The Chess.com Awards is our yearly celebration of the best of the chess world. At the end of every year, we invite the chess community to vote on the best games, moves, creators, and everything else involving the game we love. The awards are a per...
I have no doubt that you've heard the saying, "Chess is 90% tactics" many times. It is so overused that it is impossible to trace who said it first. While in general I agree with this statement, I would still slightly modify it. So, channeling my ...
KDlearns' first introduction to chess was the same as it was for many other people: he was mercilessly destroyed by his older family members and didn't play for years after that. His reintroduction to chess follows another familiar pattern: he sta...
GM Avetik Grigoryan is an Armenian chess coach and content creator with an extensive range of experiences to draw from. Having coached individual students as well as national teams, his focus goes substantially beyond simply improving the Elo rati...
As many of you know by now, the collaboration between Chess.com and Supercell this month has brought us the delightful and interesting crossover between two strategy games, chess and Clash Royale. I’m Joseph Wan, a FIDE candidate master and ...
The Collegiate Chess League (CCL) began in 2020 and allowed top college chess teams to compete while over-the-board chess was inactive during the pandemic. It has quickly become a premier event in the space, joining the much longer-standing Pan Am...
All chess players can remember the games that had ultimate importance for them. The level of the competition is irrelevant: it can be your local chess club's championship, national tournaments, or even the FIDE World Championship. What mat...
Chess Clash, the ultimate strategy battle between chess and Clash creators, is almost upon us. The event will feature a mixture of chess, Clash of Clans, and Clash Royale challenges, so there's really no telling which team is going to win. But w...
When you work on chess, what do you actually do? The question sounds simple, but the more you think about it, the more questions it raises. Playing or studying? Videos or books? Blitz or rapid? Openings or endgames? With so many parts of chess t...
WCM Alexandra Prado, also known as AlexandraChess, is the mind behind some of the internet's most-viewed chess content, with hundreds of thousands of followers across different platforms. How did a young chess champion from Bolivia become one of t...
There have been many attempts to estimate ratings of chess players, both past and present, by looking at their game scores and comparing the moves with a top engine's choices, including one notable study here on Chess.com in 2017. These at...
It was on July 17, 2019, that I lost all faith in humanity. That was my first loss to the shameful Englund Gambit, which left me wondering what type of person does this. Why would someone play a dubious opening trap that either gives them a quick ...
Diego Villanueva is an expert chess player and coach who specializes in working with adult improvers. His lessons have helped over 100 students reach their chess goals (including students participating in international tournaments), and his passio...
When I was 11, my home city hosted the First League of the Soviet Championship. For chess players who weren't alive at that time, it is absolutely impossible to understand the importance of such an event for local players. These days you can wat...
The PogChamps 5 live in-person finals are almost starting, with the players gathering in Los Angeles to play for a first-place finish in the Championship and Consolation brackets. While it's not uncommon for people to point out how much better the...
Who is the best? It's a question we ask about almost every competitive endeavor, and chess is no exception. For many years, we here at Chess.com have bestowed the Chess.com Awards at the end of every year. But it's time to think with longer timesc...
When initially working with beginner students, I am often told something like, "I struggle to remember opening theory that I have studied." This is because their study is not taking place in the right way to optimize their results. Luckily, Chessa...
PogChamps is a series of chess tournaments that Chess.com began in 2020. What is PogChamps, where did it come from, and what has it meant for chess? Answers to these questions and more. Origins PogChamps PogChamps 2 PogChamps 3 PogCh...
The months of July and August both received their names from Roman emperors (Julius and Augustus) and we never really got around to changing them. There have been plenty of changes across Chess.com and the chess world over the last month, howeve...
Imagine being a minor league baseball pitcher—waiting and hoping for a call one day that pulls you up into Major League Baseball. Then you hear a knock on the door and know that the manager of your AAA team has come to tell you that the day ...
There are certain classic games that really show the "ABCs" of chess. They demonstrate some basic chess concepts that any educated player must know. The following famous game by Alexander Alekhine is one of them. You can find it almost in any book...
“That’s it. This is going to be my last game ever, I’m quitting chess.” These words kept echoing through my brain during one of my games at the World Open, a big tournament held in Philadelphia every year. I’d just ...
WGM Adriana Nikolova became a WFM in 2007, WIM in 2008, and WGM in 2011. That same year, she became the women's champion of Bulgaria in standard, rapid, and blitz time controls. She is also a chess streamer. In addition to her accolades as an ad...
The game of chess didn't have a world championship until 1886. It took an additional 41 years for there to be a women's world championship, first held in 1927. Despite the shorter time period, there have been almost as many women's champio...
