Arthur Bisguier faced the new kid, Bobby Fischer, in the third Rosenwald in 1956. In the same event Fischer's win against Donald Byrne was called the game of the century. Fischer was already a player. The kid played the King's Indian Defense, also...
A constructive plan for white in Ruy Lopez Exchanged Ruy Lopez Exchanged has always been an interesting alternative to the bishop’s retreat to a4 for White. With Bxc6, White damages Black’s pawn structure and either trades pieces to get into a fa...
When you have to drive somewhere you have never been before, there are two types of people. One type gets a map and plots a route to the destination, prints out driving directions from the computer, or uses a GPS navigator. The other type relies...
This week we shall take a look at the Ruy Lopez Chigorin defense. Personally I (Magesh) have played this variation as both white and black for quite some time. Not that I can call myself an expert in it, but we felt I have had quite a few interest...
Last week we saw the sidelines of the Botvinnik System and for this week we shall head into the mainlines of this system. This system a couple of years ago was considered very dangerous for Black and was played only by few Elite Players. But now t...
For better or for worse, the opening tends to be the aspect of the game that gets the most attention. More books have been written about that phase than the middlegame and endgame combined. This importance, though, is probably overstated at lower ...
ChessPaladin2009 asks: The subject of my question to you is: when White opens with the Queen Pawn, what are black’s best defensive opening option(s)? Some people say that Queen Pawn Openings always lead to positional chess games that often lack a...
This week in our article we shall see The Botvinnik System. We wanted the readers to understand the opening clearly. So to begin with we decided to check the side lines that are played by white against this system. In this system White is consider...
A blog appeared by farbror (10/05/2009) that claimed I seemed to be recommending the Latvian Gambit to chess.com readers while badmouthing the same opening on my site. Dear farbror and all the people that think I have turned into a Lativan Gambit...
I have long said that chess requires intelligence and character. This is the motto of the Grandmaster Chess School operated by Alexander Khalifman and Gennady Nesis. They express it as a formula, "chess = intellect + character." The school is in S...
This week we shall see an old line in the Sicilian Pelikan or the Sveshnikov Variation. This system was very popular in the seventies and after taking a break it sprung back to life in the late nineties especially after a couple of strong wins by ...
Basheer Unneenkutty asked: Today I had a game in which my opponent played 3…Nxe4? in the Petroff Defense: 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nxe5 Nxe4. I played 4.Qe2 (aiming Nc6+ to get black’s Queen). He responded with 4…d6 and after 5.Nxf7 Kxf7 6.Qxe4 I had ...
This week we shall study another interesting early g2-g4 idea in the Slav Defence. To play against the Slav Defence Meran is not everybody's choice. The side that comes up with a new idea has a better chance of winning the game. For white players ...
Chronotis asks: One bit of common advice for selecting openings is to choose those that match your style of play. I have three questions about this. Do players under master class really have a style other than patzer style? Supposing we do, how w...
Most smart players have a knack for taking their opponents into uncomfortable areas very early in the game. Like we have discussed in previous articles, chess not only involves strategy over the board, but also before the actual game is started. S...
Alexei Shirov was born on July 4, 1972 in Riga, Latvia. He was World Champion Under 16 in 1988 and became a grandmaster in 1990. He defeated Vladimir Kramnik in a match to play a world championship match against Garry Kasparov. Instead of playing ...
This week we shall have a look at the Dutch Defence. To begin with we have an interesting concept, the 'h-file operation.' Usually the advancement of the h-pawn occurs in variations like Sicilian Najdorf, Dragon, Classical System, KID samisch vari...
[Ed: This article was actually written by GM Serper] Pretty frequently my students complain about how difficult it is to learn new openings. Indeed, modern opening theory is more complicated than ever. You can spend weeks, even months of your...
The Art of Stealing by IM Jeremy Silman A chess professional has to do many forms of chess preparation: If he’s having trouble in endgames and technical positions, he has to do a detailed study of that phase of the game. If he finds that he ofte...
[Ed: this week, our daily columnists [may] have secretly traded columns. From this Sunday through Friday, read all the columns, and guess who wrote which. Mail your guesses to dpruess at chess.com. A couple prizes will be awarded at random to thos...
The Pterodactyl is a very varied opening, with dozens of variations. One of the most important is the unpin variation 1.e4 g6 2.d4 Bg7 3.Nf3 c5 4.Nc3 Qa5 5.Bd2!?, setting up a discovered attack on the queen. Here is how I think Black should handle...
San Francisco is known as a hub of strange activity so it is not surprising that at their Labor Day tournament many unusual openings appeared. I have selected a few of the more interesting games that explore these rarely visited territories. ...
Last week we discussed "Material for Initiative" in the French Tarrasch Variation with a pawn sacrifice on the 9th move. This week we shall see about the other various alternatives for Black. Our first game is between the 13th World Champion Garr...
VK asked: I am a beginner in chess with no formal training but I have a little bit of knowledge of opening theory from reading books. My question is about the Maroczy Bind for White in the Sicilian. In this opening, because of the pawn on c4, is ...
