I prepared for my first chess tournament for weeks. Every night, I played a rapid game -- and then studied it, reviewing my moves to see where I missed a tactic, where I anticipated the wrong move, where I could have pressed for better advantage...
1943 The 1943 tournament was held from July 5th - July 11 Anthony Santasiere and Pfc. George Shainswift shared the $50 first prize award. Santasiere, who espoused Romanticism, played defensi...
Chess is both a game, and a sport! Here are ten ways that chess is a sport: 1. Chess is physically demanding. Chess players do not compete based on athletic prowess, but it is essential for elite chess players to be in excellent physical s...
In my recent article, "The Lonely Knight Checkmate," I discussed a very uncommon situation where a checkmate is delivered by a knight and the winner has no other pieces on the board besides pawns. Such situations are indeed so rare that all t...
Many chess players have a limited understanding of the game. They think it’s all about mating the enemy king. They think it’s all about tactics and attack. They think it’s about creating threats. Of course, all these things are i...
1941 The 1941 Ventnor City Invitational took place on the Municipal Pier from July 5-13. Of those initially invited, Jack Collins, Harry Morris and Olaf Uvestad couldn't accept and were replace...
When I read the recent news that the Azerbaijani GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov crossed the magic 2800 mark, I wasn't surprised. Well, actually I was surprised that it didn't happen many years ago. You see, while it is difficult for me to tell wh...
The clock now shows 12:18 am where I am sitting in Oslo. 19 minutes past a devastating day. I just got home from a very eventful day at work, and my initial plan was to pour a glass of wine and finish off the second article in this column. It la...
Though I played the late, great grandmaster Arthur Bisguier in Canada a long time ago (he beat me), I didn’t really know the man. Photo courtesy US Chess. However, knowing a man is one thing, but knowing his chess is quite another! Thoug...
Introduction Ventnor City is a charming resort community on New Jersey's Absecon Island, snuggled between Margate City and the more famous Atlantic City. In the Spring of 1939 Richard W. Wayne...
The top chess player in the United States will be in action today on Chess.com as Wesley So battles the Dutch number-one Anish Giri in the first round of the 2017 Speed Chess Championship, the strongest tournament ever held online. Cou...
Last time, we started to analyze the old game Charousek-Alapin and learned a useful trick that can be used in variety of openings. As a rule, you can learn more than just one idea from a game played by a strong player. Let's see w...
This series is all about the classic games that affected me in a profound manner as a young teen (15 years old). In general, they were positional games, since for a kid that grew up on attacking chess and combinations (12 to 14 years old...
When I began playing chess, I had no idea how to begin a game. I would stare at the row of pawns, wondering which one I should order forward, without an idea of why. Or I’d hop a knight into the open board and hope for the best. There are ...
In his book "School of Excellence: Endgame Analysis," IM Mark Dvoretsky analyzes two very similar endgames. He writes: "The game Sultan Khan-Tartakower, played in 1931, was indeed almost completely identical to Dolmatov's [game played in 1988]. ...
In the latter part of 1941 the USCF, only three years old, started finalizing its plans for the 1942 performance of its crown jewel, the U.S. Championship. But in December the unthinkable happened and the United St...
Most chess players like to study games by masters and grandmasters. Indeed, many of these games are real works of art and you can enjoy them immensely. Of course, you can also learn from such games. I still remember the shock I experienced ...
Every chess game starts with a "time control" - how long each player has to move. And every game ends with a "result" - why did it end? A friend asked me about how each time control impacts the result, and I had no idea! So I took a look. ...
It's a shame that the grandmaster Nigel Short is not as well known to the general public as much as he used to be. In the 1990s he was one of the best chess players in the world and even played a match vs. Garry Kasparov, trying...
Yes.* *Speed chess is good for you (meaning it can help your slow chess, too) but doing it "incorrectly" could be harmful. Let's digress... A few years ago our Main Line Chess Club hosted a seminar by WGM Jennifer Shahade. At the end...
At of this writing, GM Hou Yifan is the sole leader of the super tournament in Baden Baden. Her play in this tournament so far is simply unbelievable and each game is a textbook example of good chess. Photo: Georgios Souleidis. Here is t...
GM Emil Sutovsky recently posted some shocking news on his Facebook page: a computer program, Ponanza, beat the best shogi player in the world. Not only that, but the computer program pretty much introduced a novelty on the very first move: no pro...
The Chess.com member Cubronzo asked: “I’ve been playing chess for about a year now and my playing strength keeps going up and down. My main problem is my ability to see ahead in a chess position. Do you have any advice on how I could c...
There are many different ways to improve your chess, but few of them can compete with the time-proven method of studying games played by great chess players. Indeed, this way you learn all the elements of chess from opening to endgam...
