In the introduction to his famous book "Grandmaster Preparation," GM Lev Polugaevsky tells a story that happened on December 17, 1969, when he and ex-world champion GM Mikhail Botvinnik were walking on the streets of Belgrade. Mikhail Botvinnik ...
Stalemate is the biggest miracle in chess—there, I said it. You might disagree and give me dozens of different examples of chess magic and you might be correct too. We all have different definitions of beauty and magic. Yes, when you see o...
Any experienced player knows that chess is all about pattern recognition. At least this is true of chess played by humans. In this article, I argued that one of the biggest competitive advantages World Champion Magnus Carlsen has is his unique mem...
The first Capablanca book that I read was "My Chess Career." In the very first pages, I could see that it was completely different from any chess book that I read before. It was almost like an advertisement where every single sentence was screamin...
For an average beginner, the road to a rating in the range of 1400-1600 is pretty straightforward. Learn as many tactical patterns as possible, get yourself familiar with some basic opening principles, and you are there! Notice, I said that the ro...
Ask a dozen chess players what their favorite square is, and quite likely you'll get a dozen of different answers. I suspect all four central squares (d4, d5, e4, and e5) will be on the list. While it is difficult to dispute the importance of...
Practically all strong players from the former Soviet Union made their first chess moves in their local Pioneer Palace. All kids were accepted there. Even those who didn't know the rules of the game. In order to assign players to a group that matc...
Last week my student told me that his internet opponent played a weird opening. I wasn't surprised a bit since any opening that doesn't allow the Scholar's Mate is labeled as "weird" by this little kid. Yet, I was intrigued when he mentioned that ...
Endgames are difficult to learn for most of players who have recently begun their chess journey. Indeed, the endgame has many sets of rules that contradict well-known opening and middle game axioms. For example, an outside passed pawn, which is us...
Even people who are not interested in baseball remember Yogi Berra as the author of so called "Yogi-isms." Indeed, his catchy phrases which mix humor and wisdom will make you smile and think. Pretty frequently they contradict to themselves. Who ca...
GM Alexander Kotov is one of the most underappreciated figures in chess history. Ask average club players what they know about Kotov and at best they will recall his most famous game versus GM Averbakh. Personally, I don't think that it was such...
Social distancing and mask wearing is a hot topic for many chess players. Take a look at Facebook pages of many masters and grandmasters, and you'll see plenty of discussions about COVID-19, some have called it a worldwide scam. Such conspiracy th...
"Every strong chess player should have his own opening theory which is different from the mainstream theory." This is one of the most important rules I learned from World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik as a student in his famous Botvinnik-Kasparov s...
In his recent stream, Russian GM Alexey Dreev called a certain opening "indecent." Moreover, he said that it is disrespectful towards your opponent to play this opening. He also said that if you don't understand why it is disrespectful behavior th...
When the COVID-19 pandemic started, many people considered it mostly a nuisance that would be gone sooner rather than later. These days, popular opinion has shifted to another extreme. Life will never be quite the same even when the pandemic is fi...
"Every Russian schoolboy knows" is a well-known cliche to say that a certain position or a concept is an integral part of a classical chess education. A good friend of mine, GM Alex Yermolinsky, even used this cliche as the title of his weekly sho...
In one of my recent articles, I called Magnus Carlsen a "born entertainer" and asked, "Who could forget the barbs he exchanges with GM Anish Giri on Twitter?" Our world champion never fails us. The very day after my article was published, we could...
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 ...
