I opened the show by randomly selecting a position from one of my Chess.com friend's slow games: I spent about the first 15 minutes of the show analyzing the position. My general considerations were that White was slightly better due to the act...
Few games test a player psychologically as much as the last-round game of a tournament (or the decisive game of a match). When the prize money, championship, or norm is on the line, the tension becomes extremely high. In this situation you can fin...
When I introduced this column I mentioned that I probably wouldn't be covering many opening books. However, I decided to write a review of this fairly old book on the French by grandmaster Lev Psakhis from the "Complete..." series. Why? Well, fi...
Today I have the pleasure of reviewing Grandmaster Judit Polgar's new book, How I Beat Fischer's Record for our community here on Chess.com - and I must say I found Judit's work refreshingly honest, surprisingly inspiring, and undeniably as i...
Today's show coincided with the first round of the Candidates Tournament in London. Unfortunately, none of the games were exciting (all draws, most fairly short), so it was not a big topic of conversation. However, I was asked who I thought would...
William Ewart Napier was born in England on January 17, 1881. His family soon moved to the United States, and because they did American chess has been all the richer. Napier first played correspondence chess, participating in one of the Continenta...
This week I will be analyzing the well-known book by Alexander Kotov, Think Like a Grandmaster. This was the first part of a three-part series - the other two books being Play Like a Grandmaster and Train Like a Grandmaster. Kotov - and this boo...
At the beginning of the show I suggested that more questions that were "position oriented" could be suggested, such as how to solve puzzles, analyze positions, problems that viewers had with positions, etc. Thankfully the viewers complied, an...
I will be reviewing one of the most influential books I had early on in my chess development. This is an excellent book by grandmaster John Nunn and Peter Griffiths. Secrets of Grandmaster Play is at once a best games collection (all of the game...
One of the final questions on today's show was "What do you consider the game in chess history that, if I study, I will learn the most?" (I paraphrase) This question raises three important issues: An unannotated "pure" game is only worth what th...
This week I will be reviewing a book that was pretty influential for me when I was growing up. This is Garry Kasparov's game collection The Test of Time. The book includes his annotations of games starting from his first steps in international che...
When I get asked generic questions on the show about improvement, there's about an 80% chance that I already have at least one Novice Nook containing a much more comprehensive answer than I could easily cover on the air. This, of course, makes me ...
This week I will be reviewing an interesting and unusual book about the development of chess in China. The author, Liu Wenzhe, is considered to be one of the first promoters of western chess in China. Originally a XiangQi (Chinese chess) player, W...
Tonight's show was a lively one and I think one of the best. It's always fun when I get to do a little story-telling to enhance an answer. Moreover, the good questions from the audience led to an interesting show - when it was over I was quite sat...
At the beginning of this week's show almost every question involved openings. Don't get me wrong; I think openings are important - it's the only part of the game which you are guaranteed to reach each time you play. But this obsession with opening...
This week we will be seeing a very entertaining book called Chess Combination as a Fine Art. This is a collection of articles by German master Kurt Richter from the magazine Schach. The subject of his column was "Lessons in Chess - Advanced School...
This week's book review will be of the classic Endgame Strategy by Mikhail Shereshevsky. This book - as its name implies - is about the endgame. However, it is not really about basic endgames (i.e. rook and pawn against rook). It is not a book o...
The Mongoose Press Prize for the best question went to LazyChessPlayer for: "One of the rules of blitz games is you can only move when your clock is running and you can not move until your opponent has pressed his clock. Although I heard of this ...
This week, as the holiday vacation draws near, I will be reviewing the book The Art of Defense in Chess by Grandmaster Andrew Soltis. Consider settling down in a soft and comfortable chair and reading this book during those snowy afternoons of you...
Mongoose Press graciously offered free copies of The World's Most Instructive Amateur Game Book for the best question on each of the Dec 7 and Dec 21 shows. I scribbled down seven questions which were contenders for the prize. Here they are (I apo...
For this week's review, I will be covering 500 Master Games of Chess by Savielly Tartakower and J. du Mont. I have had this book since soon after I started playing chess, and it was a big influence on me. I spent many hours playing over the games ...
In the second part of this article we continue the presentation of the new champions: Without a clear rating favorite of the group (about whom you will read below), the girls under 14 championship was won by M. Mahalakshmi from In...
[Scene: Courtroom hearing on Chess Coaching. Dan on witness stand, a few hundred inquisitive spectators watching the proceedings...] Bard: You are aware of the accusation that chess coaches can't really help people play chess better - that they a...
