Losing is no fun! Unfortunately, all chess players end up in lost positions sometimes. The best ones know how to escape as often as possible and steal draws and wins from busted positions. Here are the techniques you need to know to be a chess Hou...
Chess has often been described as a mix of sport, art and science. This laconic definition long ago became an axiom for many generations of chess players. However, in the last 20 years or so, things changed dramatically. Yes, it is still sport; ju...
There's no way around it—every chess game starts with the opening. These first few moves are crucial to determining how the rest of the game will go. Because of this, learning how to play the opening well can drastically improve your results...
I would like to start this article with a warning: what you are about to see cannot be unseen. I'll understand if you click away right now. But if you're brave enough to power through this, get ready to see the nine most awful chess sets you've ev...
It's evening in Romania, and WFM Maria Yugina and GM Mihail Marin are sitting on the couch at home for our interview. Their rescue dog, Foxy, bounces around the room, playing around and chasing her own tail, at one point disconnecting the camera a...
I still remember my childhood evenings, watching Searching for Bobby Fischer over and over, the script becoming nearly a manual for my chess pursuits. Even in the mornings before venturing to my earliest scholastic tournaments, I found inspiration...
With two IM norms under his belt and over a decade of chess-teaching experience, FM Michel Coto Mederos is well-versed in coaching students online and in person. Some of his young pupils have even become national champions in their age categories,...
Last month marked 88th birthday of GM Eduard Gufeld, who was born March 19, 1936 in Kyiv, Ukraine. Even though he died over 20 years ago in 2002, he is well-remembered for his entertaining style of play and strong sense of humor. Among many pictur...
The games begin on Thursday, April 4, 2024, for the FIDE Candidates Tournament and FIDE Women's Candidates Tournament! They are being held simultaneously in Toronto, Canada. This article has all the information you need to watch, follow, a...
As eight of the world's very best grandmasters—GMs Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura, Alireza Firouzja, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu, Gukesh Dommaraju, Vidit Gujrathi, and Nijat Abasov—descend on Toronto, Canada for the...
NM Ben Johnson is the mastermind behind Perpetual Chess, one of the world's most-loved chess podcasts. He has spoken to grandmasters, world champions, adult improvers, content creators, and other luminaries of the chess world every week since star...
One of my first chess books was Richard Reti's Chess Textbook. The title of the book was a bit misleading, since the book was absolutely useless for total beginners. I assume that it was implied that any Soviet schoolboy knew the rules of chess as...
Dylan Quercia is a multi-faceted creator, chess player, and coach who has helped students improve their game for over 20 years. Dylan—a.k.a. Coach Q— is also one of the driving forces behind the film King Chess, an award-winning docume...
The world is full of chess advice. You will find all sorts of ideas in books, videos, and articles. While most of the wisdom you receive will help your game, here are five popular pieces of advice that you are better off ignoring. Don't Play B...
Last time we talked chess with ChatGPT, it had all sorts of weird ideas and terrible advice about chess. So, of course we left it at that, right? Au contraire. We doubled down—literally. We added another AI, Google's Gemini, into the mix a...
March's monthly update is here; it's time to catch up on everything that happened in February and get a preview of all the March madness heading your way. Unleash your inner detective with a murder mystery, celebrate International Women's Day wi...
FIDE recently awarded honorary grandmaster titles to IMs Iivo Nei and Andreas Dueckstein. I think it is a very good practice to reward famous chess veterans for their past great results and lives devoted to chess. While reading this news, a questi...
Hi, my name is Lula. And I play chess... or at least I did, until I accidentally took an eight-month classical chess break and moved to Paris, France, to pursue my dreams as a chic cat mom. But now I'm back, and I just played my first tournament...
I had the chance to sit down and interview Detroit legend, National Master John Brooks! FM James Canty, also a Detroit native and chess family to Brooks, was there to aid tech support and even give a few of his own thoughts about Brooks. They were...
Artificial intelligence is well on its way to controlling the world, or so the computers would have us believe. In reality, computers on their own are still pretty dumb things, even when they appear smart. We spent some time asking ChatGPT some ...
Rochelle Ballantyne is a USCF candidate master as well as a lawyer, and was once featured in the award-winning documentary, Brooklyn Castle. Her inspirational story ranges from being a student of the chess success hotspot, I.S. 318, to being recog...
A fan-favorite Chessable course creator, GM Erwin l’Ami has quite literally written the book on some of the most popular ways to start a game with the black pieces. Thousands of people have benefited from his work as one of the chess world...
When I was just starting in chess, our chess club's team went to participate in one of the national competitions. Here I need to mention that unlike the U.S. Nationals, open to anyone who knows how to move pieces, the Soviet Nationals were highly ...
At just 33 years old, GM Magnus Carlsen has conquered pretty much every peak in the world of chess. On his journey to achieving G.O.A.T. status, he has also made his mark in history setting some incredible records. Some of these records seem des...
In the chill of February 2022, Ralf Keller was procrastinating work in his hometown Paderborn, Germany, and decided to play on Chess.com. Simultaneously, across the miles in Como, Italy, Valeria Oomen, while contemplating her life, also logged on ...
