Sometimes you start a game and wait for your opponent to castle so you know on which side to begin mounting your attack. But what if he won't castle? What if he stays in the center and the center is closed? What do you do then? Sometimes a wel...
Not every attack ends in mate in under 30 moves. Some attacks go through phases, where goals are accomplished in parts and acheiving one goal leads to the creation of a new goal. This pattern may be repeated several times in one game. And tacti...
If your opponent commits chess "crimes", they need to punished. Sometimes the "trial" is long and the execution takes place in the endgame. Sometimes the crimes are misdemeanors and, if your opponent plays well after the crime, they are expunged...
When you are analyzing a combination during a game, sometimes your first go at it makes it seem as though it won't work. Many chess books about tactics suggest that you then reverse the order of the moves in the combination to see if that helps. ...
Sometimes a game comes down to which player can see further ahead. After dodging a bullet in the middlegame (where he almost loses a rook after initiating a combination), White finds himself in situation where he has to see as many as ten dangero...
For those of you who are new to chess.com or for those of you who have enjoyed any of my articles in the past, I decided to post a list of links to all of my previous articles. There have been 19 to date, this being the 20th. Title Date Pu...
Sometimes you read about a neat trap in a book and you try to play it, but no one ever plays the right moves. Either they know about it and avoid it, or they don't know about it and accidentally avoid it. But sometimes they fall right into it. ...
In this game, Black falters in the opening a little, but recovers in time to get to an endgame without too much damage. Just when it looks like we're in for one of those long rook endgames where both sides are trying to play offense and defense a...
If you study an opening long enough, and play through enough master games with that opening, and play a lot of games with it yourself, you start to get a feel for which moves are accepatable or playable within the framework of that opening. Such ...
Sometimes openings have certain positional or thematic goals that they wish to accomplish. For example, in the King's Gambit (1.e4 e5 2. f4), one of the primary goals for White is to open the f-file and get play against the square f7 with a rook...
Sometimes you play games where things almost magically unfold before you, seemingly without any help from you. "Wow, that worked like a charm, didn't it?", you marvel at your amazing attack. Yet it did have help from you. If you play active, de...
Sometimes a move has more than one purpose. And sometimes, the obvious purpose is so non-threatening, and relaxes your opponent so much, that he ignores your move and doesn't look for any other, more hidden, threats. In the first game, White's 5...
The following game is just an enjoyable little minature (micro-minature?) where a mate just fell into my lap right in the opening. I guess that Black was so focused on his pawn-winning tactic, that he just forgot to evaluate the ensuing position...
Most players think mates only occur during kingside attacks in the middlegame or after one side promotes a pawn to a queen and the other side keeps playing. But I have learned that mates can be found even in a wide open position in an endgame wit...
In my previous article, I gave a game illustrating the virtues of the Exchange Variation of the Caro-Kann and reasons that I play a line that has a reputation of being harmless. In this game, my opponent gives me an easier time of it playing a di...
Look in any chess opening book about the Caro-Kann Defense and you will find a very small percentage of the book devoted to the Exchange Variation. Usually only a page or two, the book will site a few lines as giving Black easy equality and dismi...
James West is a Life Master from New Jersey (where I used to live also). Although he has for most of his carrer played the Sicilian Defense as black in response to 1. e4, he later switched to the Philidor Counter Gambit (PCG) (1.e4 e5 2. Nf3 d6 3....
William Morrison is one of the top players in Maryland. He is nicknamed "The Exterminator" for his "ability to process lower-rated opponents" (I read that somewhere). I presume that means he grinds them up like a food processor and points come o...
Some chess books about tactics have puzzles for you to figure out. Most of them are neat, but you never see them in your games, so you wonder if studying them is even worth the effort. IT IS! But they don't just appear. You have to:1) Know the ...
Just when you think you've created something original, it turns out it's been done before. This happened to me in 2007 at the United States Amateur Team East tournament in Parsippany, NJ. In Round 4, I played the Black side of a King's Indian Defe...
About Chess Ratings by Bruce Till The United States Chess Federation (USCF) has instituted a rating system for chess players which allows them to know their relative strength among other rated players, as well as facilitating the pairin...
In this article, we're going to take a look inside the winner's toolbox. Some of these items are absolutely essential to have, or you will lose games that you shouldn't have lost. Not having these skills in your toolbox would be like a carpenter...
By Bruce Till You study. You play at the club. You play on the internet. You play against a chess computer. You play in tournaments. You buy more books (maybe you even read some of them). You try new openings. You study endgames. But your ...
What is "Learning by Induction"? Simply put, it is learning by watching. You watch what others do, then you do that. Below is a more formal explanation of inductive vs. deductive logic: In logic, we often refer to the two broad methods of...
