Dear Grandmasters Arun Prasad/Magesh Panchanathan: I have questions and I hope you may answer them. I have not played over the board chess for a year and have mainly played blitz or rapid chess online. Before I took a break I managed to achieve ...
No time to study opening theory? Shock your opponent with an SOS! With an SOS you deviate early (usually before move 6!) from regular lines in mainstream openings. So you will reach positions you have actually studied without having memorized tons...
In this article a popular pawn structure will be reviewed: when White has pawns on e5 and d4, and Black – on e6 and d5. It is typical of the Caro-Cann, French Defense, and can occur in other variations as well. For example, in the following game i...
Target Skill Range: Intermediate (Rated 1400-1799) Acquire the knowledge you need to approach the opening with confidence and achieve success! Tasks: Extend your base knowledge of "tournament openings." Aim for consistency. Learn the con...
Dear GM Prasad and GM Panchanathan : I am grateful to see the revival of this weekly column after IM Silman. Thank you! Hope you can answer a few of my questions below: a) I understand that in order to become better one has to accept losing many...
Need a little help navigating the thousands of videos on Chess.com? Use this guide to find all the videos you need on topics such as: Starting Out The Opening Tactics Strategy Master G...
Robert James (Bobby) Fischer was born at 2:39 pm on March 9, 1943 in Chicago, Illinois (Michael Reese hospital) by the banks of Lake Michigan, his mother Regina Wender Fischer Pustan (born in Switzerland of Jewish parents on March 31, 1913 and rai...
After the Canadian Open Championship, there was a week pause, and then the Canadian chess circuit continued with the Quebec Open from July 23-30. In 1967, the Quebec chess federation was created in reason of the conflict between chess players fr...
The stronger the player, the more important it is that they know the opening well. The number of lines also increases tremendously. While beginners may get away with knowing just the basics, elite players have to analyze and memorize huge amounts ...
The games of the final Candidates match of 1977 between Viktor Korchnoi and Boris Spassky in which the positional lines of the French Defense, Winawer Variation were played will be shown. These are the games without 7.Qg4. Instead 7.a4 or 7.Nf3 we...
Every master was once a beginner. That is why Grandmaster Sam Shankland has prepared this detailed guide to help you make your first steps in the chess world. Check out the steps and resources and start your path to mastery. Target Skill...
The final match of the Candidates in 1977 was between Viktor Korchnoi and former World Champion Boris Spassky. Korchnoi won 10.5-7.5. Two-thirds of Korchnoi’s three point lead came from the French Defense, which he used in two-thirds of his games ...
Originally my “Travelling Chess Player” series was going to be a one-time thing – just three parts, and that’s it. But it seems it was well-received, so the editors of Chess.com have asked me to continue the series. F...
Viktor Korchnoi was born March 23, 1931 in Leningrad, USSR. He was a candidate for the World Championship ten times from 1962-1991. He won the USSR Championship four times from 1960-1970. Korchnoi never won the world title, but has been considered...
In the second part of the article we will continue to explore games where strong chess players (masters and grandmasters) lost their games in 10 moves or less. Today I want to discuss the most common reason (at least in my opinion) for quick openi...
Today’s endgame is from the category of practical endgames. What makes it practical? No precise positions, no theory involved… As a counter-example, this endgame without the knights, but with the rooks would be a theoretical position. Rook endgame...
Exactly 20 years ago, in 1991, I was playing the Soviet Championship Under-26 years old. This was an invitational tournament for the top Soviet players and not surprisingly all participants of that tournament later became Grandmasters. One of the ...
This is the second part of my three-part series about my travels while playing chess. In Part 1 I described my decision to move to Prague, my troubles last fall which led to me feeling like quitting chess, and my first tournament, the Prague Open,...
Robert James Fischer (1943-2008) won the world championship in 1972 from Boris Spassky and stopped competing, except for a match with Spassky twenty years later. He became a legend and is considered by some to be the greatest chess player ever. O...
The tournament at Linares in 2002 was called a Super GM event. There were seven players in a double round robin playing twelve games. The results were: Kasparov 8, Ponomariov 6.5, Ivanchuk 6, Anand 6, Adams 6, Vallejo Pons 5, and Shirov 4.5.Kaspar...
Early Years Tigran Petrosian was born to Armenian parents on the 17th of June, 1929 in Tiflis, Georgia, which was then a member of the Soviet Union. As a young boy, Petrosian was an excellent student and enjoyed studying, as did his brother Hmaya...
The biggest part of Botvinnik's chess legacy is his contribution to opening theory. I don't think there is another chess player who could compete with Botvinnik in this department. The Patriarch managed to completely change whole openings! The be...
Geza Maroczy (March 3, 1870-May 29, 1951) was a Hungarian grandmaster who was one of the world’s top players in the early twentieth century. His opponent in the game shown is Georg Marco (November 29, 1863-August 29, 1923), who was a Romanian w...
Arturo Pomar Salamanca (pictured) was born September 1, 1931 in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. At the age of 11 he won the championship of the Balearic Islands. He was able to draw a game at age 13 with his teacher, Alexander Alekhine. He was the yo...
