In various lines of the Sicilian, Black plays ...a6 and ...b5, which sometimes gives White the chance to sacrifice a minor piece on b5. The knight that ends up on b5 subsequently captures on d6, the queens are traded, and a typical endgame arises....
In the Sicilian, we tend to think of the queenside as Black's domain. Black's open c-file, which allows real pressure on c2 as well as support for a knight on c4, along with the easy possibility of expanding on the queenside by ...b5, generally gi...
I will begin a series of article on various endgames arising from the Open Sicilian. The endgames share certain characteristic features - especially the trade of White's d-pawn for Black's c-pawn, giving Black two center pawns against one. Black h...
The Philadelphia Open recently concluded in my home city with the victory of the top seed, former world championship challenger, Gata Kamsky. Kamsky has a very unusual style, a style which I think many people neither understand or appreciate. I ...
In a recent tournament, one game reached a certain ending which I had previously played a full eight years ago. That was a decent memory of a very different time. I wasn't even an IM yet, and I was still trying to establish a life in Philadelphia ...
Imagining that the pieces have stable values which are written in stone is an oversimplification of chess. One of the ways to become a better player is to develop a more subtle understanding of the relative values of pieces. Often a piece gains ...
In the first part of my series on Emanuel Lasker's endgame play, we saw how he began the St. Petersburg 1914 tournament rather poorly, nearly failing to qualify for the finals. Even in the finals he was still playing catch-up to José Capabl...
It has been said that the second World Champion, Emanuel Lasker, was unique among the top players of his time period in that he didn't create a chess school of thought. Others have said that he did create a school - the "psychological school." It ...
There often comes a time in a chess game when decisive action is needed. One must change the status quo or find a sudden solution to a long-standing problem. It is funny how this works out - chess is an equation, and decisive changes in the positi...
When I was new to chess, I had several fantasy scenarios of dramatic brilliancies in tournament games. Of course there was the standard "sacrifice everything for checkmate;" but also I had an unusual one - a long combination leading to all the pie...
In this article, the fourth part of my "A Pawn Up" series, we will be seeing a game that I played myself. This was the first round of the Eastern Open, which was held in Potomac, Maryland. This tournament always takes place in the time between Chr...
How does the young Anatoly Karpov win with an extra pawn? This will be the subject of today's article. In 1972 Karpov was twenty-one years old, and a new young talent. He was competing in the Soviet Team Championship, held in Moscow. His opponen...
Continuing our series on the technique of exploiting an extra pawn, we move along to a different kind of situation compared to our example from last week (Gligoric-Smyslov). In last week's example, we saw Smyslov, with an extra - although somewhat...
When I first started playing, it eventually dawned on me that there were only two gears to play chess: Try your best or resign. For a critical tale of how I reached that conclusion, please refer to The Train Story. Today I would like to relate an...
Greetings, chess fans! This is the final part of my series of endgame studies. This month I have learned so much about these wonderful pieces of chess art and their composition. The beauty and majesty of this royal game we all love continues to am...
"And the rest is technique..." You've seen that annotation before. What does it mean? The rest is easy? Or we should pay less attention to the rest because it is less artistic? In fact, the technique of winning with an extra pawn is one of the m...
Hey everybody! My month of endgames and beauty is drawing to a close. This week was pretty harrowing for me. I was uninspired and frustrated, staring at a chess board for hours without seeing so much as a tiny tactical twist. Creating endgame stud...
A distinctive structure arises from the French Defense, featuring White's space advantage and Black's restricted light-squared bishop. Against this, Black hopes for counterplay via the pawn break ...f6 and queenside counterplay on the c-file and o...
En la eterna lucha de alfil contra caballo muchos jugadores se preguntan cuál pieza es mejor y existen algunos principios generales en el medio juego que se hacen aún más evidente en los finales. Pasaremos a revisar un caso donde la superiorida...
Another week goes by, and my efforts to create chess beauty continue. Once again, I have failed to create true beauty on the chessboard. This week I began with slightly more "original" ideas, ideas that I have not found in other studies. However, ...
It was the fifth game of the 1963 world championship match between Tigran Petrosian and Mikhail Botvinnik. Petrosian, the challenger, had not yet won a game against Botvinnik, neither in the match nor at any time before. Botvinnik was at +1 in the...
For the past week, 5 hours a day, I have worked on studies. Every morning at 10:00 or so I sit indian-style on the floor of my room and begin to work with my floor board. I also have a magnetic board for when I am tired of sitting, and when I am u...
This game shows that the pawn endgame is not easy.It is necessary to calculate transition to it carefully. Эта партия показывает что пешечный эндшпиль бывает непрост.переход в него всегда надо аккуратно рассчитывать. Dear chess lovers. ...
The Alapin Sicilian (1.e4 c5 2.c3) is an opening which particularly often leads to the transposition to a queenless middlegame. There are quite a few theoretical lines which lead to an early queen exchange, while keeping a tough, fighting game. In...
