Imagine yourself in a situation: ahead of you is a chess game that you must win at all costs. Failure is not an option. This could be the last step toward a FIDE title you've been chasing your entire life, the final push to finally break the 2000 ...
"Cramped positions carry within them the germ of defeat." – Siegbert Tarrasch This spring, two of the strongest chess engines in the world, Stockfish and Torch, played a match featuring some bizarre starting positions. We asked the Chess.c...
Becoming a stronger player is about finding ways to turn knowledge into skill. - GM Tiger Hillarp Persson in Tiger's Chaos Theory. When you're new to chess, improvement is relatively easy. Most of us lose our first few games, and then start...
“There is no concrete preparation, the way it is in normal chess when you can memorize 20 moves and it's hard to even get a game—in this format, you always get a game!" - Magnus Carlsen, February 9, 2024. Have you tried F...
In normal chess, White has a small advantage in the opening at the start of every game. Because White can move first, engines like Stockfish give White an edge of about 0.25, an advantage, but well within the drawing margin. However, in Freestyle ...
Once upon a time, before Stockfish and glowing evaluation bars, analyzing your games meant something entirely different. You'd grab a notebook, sit with a friend or coach, replay the moves from memory, and try to answer questions like: "Where did ...
What's in a name? Have you seen this famous clip of GM Hikaru Nakamura calculating a deep combination in seconds with his famous "check, check, check...." How can Hikaru calculate that quickly? He's amazing, but it helped that he knew the s...
As we start our journey in the magical world called chess, one of the very first things we learn is the ultimate importance of time. "Each move should have a purpose," "Don't waste time," and "Develop your pieces as quickly as possible." These and...
Since the Speed Chess Championship (SCC) debuted in 2016, it's been completely dominated by two players. GM Magnus Carlsen won the first two editions in 2016 and 2017. After that, GM Hikaru Nakamura won five years in a row before Carlsen took back...
What separates a chess beginner from an experienced player? It's not just the brilliant moves that the star players find, it's also the bad moves that beginners play, which veteran players instinctively know to avoid. Here are five trades that ama...
Back in 1996, GM Garry Kasparov won 4-2 in a match versus the Deep Blue supercomputer. It turned out to be the last convincing human victory over an artificial chess player. The very next year, Deep Blue took revenge 3.5-2.5, and pretty soon match...
Losing is no fun! Unfortunately, all chess players end up in lost positions sometimes. The best ones know how to escape as often as possible and steal draws and wins from busted positions. Here are the techniques you need to know to be a chess Hou...
One of my first chess books was Richard Reti's Chess Textbook. The title of the book was a bit misleading, since the book was absolutely useless for total beginners. I assume that it was implied that any Soviet schoolboy knew the rules of chess as...
Eighty-five years ago GM Mikhail Botvinnik won the premier tournament of the year, the Soviet Chess Championship, with a very impressive score 12.5/17 (+8−0=9). Later, in his book about the tournament, Botvinnik shared his methods of chess p...
Every chess player dreams about scoring a huge upset. Maybe you want to beat your dad or grandmother at chess for the first time. Perhaps you’re trying to get your first win against a player rated over 1000, or even 2000. Although it’s...
Any experienced tournament player knows that playing for a win with the black pieces can be quite challenging, especially against a well-prepared opponent. Indeed, in most openings, White gets some initiative right from the start of the game due t...
Some chess games played by legendary players featured such impressive new concepts that they instantly became iconic. As time passed, these concepts turned into chess axioms. According to Wikipedia, "In classic philosophy, an axiom is a statement ...
I have no doubt that you've heard the saying, "Chess is 90% tactics" many times. It is so overused that it is impossible to trace who said it first. While in general I agree with this statement, I would still slightly modify it. So, channeling my ...
There are certain classic games that really show the "ABCs" of chess. They demonstrate some basic chess concepts that any educated player must know. The following famous game by Alexander Alekhine is one of them. You can find it almost in any book...
The 2023 FIDE World Championship was an unusual event. First of all, it is very uncommon to call an event the "World Championship" in the absence of the unquestionable world's number-one player. It is also unusual to see so many hard-fought games ...
Most chess players know World Champion Alexander Alekhine as a master of attack and combinations. They might be surprised to learn that some great players considered Alekhine's strategic talent as the main reason for his success. I don't have the ...
GM Magnus Carlsen has produced hundreds of brilliant games, so when you saw the word "epic" in the title, you probably envisioned one of those sparkling attacks with multiple sacrifices. While this game indeed features many attacks, counterattacks...
There are thousands of ideas in chess. Some of them are very basic, and others are so complicated that you cannot help but think: "Who was the genius? Who came up with this idea first?" Unfortunately, in most cases, we will never know the answer. ...
If you frequent chess forums, you are probably familiar with the never-ending debates about the strength of chess players from various eras. There will always, for example, be a person making the traditional claim that any decent master today woul...
You have to admit, my dear readers, that the title of this article probably made you think that I was going to talk about GM Bobby Fischer's famous book for beginners. And you would be wrong! While this book is decent, with all due respect, there ...
