While everyone is following closely the exciting WC match between Anand and Topalov, I still have to pay my dues and share with you my analysis of the Pogonina vs Chess.com game. The first part of the article included a story about the game, some ...
Before I get into today's column, I'd like once again to thank Grandmaster Bhat for his excellent contributions to this site for over a year. His articles have been uniformly excellent, and he took the time to come up with thought-provoking questi...
Last week, I shared my best game from Seville. This time, I'll move on to my second tournament of the trip in Gibraltar (the GibTelecom Masters) and show my best game from there. After a win in the first round, I had drawn my next 3 games against...
Pogonina vs the World match took place from December 24, 2009 to March 28, 2010. During these three months a few thousand chess players from over 100 countries have been competing against top female grandmaster Natalia Pogonina. Among those who ha...
Here is yet another exciting game where the players castle on opposite sides. Both quickly begin an attack, starting with some sharp pawn thrusts. For a while, the situation looks unclear, but killer queen sacrifice and some pretty back-rank play ...
This game is a very nice creative achievement by Kasparov. The opening played leads to a wide-open position, and both players race to see who can get to the opposing king first. Though at first it looks as if Ivanchuck has defended well enough...
Rudolf Charousek (September 19, 1873, Prague – April 18, 1900, Budapest) was a Hungarian chess player. He had a tragically short career, and he was once called by Reuben Fine the John Keats of chess. A brilliant player and a tremendous talent,...
The Yugoslav attack in Sicilian dragon is one of the sharpest lines in chess. The starting position (tabiya) is this one: Normally white goes here for a sharp kingside attack,- often in the h-file -, and black counters at the queenside. Oft...
How should you play when you face an opponent who is hundreds of points higher rated than you are and has a wealth of experience? Should you play your regular opening or choose something tricky that might catch the opponent in a trap? Should you g...
Sacrifices of the major pieces used to be fairly common among top chess players, but nowadays are rarely seen when top grandmasters square off. However, in the game that follows, Nigel Short sacrifices his queen...after a mere seven moves have ...
Now that Hikaru Nakamura is our leading player let's take a look at his first victory over a GM, played back in 1998 when Hikaru was just 10 years old.
Most great games are almost hard to avoid. They are published in magazines and a variety of books and appear on websites all over the world. This game, which in my opinion contains some of Kasparov's best moves, did not get such a treatment. Both...
In this week's edition I would like to continue with last week's exciting theme! The knowledge of typical and common positions is a giant step towards chess mastery. Russian folkore tells us that there exist 300 secret positions that-- if learned...
Classic: Of the first or highest quality, class, or rank; serving as a standard, model, or guide. --Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. 05 Jan. 2010. There are no precise criteria for defining the classics in chess. It would be a game ...
In the following game, played in a simultaneous exhibition against a well-known senior master from Maryland, White plays a variation of the Bayonet Attack vs. the King's Indian Defense, throwing in 9. Nd2 before 10. b4. A war is waged over contro...
In July at the World Open, Ray Robson beat me in a very complicated Poison Pawn Winawer. I got my second crack at the new US hope at the SPICE Cup in the 3rd round. As at the World Open, I had the black pieces, and while the opening was a very dif...
Mikhail Tal, the former world champion, and Bent Larsen, the Great Dane, met in a semifinal candidates match in 1965. Larsen was ahead after winning game one. Tal won game two. Games three and four were draws. Larsen won game five and Tal came bac...
While I was writing my last article about the “Janowski Bishops,” I found an exciting game between Janowski and Chajes, New York, Rice Tournament, 1916. The combination conceived by Janowski, besides being too deep, has an interesting history. Fif...
The past two weeks, I've shared my games from rounds 4 and 6 of the Montreal International. This week, I want to share my game from the 5th round, as white against GM Sergei Tiviakov. With a draw against Bacrot in the books, I was looking to take...
The games of the old masters were characterized by a more free-wheeling attitude with respect to material. A development advantage was the holy grail for chess players, and they would strive for that lead by sacrificing whatever it took. Pawns wer...
The London 1883 chess tournament was one of the most important competitions of the nineteenth century where most of the leading player competed. It was won convincingly by Johannes Zukertort (22/26) ahead of Wilhelm Steinitz (19/26) by three point...
Hi everyone, and welcome to my second "annotated" game from my vast number of blitz games played on live chess here. This time the game is set to a mere 3 minutes for the entire game. Be prepared for one heck of a beautiful attacking pattern. ...
Miguel Najdorf (1910-1997) was born in Warsaw, Poland. He was playing at the Buenos Aires Olympiad in 1939 when World War II broke out, and decided not to attempt to return home, taking Argentine citizenship.Today I want to share with you a myster...
Zugzwang: A situation in which a player is limited to moves that cost pieces or have a damaging positional effect or A situation in a chess game in which a player is forced to make an undesirable or disadvantageous move.According to Nimzowitsch, w...
