"You might not be able to fight like a samurai, but you can at least die like a samurai." -- Kill Bill, Vol. 1. The Berlin Defense in the Ruy Lopez is a very peculiar opening. Spectators hate it, most chess players hate it (coun...
When we analyzed "An Opening Line For Masters" last week, I chose GM Igor Zaitsev as our opening guide for a reason. It is difficult to name another chess player who introduced that many absolutely paradoxical opening novelties. Today ...
Last week we analyzed a line that could be a decent opening weapon for club players. As you remember, unlike the openings played by super-grandmasters, it didn't require any special opening knowledge and could be learned in one minute. The obvio...
The Cunningham Defense in the King's Gambit Accepted begins 1. e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. Nf3 Be7. White moves the Bishop to give his King a place to go with 4. Bc4. If Black continues with the threatened 4... Bh4+ ...
There are certain opening variations in chess which can be labeled "for top players only." The most obvious example would be the Berlin Variation of the Ruy Lopez. But club players shouldn't be jealous since there are also opening variations "fo...
The King's Indian Defense is one of the great openings in chess history. A favorite of many of Caissa's greatest innovators — the King's Indian Defense was central to the development of new, dynamic ways to play chess. No more taking 1....
For our final article of this series on the world champions and their contributions to opening theory, we focus on the current champion, Magnus Carlsen. As many of you have commented on the earlier articles, it is difficult to link Carlsen with a ...
Many openings go by various names. The opening(s) we'll be looking at below not only go by many names, but the situations, like gambits themselves, can get messy, muddy and uncertain very quickly. The title of this article is Martin...
Like Veselin Topalov, Viswanathan Anand became FIDE world champion by virtue of his victory in a world championship tournament -- this one held in Mexico City, 2007. However, the chess public, which has always tended to see the championship changi...
San Luis, Argentina, 2005: A double-round-robin tournament was held to determine the FIDE world champion. In those days the world championship was still split after Garry Kasparov and Nigel Short left FIDE for their 1993 match. The chess world l...
Before the 2000 world championship match between Vladimir Kramnik and Garry Kasparov, the latter had been champion since long before I started playing chess. Kasparov dominated the chess world and seemed unbeatable. I naturally assumed that he wou...
The Schliemann (AKA Jaenisch) Gambit is one of Black's most aggressive responses to the time-tested Ruy Lopez. Some say the Schliemann is unsound, but GM Melikset Khachiyan (Melik) believes the Schliemann is better than its reputation. In thi...
After Anatoly Karpov came Garry Kasparov, the 13th world champion. Kasparov took opening preparation to possibly the most extreme level of any champions before or since. His deep explorations, with the help of a team of grandmasters and -- a new p...
For 10 video lessons, GM Melikset Khachiyan is here to analyze his preferred variations of different openings. Melik is one of our favorite coaches but he is also a world-class player. Our lessons will come from games of his own and his students. ...
After his famous 1972 victory over Boris Spassky in the so-called "Match of the Century," Bobby Fischer stopped playing chess. He did not compete in any tournaments as the world champion. When Anatoly Karpov emerged as his challenger in 1975,...
After Boris Spassky came the most famous chess player ever: Bobby Fischer. Fischer was the world champion with the most limited and consistent opening repertoire. Indeed, Fischer had an attitude that there must be one correct way of playing in e...
The 10th world champion, Boris Spassky, was a universal player with a wide opening repertoire. He mostly played classical openings with a healthy aggression. One weapon, which served him well throughout his career, was a rather surprising move: 4....
Tigran Petrosian, the ninth world champion, gained the title in his 1963 match with Mikhail Botvinnik. Thus the Botvinnik era came to a close, since the automatic rematch clause (which allowed Botvinnik to regain the championship after one year fr...
GM Jacek Stopa is here to show you how to win with the aggressive Evans Gambit. Few openings have a more swashbuckling reputation than the Evans Gambit which was even invented by the sea captain, William Evans, in 1827! Jacek is a practitioner of ...
The French Defense has been vexing players on the White side since it was first introduced by the Parisians in the historic match between London and Paris in 1834! Black permits White to build a sturdy center, only to devote the remainder of the g...
Botvinnik had regained the title from Smyslov in their 1958 rematch, but soon he had a new challenger: the fiery Latvian player Mikhail Tal. Tal had appeared out of nowhere, and within a few years went from an unknown young player to a challenge...
Although Vasily Smyslov was only the world champion for one year, he is nevertheless remembered as among the greatest players ever, and his matches with Mikhail Botvinnik dominated chess in the 1950s. All in all, they played three matches, with ...
After World War Two, the chess world (and the world in general) was abruptly changed. It is very clear that a demarcation line can be placed at 1945 between the old classical chess and modern chess. There were many changes in the chess world aro...
In 1935 a surprising thing happened. The fourth world champion, Alexander Alekhine, widely considered a genius, lost a match to the Dutch master, Max Euwe. Euwe was unique among world champions for several reasons. First, he was the only one who...
