Today we will review typical positions where one side varied their move order and combined some well-known ideas to reach a new, completely fresh position. When you are familiar with plans and typical ideas, sometimes you don't need to exactl...
The year was 1969, I was 15 years old and had just made the trip from San Diego to beautiful Santa Monica to participate in the American Open (which, at that time, was held in the luxurious Miramar Hotel). I got there early, checked out the playin...
Today I have the pleasure of reviewing Grandmaster Judit Polgar's new book, How I Beat Fischer's Record for our community here on Chess.com - and I must say I found Judit's work refreshingly honest, surprisingly inspiring, and undeniably as i...
Last August I wrote an article called "The Knight's Moves", about superhuman (or rather, "superequine") knights which travel the board with amazing activity. But more often a powerful knight takes the form of a "permanent knight" - a knight entren...
One of the final questions on today's show was "What do you consider the game in chess history that, if I study, I will learn the most?" (I paraphrase) This question raises three important issues: An unannotated "pure" game is only worth what th...
In Part One of this series, the main topic of the Bxh7+ thrust concerned the win of material. This might have been boring to some, but it is no less important than a full bore mating attack. Now, in Part Two, we’ll let the blood fly! Here we...
This week's featured subject is quite an eclectic person. NM Dan Heisman has written numerous chess books and he authors the award-winning Novice Nook column, and he has lived professionally from chess the last 16 and a half years. He is also a so...
Today's show featured a bit more use of the demonstration board, which usually makes for good TV. One player said that no matter what his opponent did, he always brought out his two knights first, and was this OK? So I set up a board and said "Wel...
Due to (my) technical error, the show got started late, but we got in the full 90 minutes - the show must go on ! At the start and end of the show I made two announcements: Congratulations to Chess.com for getting to 6,000,000 members! What a fea...
SEE FOR YOURSELF HOW AN SOS CAN SHOCK AND CONFUSE! Every month, the editor of the SOS Secrets of Opening Surprises book series, IM Jeroen Bosch, annotates a game which was recently played with an SOS-variation. SOS Game of the Month: November...
The following opening moves are extremely popular among inexperienced chess players: When I ask my students who play Black why they trade the knights and bring the White Queen into the center the usual answer is: "it is a bad idea to develop y...
This article and the next article will wrap up the series on Initiative in Endgames. Here, I offer you a series of endgame positions from the recent 28th European Club Cup. The first two positions are unique, and the themes include zugzwang and ...
SEE FOR YOURSELF HOW AN SOS CAN SHOCK AND CONFUSE! Every month, the editor of the SOS Secrets of Opening Surprises book series, IM Jeroen Bosch, annotates a game which was recently played with an SOS-variation. SOS Game of the Month: October ...
In Part Two we already had a chance to see GM Svetozar "The Opening Expert" Gligoric at work. Today we'll discuss his King's Indian Defence legacy. There are not many chess players who introduced as many ideas to the theory of the Kin...
In today's show there were many open-ended questions similar to "Hi! I'm 1600 and want to get to 1800. What books should I read?" or the more answerable "Hi! I'm 1600 and I want a good book on positional play. What do you recommend?" There's a to...
In any series of Candidates tournaments for the world championship of chess, you can count on your fingers and toes the realistic contenders for the crown - about 20 people - out of over 7 billion people in the world. Magnus Carlsen is one o...
I receive a lot of messages from fellow chess.com members. Sometimes I am frightened when I open my mailbox since I know very well that I won't be able to reply to many of them. There are requests like "I am an attacking player, what opening shoul...
Have you ever seen one of those situations – let’s say on National Geographic or some other nature show – where a group of hyenas are trying to steal a lion’s fresh kill? One hyena jumps in and the lion bats him away, but meanwhile another one is ...
Last week we analyzed games where Anatoly Karpov suffered because his opponents used the dynamic power of their "criminals" and with a timely push of their central pawns completely destroyed Karpov's position (http://www.chess.com/article/view/smo...
In the real, physical world, a “nail” is a small but sharp thing. In the chess world, a “nail” is not a common term, but it has been used to describe a pawn that is lodged deep in the opponent’s camp, near their king. It is blocked and immobile, b...
In this and the next article I will be discussing the situation where one player holds an advantage which is tangible but not necessarily of the level we call a “winning advantage”. But while we are at it, what exactly is a “winning advantage”? ...
N.N. (1950) - Sam (1850), Bristol District League 2012 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 Not so long ago, the extremely dangerous Taimanov Variation (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 3.d5 e6 4.Nc3 exd5 5.cxd5 d6 6.e4 g6 7.f4 Bg7 8.Bb5+ ...
scarredeyes: “I find it hard to form a plan in the middlegame. I love to attack, but I always find that I do better if the game is more ‘dynamic’ with both players under pressure. Also, I keep starting an attack that I feel may g...
The topic of today's article is the "bad bishop" in the endgame. A bad bishop is usually a piece that is restricted by its own pawns, though it is also sometimes simply a piece that does not have much work to do. In contrast the opponent's bishop ...
