There are many different traps in chess. Some of them are so well known that you can hardly use these tricks even against relatively weak players. However, some traps are good enough to catch even grandmasters. Sometimes, the world's leadi...
A material imbalance in the endgame provides an unusual type of play. Here we watch the spectacle of pieces, each with different capabilities, fighting, trying to change the terrain to their own advantage. It is like two knights on horseback fight...
For the 4th year in a row, Metropolitan Chess has attracted yet another huge star to Southern California. This year's star will be World #2 GM Levon Aronian! Aronian has been named the official lead instructor of the 2014 Metropolitan & ACA ...
Imagining that the pieces have stable values which are written in stone is an oversimplification of chess. One of the ways to become a better player is to develop a more subtle understanding of the relative values of pieces. Often a piece gains ...
"How can I tell if a chess book is too advanced for me?" Excellent question. Often you can't! Even books' suggested reading levels (eg by rating) are often misleading, partly because the publisher wants to sell books, not exclude readers who migh...
I will begin by affirming that the title of this article is deliberately oxymoronic. According to David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld's The Oxford Companion to Chess (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), a combination is "a series of forci...
When you hear the word "brilliancy," what comes to mind? A dazzling combination with multiple sacrifices? A captivating tactical melee in which both players display their calculational expertise? Without a doubt, brilliancy has a tactical connotat...
"If I play for a legal trap and it doesn't work, can I still have a good game?" Sounds like you might be a lawyer (or need to consult one)! This is also a good example of how I need to "interpret" questions on my Q&A show. Since the questio...
I left Part 3 of this 7-part series with Alekhine beating Capablanca in their World Championship. Here’s how that article ended: The match itself was a long, extremely tiring affair that covered 34 games before Alekhine achieved the necess...
Greetings everyone! I am grandmaster Rafael Leitão, from Brazil. My FIDE rating is 2645. I am going to write a series of articles about chess preparation. Many ambitious chessplayers do not know how to work in order to achieve a master and grandma...
Today's article is inspired by a trend in media posts - calling Carlsen's play in the World Championship match “nettlesome” - his opponents tend to make more mistakes when playing him compared to their play vs. the other opponents...
Today's article is a continuation of my series on positional play from the current World Champion's practice. Carlsen is a brilliant chess player and uses diverse positional weapons to win his games. In the first installment we saw his master...
For more cool articles visit http://stuscorner.wordpress.com Ivanchuk, Vassily – Aronian, Levon, Linares 2007 What is thinking “outside of the box”? Before I answer to that question, we should analyse this position first. Black has just taken ...
Magnus Carlsen is a phenomenon. He could recently be seen on enormous billboards all over the world posing next to supermodel and Lord of the Rings actress Liv Tyler; he’s been a guest to The Colbert Report; and he has featured on the cover ...
Some time ago we discussed the chess version of the well known phenomenon called the butterfly effect. We could see how a piece or a pawn sitting at one part of the board could affect the outcome of the whole battle on the opposite part of the boa...
We continue with the topic of blunders in modern play and today's article features games from the World Junior Chess Championship 2013, which was held in Turkey and has just finished. (GM Yu Yangyi won!) The three examples featured today are about...
Accepting a piece sacrifice can lead to complicated positions that require a sequence of accurate moves from the defending side, which sometimes is even challenging for the top players. We will look at two games from the recent FIDE World Cup that...
This week I will continue with the third installment of my series on the endgames played in the World Cup, currently taking place in Tromsø, Norway. One of the biggest surprises of the third round was top seed Levon Aronian's elimination ...
The World Cup continues and it’s simply one of the most exciting Chess events of the past two years. Before I delve into the article I want to define some terms just so that we’re on the same page. Skill: the ability to play good moves or better...
For the next few weeks, the FIDE World Cup will be taking place in the arctic town of Tromsø, in the very north of Norway. Many of the best players in the world are competing, beginning with the top seed, Levon Aronian (2813). The winner and runne...
World Cup Round One 2013 The strongest Chess World Cup of our time has begun! The first round pits the top half against the bottom half in such a way that the higher seeds are given the most favorable parings, i.e. 1 vs. 128, 2 vs. 127, 3 vs. 126...
In Part 1 of this glimpse into Alexander Alekhine’s life and games, we left off with him winning the Moscow Championship (late 1919/early 1920) with a spectacular clean sweep (11-0) followed by victory in the first USSR Championship (9 wins, 6 dra...
Grandmaster Melikset Khachiyan is a genuinely great conversation partner and a tough chess player, something former world champion Boris Spassky got to experience over a bottle of whisky in Teherean in 1992. Born in Aserbadsjan, Khachiyan left for...
If you have any knowledge of chess history, you have probably heard of the theoretical dispute - and antagonism - between Siegbert Tarrasch and Aron Nimzowitsch, the leaders of the classical and hypermodern schools (respectively). It appears that ...
