As we move along in our exploration of the endgames that defined the battles for the world championship, we come to the 1894 match between Emanuel Lasker and Wilhelm Steinitz, which took place in New York, Philadelphia, and Montreal. In the year...
Dear readers! Over the next couple months I will be doing a series of articles covering the endgames played in world championship matches over the years. Through this series, we will be seeing how endgame play evolved as well as learning about som...
Recently, IM Jeremy Silman contributed an article featuring the talent of Ignatz Kolisch, one of the strongest, if not the strongest, player during the 1860s. Mr. Silman's article, Kolisch: Unknown Tactical Monster, demonstrated Kolis...
(I want to thank chess.com’s finest chess historian, batgirl, for articles shared, the photos you see in this article, and her very useful feedback when I asked her about Kolisch. If you don’t follow her blogs and articles you are foolishly depriv...
"The biggest risk is not taking one." Many of the greatest chess players in history are compulsive risk-takers. From Paul Morphy to Mikhail Tal to Bobby Fischer to Alexei Shirov, tournament success (especially at a high level) frequently h...
Paul Morphy, Spring Hill College, 1854 This is a highly unusual article for me. I have no love for chess engines. Additionally, I have severe reservations about trying to compare modern players with 19th cenutry players. It has alwa...
Imagining that the pieces have stable values which are written in stone is an oversimplification of chess. One of the ways to become a better player is to develop a more subtle understanding of the relative values of pieces. Often a piece gains ...
It has been said that the second World Champion, Emanuel Lasker, was unique among the top players of his time period in that he didn't create a chess school of thought. Others have said that he did create a school - the "psychological school." It ...
Hello, and welcome to my first article for chess.com. Given that I'm not a professional chess player (far from it) and that my actual occupation is in music it was easy to decide upon the subject of music and chess, especially as there's been so ...
February 10 commemorated the 150th birthday of Max Harmonist. I first came across Harmonist in I.A. Horowitz's book, "The Golden Treasury of Chess" and was entralled by the included game: Max Harmonist2-10-1864 -...
"What rules do you break the least (most)?" I'm a US Chess Federation Senior Tournament Director, so I try not to break any rules at all! For example, I never move my knights like bishops and I press my clock after each move. But I think the ques...
When I was doing readers’ games (and I’ll return to that at some point next year) I would heap praise on good moves or even interesting moves, and I wouldn’t hesitate to call a horrible move what it was... horrible. Some readers ...
My last article didn’t have any chess puzzles, which I know Chess.com readers enjoy. To make up for that, we’ll have a simple article this week composed entirely of puzzles. And, as I did in Part 2 of this series, all examples will be ...
Due to the crash of my website email address (which has finally been fixed), I didn’t look at my business letters for a month and a half. There were about 60 waiting for me. One was from a guy that wanted me to give him a study program that featur...
It’s not easy to find time to read chess books when there’s a World Championship match going on at the same time. Still, chess publishers around the globe managed to reach me over the last few months, and I felt compelled to read some ...
There is no question that chess masters are lightyears ahead of the average player in both technical skill and understanding. Sometimes we even think of these players as superhuman at least in chess terms and that perception remains pretty ...
Rudolf Spielmann was born in Vienna on May 5, 1883, and he learned how to play chess at a very young age. Reti, in his classic book Masters of the Chessboard, said this: “He learned to play while still a boy and was exhibited in public as ...
"Should I continue playing a weak opening if I know it well?" This is one of those questions that depends on more information, such as: "How weak is the opening?" "Who considers it weak?" "Who are you playing", etc. I gave the example of the "W...
Johannes Zukertort was born September 7th, 1842 in Lublin, Poland. It’s always interesting to wonder what a person will eventually become — a life in the military perhaps, a businessman, will he struggle to survive, a doctor or lawyer, or will he ...
"After Anderssen's departure, Paul Morphy declared he would play no more even matches, and, certainly, his resolve was justified by the unheard of manner in which he had walked over all opponents." -Frederick Edge &n...
On a site like this with active forums, one question comes up more than any other. Who is the greatest chess player of all time? There are many factors that influence people's opinions, including longevity and dominance, but one I like to use is c...
What some people may not realize is that before Anderssen rose to fame by winning the first international tournament at London in 1851, before his Immortal and Evergreen games, before his stunning loss to Morphy and less stuning loss to Ste...
On today's show the great majority of questions involved getting better at chess, and most involved openings (with a smattering of endgames thrown in). I think many players have this "improvement model" in their head where they memorize an opening...
I have some games of Prince Andrei Dadiani of Mingrelia that one usually can't find in any database. I had published these elsewhere, but wanted to put them all in one place. First a few...
