In my last article, I didn't hide the fact that, in my opinion, Magnus Carlsen's tweet before his match with GM Svidler was bad karma which ultimately decided the outcome. The Oxford dictionary describes karma as "the sum of a person's actions in ...
GM Magnus Carlsen is not only the best player in the world, but he is also a born entertainer. He organizes online chess tournaments and plays an amateur who publicly announced a plan of beating the world champion in just one month after learning ...
If you are a true chess aficionado, then your personal chess library probably has one of many books written by GM John Nunn. You cannot go wrong buying any book written by this author since all of them are of the highest quality. Yet one of them s...
The words "quarantine" and "social distancing" are going to be a symbol of the year 2020. People in isolation suffer due to many economical and psychological factors. One of them is boredom. Fortunately, creative minds will always find a solutio...
The novel coronavirus has paralyzed the world, and unfortunately, there is no clear sign of it slowing down. It will take years if not decades to learn the final toll it took on humankind. Needless to say, chess was severely impacted, just like ev...
In the first part of this article, we talked about a clash of chess titans that started over 30 years ago between GMs Viswanathan Anand and Vassily Ivanchuk. In this unusual match, we can find everything we love about chess: beautiful comb...
The World Junior Championship 1987 was a very special event for me. Since it took place in Baguio City (Philippines), it was my first opportunity to travel outside of the "iron curtain" and see the world's top junior players. In those prehistoric ...
The question in the title of this article might look stupid to many readers. Indeed, who wouldn't like to study a game annotated by a strong player? Well, I am not sure that I have an answer to this question anymore. When I was a kid, an ann...
About 30 years ago, the famous Soviet coach Vladimir Zak wrote a book "The Ways of Chess Improvement." I already expressed my opinion about this chess personality in a prior article. Nevertheless, the book was quite interesting, mainly because Zak...
Endgames with opposite-colored bishops are probably the most difficult endgames for lower-rated players to understand. The common misunderstanding here is that all of these endgames are drawn. I wish I had a nickel for every time my students sai...
Even though chess and checkers have the same checkered board, these two games are completely different. Chess is much more complex and therefore it is chess, not checkers, that is frequently used in commercials to underline the depth of a b...
The 10th world champion Boris Spassky was married three times, but unfortunately all three marriages ended in divorce. Describing his first marriage, Spassky famously said, "we were like bishops of opposite color." When I saw this catchy phrase ...
Positions with material imbalances are difficult to play, especially for less-experienced chess players. You will never see a positional queen sacrifice or an exchange sacrifice in games played by people rated below 1700 or 1800. At this level, ...
The year 2019 was so rich for chess tournaments and exciting games that I decided to make my own list of the top 10 memorable games. It was not easy to choose from hundreds of great games, so chances are that your list would be completely differ...
People who followed the 2019 Tata Steel Chess India Rapid & Blitz will forever remember the last day of this super-tournament. First the live transmission brought us a strange five-move draw played by the world champion, Magnus Carlsen. Then...
A fork is one of the most important tactical elements in chess. There are dozens of different forks in chess, and I am sure you've seen many of them. Some of the forks are very common. For example, when I attend kids' competitions, I know that I...
The recent article by Vladimir Kramnik was quite fascinating. We've all had some weird "what if..." questions, like "what if people could fly?" or "what if there were no gravity?" Thanks to Kramnik and AlphaZero, we now see what happens to che...
Last week, we learned about two friends, Dave and Detective Ron Miller, who were trying to stop a crime by a madman. While we don't know if they managed to solve the maniac's puzzles (I hope they did!), let me show you how they could easily do i...
Just like most people who love chess, I have certain favorite players. Notice how many times I've mentioned Mikhail Botvinnik, Mikhail Tal, Garry Kasparov and Magnus Carlsen in my articles and you'll get an idea of my chess prefer...
"Darn it!" Dave couldn't hide his frustration as the ringing doorbell distracted him from Sam Loyd's chess puzzle. "Whoever is there, please leave." Dave was whispering while still trying to solve the tricky checkmate in two. But the doorbe...
Chess is a very complicated game that requires utmost concentration. Therefore most of the time chess players have a very serious facial expression. I doubt that a fianchettoed bishop or a semi-open file would make many people laugh. Yet th...
When I was a student of famous Botvinnik-Kasparov school, the two living legends didn't just teach us how to play chess; they also taught us how to work on chess. The homework that each student would get by the end of a session was invaluable! O...
As we discussed in the previous article, people love chess for a variety of reasons. Our favorite game is a sport, art, science, fight and more, all at the same time! One of my favorite features of chess was well described by the great Ema...
In past articles we've discussed why people play bad openings and how to deal with such dubious lines. Are these openings really that bad for your chess? While the answer might seem quite obvious, the reality is not that simple. Let me giv...
When we learn the rules of chess and start playing, we never ask ourselves the question in the title of the article. We just enjoy the process of playing, that's all! But almost any person who has played chess for a long time is going to ask: "W...