The 2019 World Rapid & Blitz Chess Championships are underway in Moscow. How to watch Dates & schedule Participants Location Prizes Time control How to watch You can follow the games here (women's games here) as part...
This is our archive of older, completed chess tournaments and events. Click here for our calendar of current chess events! September 2021 Date Event Location September 7 Titled TuesdayOur weekly blitz event for titled players, an ...
Grab your popcorn for this article! We are going to take a look at chess in the movies. Chess fans everywhere have their favorite chess movies. Here are our top seven picks. Make sure to share your favorite chess films in the comments! Searchi...
Target Skill Range: Advanced Path (Rated 1800-1999) Tasks: Learn the power of the pieces!!! Improve your knowledge of dynamics and tension in chess. Know how to exploit exchanges. Improve your prophylactic thinking and defense! ...
Target Skill Range: Master Path (Rated 2000-2199) Acquire the knowledge you need to approach the opening with confidence and achieve success! Tasks: Learn About Advanced Opening Preparation Expand Your Knowledge of Thematic Middlegam...
One thing nearly all chess players have in common is that they hate to lose. Losing, while it might be good for our long-term chess development, is a short-term disaster for our ego. Unlike games such as Monopoly or poker, luck is not even a t...
I’ve long insisted that the best way to improve (aside from playing stronger players) is to look at reams of master games. Most games between titled players have some important lesson hiding behind the moves, and I decided to make it easy fo...
The recent Women's World Championship was a fascinating event. You could find everything we love about chess competitions: neat combinations, unpredictable results (will we ever forget Natalia Pogonina's amazing comebacks in almost every single ma...
The Benko Gambit is one of the most popular openings among club players. It is indeed very appealing to grab the initiative early in the game playing Black against your opponent who likes to play positional chess. Why do I assume that your oppon...
Chess is not a team game. It's an individual struggle between two minds to destroy each other -- at least, over the chessboard. But that doesn't mean chess players have to be loners. It's only natural that passionate chess players are drawn to...
Last week we looked at a structure that featured a central space advantage for White (two center pawns vs. Black's one) and a queenside pawn majority for Black. I discussed White’s most aggressive plan (a pawn sacrifice that creates a mobile...
"Pawns are the soul of chess." In general, I loathe chess clichés, but some statements are so true, so deep, that they defy the notion of banality. Think about it. An inveterate patron of the Café de la Régence, an eighte...
How does the young Anatoly Karpov win with an extra pawn? This will be the subject of today's article. In 1972 Karpov was twenty-one years old, and a new young talent. He was competing in the Soviet Team Championship, held in Moscow. His opponen...
Many openings (especially when you play Black) have specific strategical problems typical for that particular opening. If you play the French Defense, then the bishop on c8 is your constant headache. In the Tarrasch Defense you need to live with a...
"And the rest is technique..." You've seen that annotation before. What does it mean? The rest is easy? Or we should pay less attention to the rest because it is less artistic? In fact, the technique of winning with an extra pawn is one of the m...
Most chess players discover this pattern thanks to the next notorious game (I give it as a puzzle, so you can try your tactical skills!) There is a strong evidence that the game is a fake and was never actually played but it is irrelevant fo...
In “Train Your Brain, Target Consciousness” (Part 1, Part 2) we took a look at weak squares and weak pawns. When studying things like this, you first look at the concept (in this case weak squares and/or weak pawns), you try to intellectually gras...
My last two articles (Train Your Brain! Target Consciousness Part 1, and How to Train Your Brain) were about weak squares and weak pawns, which I view as targets that need to be devoured or used. Creating a permanent seek-and-destroy mentality whe...
I was going to do Part 2 of Target Consciousness, but three reader questions (from Part 1) have convinced me to hold off on Part 2 for next week and instead revisit a painful subject for chess hopefuls. THREE READER QUESTIONS Mottsauce said: “I...
Target Consciousness. I coined this phrase long ago, and I still consider it to be of enormous use to students who want to play much stronger chess, and also appreciate high-level games. The concept is simple: you need to train your mind to spot t...
One of the classical players who influenced me the most was Akiba Rubinstein, born in 1882. Rubinstein was, along with Paul Keres, the best player never to play a match for the world championship. Rubinstein is known for his very objective and c...
Last week was the first installment of the series Heritage in Modern Play. Just to remind you, since the topic is still fresh this series aim at systematically studying some of the methods of play and ideas that were invented long ago but still ar...
What is an endgame? We have discussed this before. In chess we might define the endgame as a position without queens, or with only queens, or something like that. But in popular culture the word "endgame" is also used. For example, "the endgame of...
SPACE: CLOSED CENTER, DUELING WINGS When the center is closed, both sides need to gain space on the wings. One gains space by advancing pawns, which acts as a sort of fence that lays claim to any territory within the fenced borders. Pushing pawns...
In this week's edition of my "Without the Lady" column, I will be showing an interesting game I played last year against the young Filipino GM Wesley So. Despite the early exchange of queens, the game was razor-sharp - imbalanced in terms of struc...
