Once again, we see an endgame that is more equal than winning, or heavily advantageous for one side or the other. I am interested in the endgames that have this almost-balance but where one side has a slight advantage. You start to feel the pressu...
Promoting chess and helping other people is very important to me. That’s why I reply to lots of messages every day and give many interviews. Of course, many of the questions are getting asked over and over again. To avoid acting like a parrot and ...
33speedy asked: I was playing in a tournament today with the black pieces. I played the Budapest and my opponent declined it (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e5 3.Nf3). I thought the way I responded was reasonable (3…exd4 4.Nxd4 b6 5.Nc3 Bb7), but when I went home...
NN asked (he’s a chess.com reader but I left his name out since I took some liberties with his question): I would like your opinion on how to study the middlegame? At the moment I rise at 5AM, eat a 4,000 calorie breakfast, do training tactics wi...
This article is a companion for my Chess.Com video lecture. We will use this game to understand the key steps to improvement: Update: on May 22, 2010, I posted the solutions in this article (right next to the questions). Inspect Infer Double-...
The Chigorin Defense was never a popular opening, but this situation has been changing in the last decade. A super GM Alexander Morozevich managed to prove that in the good hands (see the picture) it is a very powerful weapon. The idea of the open...
One of the reasons behind the “nemeses and customers” theory is that each chess player has his own style. It reminds me of the “Rock, Paper, Scissors” game where there is no one dominant item. The main three chess characters are:• Positiona...
“He was not popular with his colleagues; he was surly, arrogant, conceited, and almost paranoid. People were out to poison him. Noise bothered him. Everything bothered him. Not naturally, he was in constant controversy with other players. They obj...
Reader Comments To Articles – Love Letters to a Chess Writer! Ah, time to revisit all my previous articles and mention a few of the many comments that appear under them. I’m sure they will all be positive … perhaps offering me riches and praise a...
More on the Study of Master Games Ali Khoshechin asked: I followed your advice about studying master games and I already can see that my planning and transition from opening to middle game is much better now, and I can actually understand the re...
Capablanca possessed terrific tactical powers. In this game, he gives a brilliant display of them. After sacrificing a queenside pawn, he proceeds to hunt down the enemy queen and capture it.After that, he has a material and positional advantage. ...
If any of us were asked "What makes some chess players better than others?", we might come up with a number of different responses. Some replies might be: They are better at seeing tactics, They have a better memory for openings, They can calculat...
For anyone who follows professional chess at the top the level, it is obvious that the Alekhine defense is not a common choice at the Super GM level, and this is not without good reason. In many cases, White is able to get a reasonable space advan...
“Chess, like love, like music, has the power to make men happy."Siegbert Tarrasch (March 5, 1862 – February 17, 1934) was born in Breslau the hometown of Andersen and Zukertort. The young Tarrasch learned to play chess when he was 15 years old. He...
Hi again everyone, This time we will try to take a look at how black can answer a variation which a lot of sources consider to be critical to the whole survival of the Dragon. I’ve tried to include a lot of possible deviations for black that c...
Chronotis asks: One bit of common advice for selecting openings is to choose those that match your style of play. I have three questions about this. Do players under master class really have a style other than patzer style? Supposing we do, how w...
James Dong asked:I was wondering whether you would give your views on the Bxf7 sacrifice variation in the Ruy Lopez Norwegian Defence? I consider myself an aggressive player and would like to add this to my repertoire as it is very interesting. ...
I sit in a room without air-condition on the top floor of a building. It gets pretty hot, since the outside temperature is rather high, plus the roof is conducting heat. Being helpless in a given situation I ended up in makes me think in chess ter...
INSTRUCTIONS: The following is a game designed to test some of your chess skills, including: opening knowledge, positional understanding, tactical sight, and endgame know-how. The idea is to play through the moves below belonging to an annota...
Want to give yourself X-ray vision at the chessboard? Well, as with achieving any worthwhile result, you may expect to have much work to do – but the task is certainly far from impossible. This seems to be the common problem when learning che...
I would like to talk about exchanges as a means to achieve some strategic objective. The first objective that I want to concentrate on here is to exchange in order to get an open file. An open file is a powerful weapon; the side that has the file ...
International Master Andrew Martin from England presents a regular series of articles to answer any questions that Chess.com readers have about the game of chess. If you want to ask Andrew a question, then send an email to askandrew@chess.com an...
In my new article of the series “Inside the Master Mind: The Best Games of a Chess Coach”, I would like to present to you one of my best games in my chess career. That game was played at one of the most important tournaments in Bulgaria – The semi...
In May 1851, London staged the Great Exhibition to showcase British technology. There were already railroads everywhere and the modern ships had reduced the voyage to the Americas from one month to twelve days. London’s thriving chess communit...
