Petrov's Defense is not a common opening in club tournaments. It almost doesn't exist in scholastic tournaments, either. The reason is the opening is not very exciting, and in most lines leads to slow, positional play. Therefore, as Wikipedia pu...
I love reading member comments to my articles! It is a pleasure to see how smart and intelligent our chess community is. Unlike commenters in many internet forums, Chess.com members are polite and helpful. Take for example one of my most re...
The regular readers of my column know that I hate political correctness. In my old article I explained it is probably the biggest threat to Western civilization. Very soon people will stop expressing their true beliefs out of fear that the...
I think it was GM Tartakower who once said "the wise chess player learns from someone else’s mistakes, the smart one learns from his own mistakes, and the stupid chess players never learn." So, let's be wise and learn from the games of th...
Chess openings have been analyzed for centuries and yet even today it is still not easy to identify the best and worst first moves. According to Fischer, 1.e4 is "best by test." From the other side, when the famous theoretician GM Ernst Gruenfel...
Chess aficionados love to debate about the best chess player of all time. As I mentioned in my old article, this is the question that has no answer. Indeed, it is very difficult to guess who would have won the world championship match Fisc...
One of the leading characters of the Soviet romantic comedy "Where is the Nophelet?" would ask attractive women a very cryptic question. Yet the pick-up line "Do you know where the Nophelet is?" worked like a charm, since everyone wanted to k...
Everyone knows the story about the Trojan Horse that helped the Greek army win the Trojan War. Since chess is a model of a war on 64 squares, can't we use this 3,000-year-old trick on the chessboard? Just think of it: Your opponent hides his ki...
On March 24, 1937, the leading Soviet chess magazine 64 published a theoretical article about a new opening system the magazine called the "Panov Defense." I challenge you to identify the moves of this opening line. Yes, you can Google it ...
Let me start with a disclaimer. While the title sounds sinister, I can assure you that no frog or any other animal was hurt for the sake of this article. It is just a metaphor! This is how Daniel Quinn describes it in "The Story Of B": If you ...
In last week's article, we discussed chess players' behavior. The big questions were if trying to flag your opponent in a dead-drawn position or playing out a completely lost position or some other perfectly legal things are ethical. Judgin...
A well-known saying states that all is fair in love and war. Our beloved game is actually both love and war. While it is pretty obvious that chess is a war on 64 squares, what about love? Well, check the Twitter hashtag #WhyILoveChess and...
Some 20 years ago I had a conversation with a grandmaster who grew up in a bad neighborhood. He was recollecting his youth years when street fighting was pretty common. I don't remember much from his stories, but one of his phrases has stu...
The coming world championship match is going to be Magnus Carlsen's biggest challenge since he won his crown. As I mentioned in my recent article, it is the first time he will defend his title against a younger challenger, the 25-year-old Americ...
At the very end of my article about MVL's trapped rooks, I mentioned that Tal was famous for his queen play. There was even a joke that a regular queen is worth nine pawns and Tal's queen is worth 12 pawns! The Chess.com member "fiercebadge...
Some chess tactical ideas are very common. For example, I cannot imagine any experienced chess player who never had back-rank problems in his games. Interference is pretty much at the opposite end of chess spectrum. Here is how Wikipedia describ...
I really appreciate my readers' feedback and therefore always read your comments to my articles. One of them, by the Chess.com member rossmckinley1224, made me think. Ross wrote: "For those of us struggling to achieve a 1000 rating on Ches...
Chess is more than just a game, at least for chess aficionados. As proof of this statement we like to mention that since the dawn of the computer age, our beloved game has been the main test of computers' ability to "think." Also, don't ...
Pattern recognition is one of the most important chess skills. Some time ago I even suggested an idea that Magnus Carlsen is so great in chess due to his incredible pattern-recognition ability. Through the years I've written a series of articl...
There was an anniversary a few days ago that was completely missed by the chess world. I am not talking about any chess player's birthday since they generally are covered by many chess publications (believe it or not, I even saw a note about Kar...
Shakhriyar Mamedyarov's result in the last Candidates' tournament has cemented his position as one of the world's very best players. In a year-old article, we already discussed what makes his chess so sparkling and powerful. Today I would like t...
I bet many of you have heard the famous chess saying: "If Tal has an open file, there will be mate," but do you know how this expression was born? Mikhail Tal's second, Alexander Koblencs, who coined this phrase, tells the story in his book...
The Candidates' Tournament was a real nightmare for Levon Aronian. Aronian, one of the pre-tournament favorites, ended the competition dead last. While Aronian's numerous fans hoped for a miracle for a long time, it was absolutely clear tha...
One of the most shocking games in the history of the U.S. chess championship was played in 2015. Can you imagine one of the world's strongest players losing his game in just six moves playing White? This is exactly what happened! I was really pu...
In an old article, I expressed the opinion that some games played by really strong grandmasters shouldn't be studied by inexperienced players. Therefore I suggested to assign chess games ratings similar to movies. The article claimed that acc...