By now you've probably heard that Chess.com Chief Chess Officer Danny Rensch just released his new memoir, Dark Squares: How Chess Saved My Life. He insists: "This is not a chess book." And indeed, well more than half of the material deals with hi...
Our September Coach of the Month, Lauren Goodkind, has more than a decade of experience as a chess coach for beginning and intermediate students all over the world, from her hometown of Menlo Park, California to Canada and Germany. Whether teachin...
If you missed the State Of Chess.com broadcast on September 2, it's not too late to get up to speed on everything that's new around the site this month, including information about the 2026 Esports World Cup (EWC) after the smashing 2025 debut of ...
The first CoachChamps is about to start, and we're excited to see who comes out on top as the best chess coach in the world! The event kicks off on September 10, with each of the eight participating coaches drafting students. From October 7 to Oct...
Imagine a situation where your pawn has reached the seventh rank, just one square away from fulfilling its dream of becoming a queen. However, none other than the opponent's king steps in front of the pawn, preventing its promotion. Who is going t...
If you're looking to get better at chess, the material on Chessable and the equivalent Chess.com Courses are some of the best educational resources you can find. Chessable is well-known for its huge variety of opening courses, but its endgame cont...
Becoming a stronger player is about finding ways to turn knowledge into skill. - GM Tiger Hillarp Persson in Tiger's Chaos Theory. When you're new to chess, improvement is relatively easy. Most of us lose our first few games, and then start...
WFM Charlotte "Charly" Sanati, known online as Azizana, only began streaming relatively recently, but she has already started to build "a really nice and engaging community" of nearly 10,000 followers on Twitch with a dedicated two-a-day streaming...
GM Magnus Carlsen, following in the footsteps of GMs Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu and Hikaru Nakamura, played a blindfold chess game against ChatGPT in a video published Tuesday. In less than 48 hours, it had already racked up more than 100,000 views...
While I have been playing competitive chess for almost 50 years, the question in the title of this article never occurred to me. It looked so natural: if you find yourself in a completely hopeless situation where you see no way out, then you resig...
As we enter August, it's been another big month for Chess.com, and for chess itself as the game reaches new audiences. The esports world unofficially welcomed chess to its ranks with the inaugural Esports World Cup tournament. Chess has also sprea...
GM Mykhaylo Oleksiyenko is a grandmaster, mathematics PhD, Chessable author... and August 2025 Chess.com Coach of the Month! Mykhaylo has counted GMs Bassem Amin, Ahmed Adly, and Alexander Ipatov among his students, not to mention the countless pl...
For anyone serious about chess improvement, Chessable is the premier place to learn the game. Chessable has hundreds of courses for all levels, from beginner to Lifetime Repertoires that even grandmasters study. With so much content, it can be tri...
Have you ever played a brilliant move in one of your games? How about more than one? They're hard to find, so it's difficult to score several in a game. However, there's one tactical trick that's likely to let you stack up multiple brilliant moves...
FM Nate Solon draws on his vast experience in chess, data science, poker, and more to offer a unique perspective to his students. Both a private coach and a popular, highly-rated author on Chessable, Nate is our Chess.com Coach of the Month for Ju...
"There is luck in chess. My opponent was lucky that he was playing against an idiot." - Jim Loy Last week, many of us watched the exciting Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Las Vegas tournament. The gambling capital of the world might seem li...
Learning how to play the opening can be a great way to get better results, but it also demands time and effort. While there are many openings you can play as White, some may not be the best option for beginners. That's why it's so important to pic...
“There is no concrete preparation, the way it is in normal chess when you can memorize 20 moves and it's hard to even get a game—in this format, you always get a game!" - Magnus Carlsen, February 9, 2024. Have you tried F...
If I told you that a legendary chess master once lived in the Saurashtra region in the 1830s, would you believe me? A player with extraordinary abilities, capable of reciting full games from memory and calmly announcing checkmate with a soft &ldqu...
Have you ever lost a chess game in one move? Probably not. Unless you're playing provocatively, you're unlikely to lose material or get mated early on in standard chess. However, in Freestyle Chess (Chess 960), even master-level players have resig...
Chess is a significant part of human culture, which is why it is often referenced in movies and, especially, in financial advertisements, where it symbolizes intelligence and acumen. I remember watching a kids' show with a famous Russian a...
In normal chess, White has a small advantage in the opening at the start of every game. Because White can move first, engines like Stockfish give White an edge of about 0.25, an advantage, but well within the drawing margin. However, in Freestyle ...
Not many people can say they are a professional football player with a master's degree in electrical engineering and a strong chess player and streamer on top of it. But July 2025 Chess.com Creator of the Month Matt Henningsen is all of those thin...
As the second half of 2025 begins, there is a lot going on at Chess.com, as always. But what is new is chess at the Esports World Cup, where $1,500,000 will be up for grabs starting on July 29. This past month also saw exciting events, a new half-...
Once upon a time, before Stockfish and glowing evaluation bars, analyzing your games meant something entirely different. You'd grab a notebook, sit with a friend or coach, replay the moves from memory, and try to answer questions like: "Where did ...
