Professor: Hello, class. They all greeted the professor as if saying goodbye. Professor: Don't look so glum. Rachel: Isn't this the last class? Zephyr: All good things come to an end. Lucian: Do they have to? Wei: Yes, but each ending is a t...
Like the Kan/Paulsen, the so-called "Modern Defense" is an opening with many names. When I first met it, as a beginning chess player, I knew it as the "Robatsch Defense." It has also been called the Ufimtsev Defense, the Kotov Defense, the Pi...
Several years ago I was visiting a friend and he was online looking at live games in a team match event. One game was between a grandmaster (who had the Black pieces) and an international master. A zillion people were using a zillion chess engin...
Professor: Good afternoon, class. Are you ready for some chess? Three quarters of the students expressed a certain readiness. One quarter didn't. Rachel: I think all eight of us are ready, professor. Zephyr: Eight? Are there really that many...
The Open Sicilian can be broken down into four basic systems. In one, the Dragon, the black bishop is fianchettoed on g7. In the Scheveningen, it is developed on e7 while Black adopts a "little center" of pawns on d6 and e6. In a third, t...
These games might or might not be masterpieces; the criterion for this series is that they taught me an extremely important lesson(s) that made me well rounded and much stronger. I’m hoping that these games will teach you the same lessons, t...
This series is all about the classic games that, as a young teen (15 years of age), affected me in a profound manner. In general, they were positional games since, for a kid that grew up on attacking chess and combinations (12 to 14 year...
With last week's column, we reached the end of my series on endgames, "Without the Lady." It has been an interesting journey through one of chess's most mysterious and underappreciated domains -- but the end has come. I now begin a new column co...
After winning the Mexico City tournament in 2007, Viswanathan Anand had become the world champion. Anand defended his title for a first time by defeating Vladimir Kramnik in the 2008 match held in Bonn, Germany, He again defende...
Who is the best chess player of all time? Today, World Champion Magnus Carlsen leads Vishy Anand 1.5-0.5 after two games at the world chess championship in Sochi, Russia. Carlsen is the 16th classical world chess champion — mor...
Today, the very top chess players in the world can make good livings from the game. Magnus Carlsen and Vishy Anand, who will play this month’s world chess championship in Russia, made more than $1 million each of the past two years from ch...
So far, I have only been covering the world championship matches where the title actually changed hands. However, since this series has turned into not just a look at the instructive and beautiful endgames played at the highest level of chess, b...
Am I going to write about chess players misbehaving during their games? Not really, at least not this time. In this article I will try to show you that chess can really be beautiful and surprisingly or not, this can be achieved without sacrificing...
I’m a hard man to please, and no more so than when it comes to chess books. I expect honesty, I expect diligence, I expect innovation, and, perhaps most difficult of all, I expect my short attention span to be entertained at all times. It&rs...
Imagination is a vital component of every attacking player's arsenal. When attacking, it is easy to assume that a certain move or sequence is forced, thereby allowing your opponent to build up a sudden defensive bastion or attain counterplay. In ...
One of the most interesting continual threads in the chess.com forums is called "Post Your Own Miniatures Here." Many very good players post their less-than-thirty-moves games showing off their skill, and sometimes brilliance, in punishing we...
Mikhail Botvinnik had regained the world championship in 1958, but soon after the chess world's attention was captured by the rapid ascent of a young player with an unusually sharp and creative style: the Latvian Mikhail Tal. Frequently ma...
Hello chess.com readers! I'm absolutely thrilled to share with you some groundbreaking research on the little understood link between world chess champions and intergalactic debris avoidance. You see, ever since there have been chessplayers the...
American women had been playing chess long before establishment of the USCF in the late 1930s. In fact, as early as the mid 1890s, an officially conducted match was played between two highly considered lady chess players to determine the be...
Shortly after the end of World War II, Alexander Alekhine died, allegedly by choking, in a mostly empty hotel on the windswept coast of Portugal. He left the world championship crown vacant, for the first time since Steinitz became the first wor...
The game of chess has a storied history dating back to about 600 AD, with many momentous events in those 1500 years. About half a billion people today play chess worldwide, and the game has been adopted by cultures in every continent ...
The Vieux Carré or French Quarter, cradled in the crescent of the Mississippi River, was the original site of La Nouvelle-Orléans. Although during the 19th century New Orleans expanded and become more Americanized eroding the influe...
There is arguably no other game with the timeless staying power and global reach of chess. Unlike most of the other games and sports played today by millions around the world, chess has a history that spans millennia. While chess has change...
One hundred years ago the chess world witnessed one of the greatest chess tournaments of all time, Saint Petersburg 1914. Its storylines were numerous and compelling: Capablanca's early domination, Alekhine's first major international success, Rub...
