Get your reading glasses out for this article! The number of books written about chess is tremendous. While that can be great for the chess world, it poses practical issues for many fans. Most chess players have their own favorites, but how do y...
[cover image from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll; illustrated by Peter Newell, 1902 ] ___________________________________________________________________________________________________...
Chess has a long and storied history. The game has changed quite a bit from its earliest forms in India. The modern iteration we enjoy today wasn't known until the 16th century. There were no clocks, and the pieces were not standardized until...
Well, I’m back with six chess puzzles, with each game being given a brilliancy prize. However, a little secret: I like the little bios as much as the puzzles! Anyway have fun, and if you fail to solve a puzzle, just click the “?&rdqu...
The great Russian chess player Mikhail Chigorin (born 1850, died 1908) was put in the Gatchina orphanage at the age of 10 (his parents died young). Here is a small bit of what that was like, written by a historian of the Gatchina Insti...
The old time brilliancy prize games are fun to watch, but for some people they are even more fun if you can solve them in puzzles. Then, when you get little bios for the players too (winners and losers)…well, it’s a good time for all....
Of all the death notices for Paul Morphy, the following transcription from the New Orleans Times-Democrat, Sunday, July 13th, 1884, written by Charles de Maurian and graciously supplied by WilhelmThe2nd, is by far the best. &n...
What are the games that every chess fan needs to know? IM Anna Rudolf is here to show you the most important games ever played. Try The Challenges! Not what you were looking for? Back to the video guide. The First Modern Chess Game Ever ...
If you're looking for crazy games between the world's top players, you might have to look at the "old school" to find the best ones. In this series, GM Simon Williams shows you crazy games from the past. Try the Challenges! Not what you were lo...
Time flies. That's always the feeling when another year comes to an end—and it was definitely a great year for chess. Caruana winning the Candidates' (and a few more tournaments!), Nakamura winning the Grand Chess Tour (and the Speed Chess...
A little over 5 years ago I published an article called Lesser Known Games of Prince Dadian in which I presented 29 games absent from all of the databases I consulted. I had found them in and transcribed them from va...
Everyone loves crazy tactics, and when all the games were brilliancy prizes it makes it even more fun. Imagine: If you solve it you can say, “I could have won that brilliancy prize!” Or, perhaps not. The tactics didn’t fall...
I recently read an interesting article in Time, written in 2008 by then-world champion Viswanathan Anand, in which he argues that chess originated in India, and then traveled westward to Persia and ultimately to Spain. In the elegant f...
Magnus Carlsen defeated Fabiano Caruana in game three of the rapid playoff to clinch the 2018 world chess championship. After 12 draws in the classical games, Carlsen won all the games of the tiebreak to win 3.0-0.0. He has now success...
This is simply a compilation of sparkling games. My original intention was to title this Chess Brilliancies but upon reflection, I wasn't convinced the definition was applicable. I tend to think of brilliancies...
Once again I offer puzzles full of tactics or sharp attacks. And, as in the previous article, all of them won brilliancy prizes. I’m offering small bios so you know who these players are, and I often give lots of analysis and prose, w...
With the upcoming 2018 world chess championship between Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana just days away starting Nov. 9, Chess.com wanted to know: What is the most exciting title match in history? Below is a countdown of the top 10 a...
One of the most interesting aspects of the recent chess960 matches (featuring Garry Kasparov) in St. Louis, was their potential to develop some kind of rudimentary opening theory. It appears that the players enjoyed this opportunity as well. As ...
HOW TO START OUT I get many, many players (rated 800 to 1200) asking me what their style is, why do they lose when they had a better game, are their opponents cheating, how to get good fast, or simply how to get a higher rating. All thes...
I love reading member comments to my articles! It is a pleasure to see how smart and intelligent our chess community is. Unlike commenters in many internet forums, Chess.com members are polite and helpful. Take for example one of my most re...
I think it was GM Tartakower who once said "the wise chess player learns from someone else’s mistakes, the smart one learns from his own mistakes, and the stupid chess players never learn." So, let's be wise and learn from the games of th...
After sharing positional puzzles to the raging masses, I thought that it was only right to offer tactical puzzles and sharp attacks. However, there’s a tiny blip: All these games won brilliancy prizes. Anyway, whether you solve it or not,...
Chess is a rich game, dating back over a millennia. On Chess.com alone, over 2,000,000,000 games have been played! Which games are the very best ever played? No one can answer that conclusively, but we are going to give you Chess.com's opinion. ...
I get so many questions and statements about chess, but being old (yep, 108 years old…don’t worry though, the friends that are still alive tell me that I don’t look more than 98) means that all those questions have been asked ov...
