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...
In this series, and especially in this particular article, I’m trying to instill a love of chess history with Chess.com members. For those who simply don’t like to read, or those who hate chess history, just go right to the puzzles. Ho...
Isaac Leopold Rice I had, of course, heard about Prof. Isaac L. Rice and his gambit as well as his famous Rice Gambit Tournaments. But my superficial impression over the years was that the gambit wasn't particularly good and that ...
Louis Paulsen was a conte...
In Part 2 of this series I pointed out that Lasker’s tactics are a bit different than tactics by Tal or Kasparov or Alekhine. In fact, when you take a long look at Lasker’s games, you realize that tactics is the fuel that drives all hi...
In Part 1 of my series about Emanuel Lasker’s tactical prowess, I mentioned his various chess skills and how many aren’t aware of his outstanding tactical abilities. What I didn’t clearly point out was the general nature of his t...
My Top Tips for Chess Improvement included hanging out with strong players and reviewing your games with them, ala The Improvement Feedback Loop, consistently trying your best on every move (since it only takes one bad move to lose a game), and us...
In general, when one asks what any World Champion’s strengths were/are, it’s fairly easy to give a somewhat educated answer. Steinitz: the first master of positional chess. Alekhine: dynamic, combinative genius. Capablanca: endgame mas...
According to a fairly trustworthy source: "Isidor Arthur Gunsberg (November 2, 1854 – May 2, 1930) was a chess player, best known for narrowly losing the 1891 World Chess Championship match to Wilhelm Steinitz." "In the late 1880s and early 1890...
This week I will be reviewing a unique book - 200 Open Games, by the former "Vice-World Champion", David Bronstein. Rather than fully annotated games, this book presents 200 short vignettes, each followed by an un-annotated game, with one diagram....
Chess is a game of knowledge and skill. Yet many players - as evidenced from the majority of questions I get on the show - seem to think improvement initiatives lean toward the knowledge side, typical questions being "Where can I learn more about ...
How to evaluate a position? In this article I would like to cover a topic or even a skill which is very important for practically every chess player. I really like asking my students one little question: "How do you evaluate a position?". In many...
There is a funny thing about chess: to succeed, you only need to be good at it. Up to a point, Fate can turn its back on you, but you can override it by simply playing really well. The upshot is that in the chess world, there are some great player...
“The cavalcade, the jamboree of life I thought was meant for me. I never dreamed that it would be replaced by this eternity of isolation.” – The Mighty Boosh &nbs...
Today, possibly 90% of chess is played on the internet and possibly 90% of the chess games on the internet are played at fast time controls. Classical chess is still the Gold Standard, but fast games...
BREAKING A WELL-KNOWN RULE luke-duke (1206) - bagpiper123456 (1198), chess.com (14 days per move), 2012 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 Here White usually plays 4.Ba4, keeping the tension. However, the Exchange Variation (4.Bxc6) also had/has many ...
In the first part of this article we discussed the cases where two Bishops are a very powerful weapon. We also analyzed Steinitz's games where the first World Champion showed the correct way to take advantage of the Bishop pair. In the next ...
Best match player. William Steinitz played 27 chess matches from 1862 to 1896, and won 25 of the 27. He won 160 games, lost 70, and drew 57. Best Selling Chess Book. Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess has sold over one million copies. Best world c...
About 30 years ago I was playing in a kid's team tournament. I don't remember who won the tournament, my own result or even who played there. The only thing I remember about the tournament is what happened during one of our team's gatherings...
There is hardly a world championship match that illustrates the dichotomy of attack and defense more clearly than the two battles between Mikhail Chigorin and Wilhelm Steinitz. Therefore, I have decided to use a game from this match for the week’s...
After Paul Morphy, the next great chess player was Harry Pillsbury (1872-1906). Harry Nelson Pillsbury was born on December 5, 1872 in Somerville, Massachusetts, located just north of Boston. His father, Luther Batchelder Pillsbury (1832-1905),...
The so-called Steinitz variation in the French Defense arises after the next sequence of moves: 1.e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. e5 Nfd7 5. f4 c5 where Black gives up space for an opportunity to attack White's center. When he succeeds, the results a...
