Magnus Carlsen is a phenomenon. He could recently be seen on enormous billboards all over the world posing next to supermodel and Lord of the Rings actress Liv Tyler; he’s been a guest to The Colbert Report; and he has featured on the cover ...
¿Alguna vez ha jugado una partida rápida siendo derrotado desastrosamente sin darse cuenta cómo ocurrió aquello? Y si a esto le agregamos el hecho de que su rival realiza jugadas perfectas en la apertura llegando hasta la movida quince o veinte de...
The Third Annual Michigan Chess Festival took place October 23-27 at the Adoba Hotel in Dearborn, MI. I have played in each festival, and it gets bigger and stronger every year! Here, organizer Alan Kaufman outdid himself, as 60 players and ...
Fellow chessplayers, Chess has been a private part of my life. What I mean is that my non-chessplaying friends could never really appreciate what I was doing. So I hid it away. My chess novel, "Lisa," is my attempt to tell them, through a story....
"What do you tell someone who is losing too much?" The main reason for losing too much is playing too many players who are much higher rated than you! So we have to ask, "Do you mean you are in a slump (If so, check out Breaking a Slump) and losi...
This article came about in a most curious fashion. I was looking deeply into the "celebrated" (as George Walker called it in 1838) La Bourdonnais - M'Donnell match of 1834. This sniffing around led me into a discussion with a gentleman abou...
One of the results of Chess.com's acquisition of ChessVibes is that from now on, José Diaz will be posting his cartoons here as well! José is the best chess cartoonist we know, and so we're very happy that he's joining. Many years ago José Diaz w...
"Should I continue playing a weak opening if I know it well?" This is one of those questions that depends on more information, such as: "How weak is the opening?" "Who considers it weak?" "Who are you playing", etc. I gave the example of the "W...
Since the beginning of time everyone had an opinion, whether or not they had a clue about the subject being discussed. However, in the past opinions usually stayed in one’s own mind or went no further than your friends or acquaintances. Now that’s...
I received several questions asking how I would handle weird openings like 1.d4 d5 2.Be3?! and 1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Qd6?. The number of permutations of possible weird openings, even on the first two moves, is enormous, so no one can be "prepared" for al...
The “Plan” Fails In Part Two of our Alekhine series, I described Alekhine’s plan to force a match with Capablanca: “Play against the world’s best and win every tournament, thus showing that he was the true challenger to the title. And, at first h...
Before I start talking about my mistakes and errors, watch the following video and pay attention not only to my moves but also to my thoughts. By the way, I should mention that I am NOT replacing Danny Rensch. Chess.com held a contest a few months...
"After Anderssen's departure, Paul Morphy declared he would play no more even matches, and, certainly, his resolve was justified by the unheard of manner in which he had walked over all opponents." -Frederick Edge &n...
I constantly see amateurs raving about how tactics is 99% of chess. However, if that was actually the case then chess wouldn’t be the amazing game that it is. A true fan of the game sees beauty in opening theory, in subtle positional play, in barn...
Friday the 13th wasn't too unlucky for the show - we had lots of varied and interesting questions. Today's show was moved back an hour to allow for the finish of the telecast of the 4th round of the Sinquefield Cup. One question involved the Worl...
In my previous article (Having Fun With Blunders), I gave my personal definition of a blunder (some will choose to make use of it, others won’t, and the world will continue to turn). To make the article fun to read, I mixed a serious and fir...
What some people may not realize is that before Anderssen rose to fame by winning the first international tournament at London in 1851, before his Immortal and Evergreen games, before his stunning loss to Morphy and less stuning loss to Ste...
Recently I was involved in a small discussion about blunders and was shocked that the term’s meaning wasn’t as rock solid as I had thought. Everyone is used to symbols like “?” (poor or bad move), “?!” (dubious), “!” (good or excellent move), “!?”...
"How do you know which candidate move(s) to analyze first, especially in non-tactical situations?" This is the kind of question that you can write an entire book (or at least a big chapter) about, such as Soltis' How to Choose a Chess Move. Howe...
Hello Chess.com Community!Today, we're happy to announce an open invitation from the Amateur Chess Organization (ACO) and Chess.com! Did you know that every chess player now has the opportunity to become a world champion? That's right! As we...
The State of Chess.com is the revival of a monthly segment the CEO used to provide for Chess.com members on Chess/TV. The State of Chess.com was airied on August 14th at 11:30 AM Pacific with Erik, Chess.com's CEO and co-founder. ...
On today's show the great majority of questions involved getting better at chess, and most involved openings (with a smattering of endgames thrown in). I think many players have this "improvement model" in their head where they memorize an opening...
In Part 1 of this glimpse into Alexander Alekhine’s life and games, we left off with him winning the Moscow Championship (late 1919/early 1920) with a spectacular clean sweep (11-0) followed by victory in the first USSR Championship (9 wins, 6 dra...
Alert: If you are interested in how rules get changed and/or tournament pairings get made, this article should prove fairly entertaining. If not, then just skip it, as the story may not be your cup of tea . Our Main Line Chess Club runs ongoing U...
