After Bobby Fischer won the world championship in 1972, he was a hero -- not just in the U.S., but for chess players everywhere. But being a hero is not for everyone. Always hard-working and ambitious, Fischer had fought more against himself tha...
In our exploration of the endgames from the world title matches, we have now reached the most famous of all matches -- the so-called "Match of the Century." Besides the unusual and brilliant character of Bobby Fischer, this match is so well reme...
For the first time since Alekhine, there was a world champion not named "Botvinnik" who was also not merely renting the title for a year. The Armenian named Tigran Petrosian held the title of world champion, with his unusual, "left-handed" style o...
Mikhail Tal had come and gone; the older Mikhail (Botvinnik) was still on the throne of chess. But in 1963, another archetypal chess player which had heretofore not been seen made his appearance. Tigran Petrosian was born in 1929 in Tbilisi, Geo...
Throughout the second half of 1960 and the first few months of 1961, the world had an unusual sort of champion. Throughout most of the history of chess, its world champions have been -- at least to a large extent -- pragmatic and balanced players....
Marzaduri R- IM Sveshnikov V. 1/2 This game was a draw, but I found a nice plan to win for white, I share it with you.
Mikhail Botvinnik had regained the world championship in 1958, but soon after the chess world's attention was captured by the rapid ascent of a young player with an unusually sharp and creative style: the Latvian Mikhail Tal. Frequently ma...
At the time that Vasily Smyslov became world champion, a rule was in effect giving the previous champion an automatic rematch in the event that he lost the title. Mikhail Botvinnik benefited from this rule twice -- the first instance was with Smys...
After Alekhine's death and the subsequent 1948 world championship tournament (covered in my article last week), the chess world began the three-year world championship cycle, which would continue in relatively orderly fashion until Kasparov and Sh...
Shortly after the end of World War II, Alexander Alekhine died, allegedly by choking, in a mostly empty hotel on the windswept coast of Portugal. He left the world championship crown vacant, for the first time since Steinitz became the first wor...
After taking the world championship title from Jose Raul Capablanca in their 1927 match (covered last week), Alexander Alekhine defended his title twice against Efim Bogoljubow: in 1929 and again in 1934. Like Emanuel Lasker, Alekhine has also b...
As we move further from the misty past and closer to modernity in our exploration of the endgames of world championship matches, we come to the battle between the incumbent champion, Jose Raul Capablanca, and the challenger, Alexander Alekhine. ...
Hi all! I think everybody knows, the most draw chances, when a player has got material advantage/disadvantage is in the rook endgames. In this article I want to show some analysis, from a famous Jose Raul, Capablanca-Saviel, Tartakower game from ...
In our games we have the questions many times: Do I want to keep the bishop or the knight for the endgame. To be able to find the right answer we need to know the advantages and the disadvantages of the bishop and the knight. The bishop is strong...
As we move along in our exploration of the endgames that defined the battles for the world championship, we come to the 1894 match between Emanuel Lasker and Wilhelm Steinitz, which took place in New York, Philadelphia, and Montreal. In the year...
Dear readers! Over the next couple months I will be doing a series of articles covering the endgames played in world championship matches over the years. Through this series, we will be seeing how endgame play evolved as well as learning about som...
Last week, we broached the fascinating subject of endgame attacks, which is rarely addressed in chess literature as an individual concept. Today, I would like to zero in on a particular type of endgame: queen and bishop vs. queen and knight (QBQN)...
Two minor pieces against a rook - a very tricky material balance. In one situation, a rook and pawn defeats the two minor pieces. In another, two minor pieces run circles around a rook and two - or even three, as we see in today's game - pawns. An...
A material imbalance in the endgame provides an unusual type of play. Here we watch the spectacle of pieces, each with different capabilities, fighting, trying to change the terrain to their own advantage. It is like two knights on horseback fight...
For the second part of this series, we will turn to the classical master of defense - Emanuel Lasker. Lasker had an unusual skill for hanging on in the most difficult of positions while simultaneously goading his opponents into the abyss. Each mov...
There's no denying that, whatever your strength in chess, in some games you are going to have to cling to some floating debris just to stay over water. Anyone can fall into some opening preparation or make a blunder. Additionally, you have those g...
Wrapping up my series about endgames from the Sicilian, we will be discussing the relevance of the major open lines in that structure: the c- and d-files. In the basic Open Sicilian structure, White generally has primacy on the d-file and Black ...
In this article, I will be discussing another archetypal Sicilian endgame. This one occurs after White occupies d5 with a knight which is then traded off and recaptured by exd5. This structure frequently arises from the Dragon, Accelera...
Every year in May, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Chess Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina is organizing Individual national Youth and Junior Championship. This year organizer made event in Tuzla, nice city with chess tradition. By our rules in each cate...
