American Woman - Part V
Preface: An official U.S. Women's Chess Championship has existed for nearly 80 years. The USCF lists 1937 as the first year. There have been many strong and important women players over the early...
Preface: An official U.S. Women's Chess Championship has existed for nearly 80 years. The USCF lists 1937 as the first year. There have been many strong and important women players over the early...
Preface: An official U.S. Women's Chess Championship has existed for nearly 80 years. The USCF lists 1937 as the first year. There have been many strong and important women players over the early yea...
In this series, Chess.com’s best hosts join forces to cover the 2014 and 2015 ChessKid National Invitational Championships. These talented youngsters provide plenty of educational value for our expert panel. Watch and learn as the future sta...
You’ve all heard the joke about how the first rule of CrossFit is you must talk about CrossFit. And the second rule is that you must talk about CrossFit. So let’s talk about CrossFit. And chess. There are many parallels between chess...
Boris Gelfand’s musings in a recent interview on the benefits of children playing chess for its own sake - “Only a fraction will play professionally, but the rest will acquire the skill of strategic planning and the habit of thinking, ...
I get a lot of letters from Chess.com members, and though their ratings run the gamut, I do my best to address all ratings as best I can. Today I’ll turn my attention to two players below 1500 : Mr. Prashant1994 and Mr. Rrrtttyyyuuuiii. I&...
When we analyzed "An Opening Line For Masters" last week, I chose GM Igor Zaitsev as our opening guide for a reason. It is difficult to name another chess player who introduced that many absolutely paradoxical opening novelties. Today ...
By Maret Thorpe. Photo: Tae Moon [Reprinted with permission of the author and US Chess.] “I’m so honored to have made it on to the first iteration of the Top Women Age 50 and Over! I hope these newly added lists encourage mo...
Following this video guide, you'll retrace the steps of the Chess.com's greatest blitz and bullet combatants (Nakamura, Caruana, So...) as they wage a battle of wills in an epic three hour Death Match! Share the woes of time trouble, mouse slips, ...
Many openings go by various names. The opening(s) we'll be looking at below not only go by many names, but the situations, like gambits themselves, can get messy, muddy and uncertain very quickly. The title of this article is Martin...
Jacob Henry Sarratt (1772-1819) Jacob Henry Sarratt, born in 1772, worked primarily as schoolmaster but was much better known for his avocations which, of course, included chess. After Philidor's death, Verdoni (along with Leger, Carl...
I didn’t intend to write a 4th Cracked Grandmaster Tales article, but so many Chess.com members asked me to do another that I decided to share a few more (true) stories. I hope you enjoy these as much as you did the others. Be warned: there might ...
The famed Soviet school of chess has produced hundreds of grandmasters and dozens of world champions. Thousands of chess coaches teach their students using "the Soviet training method." But who can really describe what exactly was/is the So...
Can you identify some of the most famous chess players ever? Find out in another fun contest here on Chess.com. If you whiffed on our devilishly hard 2014 Holiday Puzzler, take heart: all you have to do this time is fill in the last name o...
Chess is a game with a long history and many more statistics and records than there are squares on the board. Chess fans have been fervently compiling facts and numbers on the game, inspired by the truth that unlike so many other competitive pur...
Chess.com member Nietsoj wrote: “I read your recent post where you answered a question about aiming for a 2000 rating. Just as so many other amateur players, I have the same goal, and I am wondering what a realistic training program would look li...
There are many definitions for the concept, "killer instinct." One of the better ones I found, from Dictionary.com, tell us it's "an aggressive and ruthless determination to win or attain a goal." Maybe it was an eventual place of di...
A Superior Tactician Chess.com member Mzeekimaro wrote: “I am a big fan of you and your chess books. I am rated 1581 by FIDE. I want to be very good at tactics. What do you recommend I do? I want to be labeled as a superior tactician.&rdqu...
Who are the most interesting chess players of all time? It’s an interesting question. Are we talking about the best players ever? Even that’s a tricky thing to define. Are the best players the most accomplished? We could go by supe...
The recent Women's World Championship was a fascinating event. You could find everything we love about chess competitions: neat combinations, unpredictable results (will we ever forget Natalia Pogonina's amazing comebacks in almost every single ma...
Everyone knows the popular, "normal" openings played at the top level of chess. The Ruy-Lopez, the Sicilian, the French: thousands of pages have been written about these world-championship-level openings. But what if you're not playing a...
What if Chess.com added a food consumption element to its Death Matches? On which meal would GMs Sam Shankland and Georg Meier prefer to gorge? For this and other pressing and non-pressing questions, we caught up with the players. You can read b...
Chess is not a team game. It's an individual struggle between two minds to destroy each other -- at least, over the chessboard. But that doesn't mean chess players have to be loners. It's only natural that passionate chess players are drawn to...
The idea of a “bucket list” is not a new one. It’s an age-old concept to compile a list of things you’d like to do before you “kick the bucket,” or pass away. Unlike traveling the world or buying your dream ho...