This week we shall return to the Sicilian Najdorf English Attack. It has always been a fascinating and a favourite opening for most of the top Grandmasters. Even the legendary Kasparov used it regularly with huge success and contributed a lot in t...
Mikeyt asked: How realistic is it for me to set a goal of achieving a master chess rating? To help you out, I’ll give a little info on my background. In my younger days I played myself to a 1900+ USCF rating without ever putting serious study in...
Some weeks had passed and Felix had made some experiences with his new opening move 1. b3. He had bought a book according to this opening system and had tried it online in several games. It was not a glowing love but a modest satisfaction.- He ha...
We have seen what should be done in many of the openings that we discussed over the past several articles, hence today we decided to take a look at some of the big “NO NO” ideas in the Ruy Lopez 9.d4 variation. I (Magesh) am currently touring Aust...
Robert James Fischer was born March 9, 1943. He was over the board World Champion 1972-1975. Hans Berliner was born January 27, 1929 in Berlin, Germany. Berliner's family moved to the United States to escape the Nazis. Hans was eight. Five years l...
In my first two posts according to that theme I advised to be patient. And there is a good reason for such a patience. It needs time to experiment with different openings before you may be sure, which opening may be suitable and which one not.- *...
This week we shall see the 8.Qe2!? idea in the 6.Bg5 Sicilian Najdorf System. 8.Qe2 has always been considered to be one of the dangerous systems against the mighty Najdorf. Many Elite players like Ivanchuk, Radjabov, Shirov etc have included this...
Athanatos asked: Hello, I have a question on the King’s Indian. I don’t really know if it is the good place to do that, but after reading a lot of your post I decided to ask. My last game (I’m White) was like this: 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nf3 Bg7 4....
Viswanathan Anand, who was born December 11, 1969, became India's first grandmaster in 1988. In 1995, he played for Garry Kasparov's world title and lost 10.5-7.5. Anand won the FIDE championship in 2000 by defeating Alexei Shirov 3.5-0.5. He lost...
More often than not in our lives, we ask this question to ourselves, “Was it worth it?” We are sure that this question haunts many of our readers too in their games as Chess is just a mini version of life. Personally on several occasions, I have f...
Arthur Bisguier was born October 8, 1929 in the Bronx in New York City. In 1950, the first year of FIDE titles, he became an International Master. He became the 39th International Grandmaster in 1957. He has told me "there were so few of us." N...
This week we shall see the Queen's Gambit Declined 5.Bf4 system. The Queen's Gambit Declined is one of the most solid structures against 1.d4. QGD has been played extensively played throughout the history of chess. During the beginning of 19th Cen...
Magnus Carlsen (pictured), today's number one, recently played the Ruy Lopez with 5.d3. This is something old, strong, and relevant now. Other players are making this move part of their repertoire. Sometimes, d3 is played later as part of an Anti-...
It is time to get back to the English opening today. We will study one of the games I played which started off as a Reti opening and later transposed into an English opening. Annotating one's own game definitely has some advantages to it, it helps...
rosadot asked: I have a question concerning preparation for a specific opponent, and about move order. I am preparing for a tournament game (club closed championship final, one game a week). The player I am facing always tries to play the Stonew...
Some of you might be playing in the vote chess game against me at Chess.com. If so, then you probably know that the Opocensky variation of the Sicilian Najdorf goes the following way: 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cd 4.Nd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Be2. This is a q...
In recent times due to advances in opening theory, Black is struggling to equalize in most of the systems. There is no opening for Black in which he can guarantee a comfortable position from which he can play for a win. These days everybody has a...
We all have our favorite openings. Ones that we have studied thoroughly and have played dozens of times. Whenever one of our games begins with that opening, it evokes warm memories of brilliant wins from the past and naturally gives us a feeling...
The Maroczy Bind is an opening, or to be more precise a pawn formation, named after the Hungarian Grandmaster Geza Maroczy. It is characterized by white pawns at c4 and e4, and the exchange of white's d-pawn for black's c-pawn. White binds down Bl...
The Super Solid Chebanenko has always been a trouble for 1.d4 players as we saw in the previous articles( http://www.chess.com/article/view/the-chebanenko-system-by-gm-magesh-and-gm-arun and http://www.chess.com/article/view/the-chebanenko-slav-pa...
There are many gambits that have almost disappeared from play because theoreticians have found a way to equalize but not refute them. The Goering gambit is one such gambit. Authorities consider an early advance of the deep on to be a complete rem...
Levon Aronian was born October 6, 1982 in Yerevan, Armenia. In 1994 he won the World Youth Championship U-12. In 2002 he won the Armenian Championship and the World Junior Championship. Aronian won the World Rapid Championship in 2009. He won the ...
It is useful to have a few extra opening plans to add a little variety to your play. If you are a standard e4 player, there are many interesting gambits that lead to a sharp game. In this article I will show you an alternative to the Max Lange, wh...
This week we shall have a look at the King's Indian Defence Classical System. This is our 3rd article in the King's Indian and our previous ones were on the Bayonet attack. We wanted the readers to know more on the Classical ideas in the KID where...
