Prearranged draws are the reality of chess. You might hate it, you might fight it, but if two players want to make a draw, they will find the way to do it. Sometimes such players just agree to a draw before the game and when the game starts they...
I am going to do something a bit different. I am going to look at the games of the most prolific (and nicest), chess writer in the world: IM Cyrus Lakdawala. Of course, Fred Reinfeld, who died in 1964, wrote more than 100 chess books. That will be...
Time flies. That's always the feeling when another year comes to an end—and it was definitely a great year for chess. Caruana winning the Candidates' (and a few more tournaments!), Nakamura winning the Grand Chess Tour (and the Speed Chess...
Most lower-rated players want to improve their game, but many just want to slug it out in blitz and have a great time. I certainly understand that! However, for those that want to be as good as they can be, they'll have to work hard. Play oppon...
Unlike professional soccer or tennis players, chess players cannot brag about their money. Yes, the world champion Magnus Carlsen is very rich and most of the players who've played world championship matches are millionaires, but can they be compa...
Maria Theresa and Frederick II play chess as Ares watches in an allegory for the Seven-Years War In a kind of Cold War allegory, the Sept. 29, 1947 issue of "Time" featured the Soviet Minister of Foreign...
Magnus Carlsen bought himself another two years to work on his admittedly ailing classical game with a devastating, nearly cruel demolition of the undisputed challenger and co-king of slow chess, Fabiano Caruana, winning 3-0 in the rapid tiebreak....
Magnus Carlsen defeated Fabiano Caruana in game three of the rapid playoff to clinch the 2018 world chess championship. After 12 draws in the classical games, Carlsen won all the games of the tiebreak to win 3.0-0.0. He has now success...
GM Jonathan Tisdall shares his reflections on the Carlsen-Caruana world championship at halftime. (You can read his preview of the match here.) For convenience, we've copied the games with GM Sam Shankland's annotations from our news reports. I ...
When I was a kid, I didn't watch much TV. You see, 40 years ago we had only two state-controlled TV channels in the Soviet Union, so most of the kids spent their time outdoors rather than watching boring news. Nevertheless, there was one weekly pr...
Almost every chess player with the slightest interest in the development of the game knows of François-André Danican, better known by the appellation Philidor, a family name given to his grandfather, Michel Danican, an obois...
The last European Chess Club Championship was a nightmare tournament for Peter Svidler. I don't recall another case of an elite grandmaster losing four games in a row against mostly lower-rated opponents! Only in the last round we could fin...
HOW TO START OUT I get many, many players (rated 800 to 1200) asking me what their style is, why do they lose when they had a better game, are their opponents cheating, how to get good fast, or simply how to get a higher rating. All thes...
The Global Chess Festival Online invites chess players around the world to celebrate chess by playing in a 24-hour 5|0 arena on Chess.com. Play will begin , concluding 24 hours later on the 13th. The event is part of the Global Chess Festival On...
"All the leaves are brown and the sky is gray..." Serendipity: As you look for one thing, you often find all sorts of interesting items in the process. I had been searching through California newspaper a...
Next to becoming the world champion, grandmaster is the ultimate summit for the competitive chess player. Out of the millions of chess players around the world, a little over 1500 current chess players have reached the height of grandmaster! ...
The regular readers of my column know that I hate political correctness. In my old article I explained it is probably the biggest threat to Western civilization. Very soon people will stop expressing their true beliefs out of fear that the...
Most amateurs run into the same problems: undefended pieces, being unaware of their opponents' best moves, falling victim to simple tactics, etc. Those things are common. However, once in a while you’ll see a player making one specific ...
One of the most important things in chess is willpower (a branch of chess psychology). Most players glance at a possibility, shrug it off as too risky or just plain bad or boring, and toss out some generic move instead. This, of course, is...
After sharing positional puzzles to the raging masses, I thought that it was only right to offer tactical puzzles and sharp attacks. However, there’s a tiny blip: All these games won brilliancy prizes. Anyway, whether you solve it or not,...
Welcome again to another learning chess experience. You will look at eight positional puzzles and, as you finish each one, you will click the question mark (“?”) underneath the board next to the light bulb. This will allow you to se...
In last week's article, we discussed chess players' behavior. The big questions were if trying to flag your opponent in a dead-drawn position or playing out a completely lost position or some other perfectly legal things are ethical. Judgin...
I’ve done positional puzzles twice. Since a lot of people enjoyed them, I’ve decided to do it again, and perhaps again and again. It’s certainly a good way to learn positional ideas. Here are the original two articles: ...
Not sure how to celebrate International Chess Day? Join thousands of other Chess.com users in our 24-hour arena from 12 a.m. PT to 12 p.m. July 20! The tournament will be played at Chess.com's most popular time control, 10|0. Play the Arena W...
I get so many questions and statements about chess, but being old (yep, 108 years old…don’t worry though, the friends that are still alive tell me that I don’t look more than 98) means that all those questions have been asked ov...