"I know doing basic tactics puzzles is good for me but I don't have much fun doing them. How can I make them more fun?" A great question. But of course the answer depends on a large part of what is preventing that study from being fun. It might b...
¿Alguna vez ha jugado una partida rápida siendo derrotado desastrosamente sin darse cuenta cómo ocurrió aquello? Y si a esto le agregamos el hecho de que su rival realiza jugadas perfectas en la apertura llegando hasta la movida quince o veinte de...
I've noticed that many inexperienced players believe that becoming a good tactician is primarily a matter of obtaining a large mental "database" of familiar tactical patterns, somewhat as they think becoming a good opening player means memorizing ...
Before I start talking about my mistakes and errors, watch the following video and pay attention not only to my moves but also to my thoughts. By the way, I should mention that I am NOT replacing Danny Rensch. Chess.com held a contest a few months...
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 column is about tactics and I would like to concentrate on examples from recent games. Since tactics are a key weapon of any chess player, the topic of tactics in chess is overwhelmingly important, and there are more books and material pub...
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...
Name: Natalia Pogonina Title: FIDE Woman Grandmaster, Grandmaster of Russia Date of birth: March 9th, 1985 Fide rating: 2447, highest - 2501 ...
Today I would like to share with you an exercise I did at the end of 2011 to try to prepare for the events I would play in the next year. I logged 70 FIDE rated games in 2011. This is a decent but not huge sample size, and I decided to do a thorou...
Today’s article is dedicated to two topics in queen endgames. The first one is how to play queen endgames when one side has extra f- and h-pawns. Last week we had a chance to analyze positions with extra g- and h-pawns and they proved to be ...
Here and there we can hear about people either wanting to earn a chess title, or wondering how and what for they are earned. Instead of offering a link to a formal encyclopedic page about this matter, I would rather share with you some insights ba...
Chess has plenty of huge egos and there are many infamaous feuds. The latest conflagration is between software giant Chessbase and chess publishing giant New in Chess. Chessbase has always hated it when peope disagree with them, as I often have (a...
Chess theory is based on general principles, regularities, notions. They help us improve our chess understanding and become better players. However, following general principles religiously, without taking into account the features of each particu...
member Adam Katz asked: Do you know of any works of fiction that mention or give pride-of-place to chess? The older the better. I am a sucker for the 19th century, but, though I can find plenty enough in the 20th century (Eliot’s THE WASTELAND ha...
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 ...
Drumdaddy (commenting on an article about the Schliemann) said: I suppose that there are many excellent players who can comfortably read through game moves presented in paragraph form, but I am not one of them and would much prefer active diagram...
The endgame is the final part of a chess game, characterized by a small number of pieces left on the board. Many chess players fall in love with studying the opening and middlegame and forget about the endgame, considering it to be dull. Some of t...
Just like I promised last week, this time we will talk about the middlegame. The middlegame is the main stage of the game. Studying this part of chess is essential to understanding concepts such as weak squares, a strong center, open files, the ar...
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...
One of the best things I ever watched on TV is the episode of "Seinfeld" called "The Opposite". There George Costanza announces "My life is the complete opposite of everything I ever wanted to be!" and then Seinfeld convinces him that “if every ...
People often ask me if they should play blitz, how helpful it is in terms of improving in chess. Experts’ views on this differ. Those who enjoy playing blitz often claim that it is very useful, and serves as an indicator of a chess player’s skills...
Gambiteeer asked: I am having trouble learning the Queens Gambit. Recently my opponents have gotten stronger and I am not sure how to handle the different positions which arise from the Queens Gambit. I am also having trouble learning the differe...
By browsing Chess.com’s forums, I noticed that there are numerous threads dedicated to improving in chess, certain training practices, coaching and other issues of that sort. Let’s talk a bit about who and what can assist us in becoming a better p...
rosadot asked: I have a question concerning preparation for a specific opponent, and about move order. I am preparing for a tournament game (club closed championship final, one game a week). The player I am facing always tries to play the Stonew...
