The recent article by Vladimir Kramnik was quite fascinating. We've all had some weird "what if..." questions, like "what if people could fly?" or "what if there were no gravity?" Thanks to Kramnik and AlphaZero, we now see what happens to che...
For chess to flourish, we need a new challenge. The increasing strength of chess engines, the millions of computer games and the volumes of opening theory available to every player are making top-level chess less imaginative. Decisive games in s...
This began many years ago as an experimental type of entry in the chess.com forums. Originally conceived to be an examination of the development of chess throughout the entire 19th century, since it never garnered the i...
Last week, we learned about two friends, Dave and Detective Ron Miller, who were trying to stop a crime by a madman. While we don't know if they managed to solve the maniac's puzzles (I hope they did!), let me show you how they could easily do i...
Just like most people who love chess, I have certain favorite players. Notice how many times I've mentioned Mikhail Botvinnik, Mikhail Tal, Garry Kasparov and Magnus Carlsen in my articles and you'll get an idea of my chess prefer...
@Jed1w1zard writes: I am a club-level chess player. I was wondering if you could clear up an issue for me that I have repeatedly been encountering in my games. When I play as White, I typically like to play the London System since it’s a ...
Chess.com's newest coach of the month is IM Levy Rozman. Rozman is familiar to streaming fans, as his Twitch.tv/gothamchess channel is one of the largest and most successful on Twitch. Rozman brings a unique wit, humor and troll-shaming to the p...
The Puzzle Battle World Championship will kick off the 2020 Chess.com events calendar, starting on January 2, 2020, and running through January 5, 2020 on Chess.com/tv. Top players will demonstrate their tactical prowess on&nbs...
"Darn it!" Dave couldn't hide his frustration as the ringing doorbell distracted him from Sam Loyd's chess puzzle. "Whoever is there, please leave." Dave was whispering while still trying to solve the tricky checkmate in two. But the doorbe...
The generational meme wars are heating up as "OK, boomer" (often with the necessary comma omitted) is now a catch-all reply to trump any disagreement between the young and old. This unstoppable meme has made its way across the Internet, all over...
Chess is a very complicated game that requires utmost concentration. Therefore most of the time chess players have a very serious facial expression. I doubt that a fianchettoed bishop or a semi-open file would make many people laugh. Yet th...
How strong was Samuel Reshevsky in his prime? Well, he won the U.S. championship eight times, the same number as Bobby Fischer. Reshevsky also played eight times in the Chess Olympiads (six times on first board). Was he good enough to b...
Judit Polgar, the strongest female chess player of all time, speaks to David Cox about growing up as part of her father Laszlo's groundbreaking educational experiment, the famous touch-move controversy when she played Garry Kasparov in 1994 and wh...
When I was a student of famous Botvinnik-Kasparov school, the two living legends didn't just teach us how to play chess; they also taught us how to work on chess. The homework that each student would get by the end of a session was invaluable! O...
GM Larry Kaufman's book Kaufman's New Repertoire for Black and White is now available in Europe in all formats, and in the United States as an e-book. It will soon be sold worldwide in all formats, including as an e-book from Forward Che...
The Halloween Gambit is surely the spookiest way to start a chess game. If you're a conservative chess player who doesn't like to give away pieces, it may indeed be "2 spooky 👻4 u." Could this early knight sacrifice be a legitimate opening? No, ...
As we discussed in the previous article, people love chess for a variety of reasons. Our favorite game is a sport, art, science, fight and more, all at the same time! One of my favorite features of chess was well described by the great Ema...
The super-grandmaster Ian Nepomniatchi sat down with Chess.com ahead of his appearance in the 2019 FIDE World Fischer Random Chess Championship, where he will go head-to-head with Fabiano Caruana, Wesley So and the world champion Ma...
Samuel Reshevsky was born in Poland on November 26, 1911 and started to play chess at the age of four. He came to the U.S. permanently at age nine (1920). From 1924 to 1931 he quit chess completely to get an education in the U.S., and graduated...
IM Cyrus Lakdawala contributed to this article. In 1975, Bobby Fischer and Anatoly Karpov were set to play for the world chess championship. Fischer, the reigning world champion, argued with the world chess federation (FIDE) over the format fo...
In past articles we've discussed why people play bad openings and how to deal with such dubious lines. Are these openings really that bad for your chess? While the answer might seem quite obvious, the reality is not that simple. Let me giv...
Sports commentators love to mention chess during their broadcasts of football, basketball and baseball games, but often these shallow metaphors don't show a true understanding of chess. IM Daniel Rensch recently observed, while watching a sports...
Something Old Deep into the 19th century chess was still characterized by match play. The idea of tournaments was slow to catch on. Prior to the London International Tournament of 1851 (the...
When we learn the rules of chess and start playing, we never ask ourselves the question in the title of the article. We just enjoy the process of playing, that's all! But almost any person who has played chess for a long time is going to ask: "W...
One of the first things everyone learns playing chess is that the queen is the strongest piece on the board. Her power is amazing! She's worth nine pawns; she's majestic, extremely agile and has seemingly unlimited powers. Then, however, comes t...