my students blundered a queen nor played the Berlin Variation of the Ruy Lopez—the danger came from a totally different direction. I was watching a playoff...
There is a very interesting situation that happens sometimes in chess. A player sets a trap and gets very excited when his opponent falls for it. Unfortunately, the euphoria is very short-lived since it turns out that there is a big hole in the tr...
Throughout all of chess history, so-called super tournaments have always had their own honorary place. That's why even today we still remember Hastings 1895, New York 1924, Montreal 1979, and many others. What's the main attraction of all these ...
I know, many of you, my dear readers, chuckled reading the title of this article. You must be thinking: "Are you really going to teach us how to play like a computer? Can you play like a computer?" The answer is quite obvious, no I cannot play lik...
Computers have dramatically changed our perception of the game of chess. The biggest change is probably the lost sense of a big mystery. Long gone are the times when chess aficionados around the world for years analyzed complicated positions that ...
These days chess fans around the world are blessed with an abundance of chess events. Some of them can really improve your chess but are not much fun to watch. Think of a Berlin endgame flawlessly played by two super grandmasters. On the other sid...
While the recent FIDE World Championship match was rather disappointing due to its anticlimactic finish, it had its crown jewel: game six. The longest game ever played in world championship history had such rich chess content that it deserves a wh...
Chess.com people are the best! I already wrote in my old article that our fellow members are nice, intelligent and always ready to help you. That's why I never miss your comments, my dear readers, since they are always interesting and I learn a lo...
After reading the title of this article, some of you, my dear readers, might think "oh no, not another 'secret' of the Soviet chess school." Indeed, recently we've seen too many similar "revelations." I can vividly see a blurb on one such book whi...
These days only a lazy person doesn't speculate about the year when GM Alireza Firouzja will become the World Champion. Indeed, it is very difficult for me to imagine what kind of an event could prevent the current world #4 (he actually hit the #3...
Throughout our entire lives, we keep looking for the best. The best colleges, best workplaces, best vacation spots, etc. The list is endless. Of course, in our chess universe we also follow this same trend and search for the best games and best pl...
After the fourth game of his 2016 world championship match versus GM Sergey Karjakin, GM Magnus Carlsen famously said, "I don't believe in fortresses!" What he probably meant is that even though fortresses do exist in chess, the majority of the po...
As we all know, Hamlet's famous question "to be or not to be?" essentially meant "to live or not to live?" In chess, when you're deciding whether to castle or not to castle your king, in many cases you are choosing between the life and death of yo...
Some questions are too complex and beyond our understanding as human beings for us to answer. Why are we here? Where have we come from? Where are we going? Another great question that no one can truly answer is: "Who will win the 2021 World ...
It is not a secret that most inexperienced chess players love checks. I guess it makes them feel empowered. This is why GM Bobby Fischer famously said: "Patzer sees a check, gives a check." I am not going to discuss here the obvious point that jus...
For many generations of chess players, Aron Nimzowitsch's famous book My System was sort of a chess bible. World Champion GM Tigran Petrosian admitted that as a kid he kept this book under his pillow. Another world champion, GM Mikhail Tal, regret...
For many readers, the title of this article might look weird. The possibility of stalemating your opponent usually means that you are in charge of the game. If you are in the driver's seat, why would you settle for a draw? Moreover, just earlier t...
The FIDE World Cup 2021 is like a breath of fresh air after the series of tournaments where we see the same players playing the same openings achieving mostly the same results. The match between GMs Michal Krasenkow and Praggnanandhaa R, in partic...
The whole chess community was stunned by GM Garry Kasparov's disastrous result in the first half of the blitz section in the Croatia Grand Chess Tour Rapid & Blitz. While 0.5 out of 9 games is indeed an utter catastrophe, I completely disagree...
Competitive chess is a very demanding activity. It requires players to constantly keep the highest level of concentration, stay calm under the pressure and be creative throughout the whole fight. Unsurprisingly, each game has its own story. I have...
Yes, this is the exact question I hear a lot from my less experienced students: "What is better: castling kingside (0-0) or queenside (0-0-0)?" Just like in the case with most of the general chess questions, the answer is "it depends." Castling ...