"I did action X and gained Y rating points so I suggest everyone should do that." This claim came up during the show, raising the question: How helpful it would be for others to follow the suggestion? In order to address this issue, we should sta...
Yet not reading latest Chess Informant 120 Maracana? Seriously? THE PERIODICAL THE PROS USE Book: Paperback, 340 pages, English language. CD: in ChessBase format (with PGN). Our four times-a-year publication aspires to be an arena that gat...
ACO World Amateur Chess Championship Rhodes (Greece) 2014 The ACO World Amateur Chess Championship took place on the Greek island of Rhodes from 7-16 June, 2014. 237 players with ages between 8 to 86 fought for the title of ACO World Champion in ...
Shock Value or the Real Thing? ejSalsac asked: “I wished to ask for your evaluation of a line of the English Attack which to my knowledge has rarely been played: 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Be3 Ng4 7.Bg5 h6 8.Bh4 g5 9.Nf5!? ...
With Chess.com University's first online chess camp (with Gelfand!) only two weeks away, we would like to reveal a few of our lecture topics: - ABCs of Successful Planning - Mastering Analysis and Evaluation - Calculating Like a Master - Effi...
There is much debate these days about whether Magnus Carlsen has already surpassed Garry Kasparov as the best player of all time - have these people forgotten that Carlsen has only been World Champion for less than a year now? Kasparov reigned for...
When a player starts out, he’s told various rules that will help him navigate through the choppy waters of chess. A few basic ones are: Don’t hang your pieces Don’t swallow and talk at the same time Castle as quickly as possible Don’t allow your ...
Usually an article discusses a particular player, or tactic, or some positional concept. When I teach tactical motifs, you know that all the puzzles are going to be about tactics. And if I am discussing a particular idea concerning a pawn structur...
In his 1968 book called "The Poor Knight" ("Рыцарь бедный"). Vasily Panov described 23 year old Mikhail Tschigorin walking down Nevsky Prospect, a busy thoroughfare in St. Petersburg, with his friend Fedor discussing chess, a game Mikhail f...
A VERY BASIC BENKO This continues the Classic Pawn Structure series as seen in Classic Pawn Structure, Part 1a and Part 1b. In general, chess professionals know the ins and outs of every structure, non-titled experienced/strong pl...
Last week we revealed our plans to organize an online chess camp and included a tentative schedule. Today, we are officially announcing Chess.com University's first online chess camp! Note: There may be a few discrepancies regarding the schedule...
1."If we partition your chess strength (or improvement) into two broad classes, what portion is knowledge (opening moves, endgame positions, tactical positions, principles) vs. abilities/skills (analysis, evaluation, time management, criticality a...
Throughout my chess career, I have resigned in several different ways. During my very first games with my brother, I - well, I resigned by knocking the pieces over in disgust. In my first tournaments, I flicked the king over, old style. Then, for ...
Mikhail Tal was one of the first world class players I saw in real life: as a kid, during my first visit to the Hoogovens chess tournament in Wijk aan Zee, I almost ran into him when I entered the playing hall. Even this extremely brief en...
Usually an article discusses a particular player, or tactic, or some positional concept. When I teach tactical motifs, you know that all the puzzles are going to be about tactics. If I am discussing a particular idea concerning a pawn structure, y...
"Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before," quipped American actress Mae West in 1936. So it is with defending bad positions in chess. One cannot deny that in the majority of cases, the best way to test your opponent's techniq...
We have great news for Chess.com members today. Chess.com University is organizing its first online summer chess camp! This July, most likely from the 8th till 12th, we will have our 5-day long camp featuring tournaments, simuls, lectures, game a...
Usually an article discusses a particular player, or tactics, or some positional concept. When I teach tactical motifs, you know that all the puzzles are going to be about tactics. If I am discussing a particular idea concerning a pawn structure, ...
"I am stuck at 1700. Does that make me studid?" "Is there a correlation between chess rating and IQ?" One of the world's leading physicists and expert on string theory is Ed Witten. Ed took up chess for a while and what was his rating? 1700. I d...
This week Chess.com celebrates its 7-year-anniversary, and we've got something for you! We're offering a 30% discount on our magazine The Master's Bulletin, which offers 40 pages each month with articles on openings, middlegame and endgame as well...
In modern tournaments, rule about arranged draw games or to don’t play draw under 30 or even 40 moves is one of the most controversial, but it helped to improve fight spirit in chess players. In last league, I played 1st board, and even in half o...
Last week we looked at a structure that featured a central space advantage for White (two center pawns vs. Black's one) and a queenside pawn majority for Black. I discussed White’s most aggressive plan (a pawn sacrifice that creates a mobile...
A Chess.com reader recently recommended a game where White (a 2700 grandmaster) made use of an interesting maneuver he (the reader) had never seen before. After seeing the sequence below, many questions may arise, and one might be left wonderin...
Bobby Fischer played 1st board for the US in four chess Olympiads, the final one being Siegen in 1970. In 1972, after beating Spassky, the first major event he skipped (and never played again!) was that summer's Olympiad in Skopje. Fischer also p...
