One of the goals we aspire to in each game is to make every move count. That is, we want to make moves that threaten something or at least contribute to some objective. We try to avoid pointless moves that put our opponents under no pressure. ...
The USCL (http://www.uschessleague.com/) is the American version of a national chess team league. In the fall, 14 teams in 2 conferences battle it out in matches with 4 boards apiece. I've played in the USCL for the San Francisco Mechanics since t...
Going into the last round of the SPICE Cup in Texas, I was tied for 2nd place with GM Eugene Perelshteyn and IM Ray Robson with 5.0/8. IM Ben Finegold was leading with 6.0/8, and was playing Eugene in the last round. Ray had black against FM Danie...
While I'm all in favor of playing aggressively, I try to do by playing an aggressive opening as White. And when I'm playing Black, I try to play aggressively after I have equalized and gotten a few pieces developed. However, choosing an opening ...
In my last tournament, the SPICE Cup in Texas, I had 4 blacks out of 9 games. The first 3 blacks I had all saw my opponents open with 1.e4 (I wrote about the first game last week, at http://www.chess.com/article/view/pawn-power). While I've normal...
In part 1 of this article (http://www.chess.com/article/view/opposite-side-castling-the-basics), I showed a game where the kingside attack was conducted using pieces to open up the pawn cover on Black's kingside. In part 2, I show a game with the...
In games where the players castle on opposite sides, an attack against the opposing king is almost always in order. The rational for this is "If you don't do it to him, he's going to do it to you" or, if you like, the more pithy "Kill or be kille...
After playing in Montreal, which I wrapped up with a loss to Naiditsch in the 11th round (covered at: http://www.chess.com/article/view/developing-an-opening-repertoire), I had a week off before playing another strong round-robin. This one was in ...
2009 US Women’s Chess Championship Report By GM-elect Ben Finegold I will be taking over WIM Iryna Zenyuk’s column this week. After reading this, the readers may wonder, “Where is the real Iryna?” Since Zenyuk is busy preparing and trying t...
I recently competed in a very strong Category 15 tournament in Montreal. There were 12 players, 8 invitees and 4 qualifiers. I qualified by finishing 3rd in the Quebec Championship in June (from which I have already discussed a few games in this c...
IM DAVID PRUESS asked: I do know a few things about planning-- I even teach “how to plan” to my own students sometimes. But I still come across positions fairly often, maybe one in ten games, where I feel I should have a plan, but can't come up w...
[Ed: This is the last article of our switch-around week. Each of this week's daily columns (beginning last Sunday) was actually written by one of our other columnists. If you have a guess as to who wrote what, send it to me (dpruess). From entries...
The title of this article refers to the computer program BELLE, which was the first one to reach master strength (unlike now when they are all grandmaster strength or better), Boris Baczynskyj, a master who annotated one of BELLE's games, and Arth...
The recent Chicago Class Championships was won by GM Dmitry Gurevich with a score of 4/5. My result was not amazing and I think fatigue was starting to settle in- I had played three nine round tournaments in a row and was not well rested. However,...
I wrote an article called "Learning By Induction", the main point of which was that a player could learn chess better by playing through the games of strong players and extracting for himself the lessons contained within them (inductive reasoning)...
Sometimes you start a game and wait for your opponent to castle so you know on which side to begin mounting your attack. But what if he won't castle? What if he stays in the center and the center is closed? What do you do then? Sometimes a wel...
Game 1: Siege, Standoff, and Strike In the first game of the Leningrad Dutch (A84) series, we will see a positional struggle between Chess.com members fcpanginen and albatros1 turn into an all-out 7th rank invasion. The game follows a non-mainli...
Kasparov has written about chess as a game of "material, time, and quality" on a few occasions. Material is pretty straightforward - just count up the pieces on the board. By my understanding, time refers to more dynamic factors in the position, n...
Piotr Linek asks: When I play the Sicilian with the sequence 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 as Black, I don’t even think about it and automatically play …e6 because I find it stronger as it attacks white’s Knight and forces it to retreat and p...
Russians called Napoleon's 1812 invasion "The Patriotic War". The largest army up to that point in history, 690,000 French troops, crossed the river Nemen intent on taking the Russian capital Moscow. After brave defenses and dire predictions of ...
Sometimes you play games where things almost magically unfold before you, seemingly without any help from you. "Wow, that worked like a charm, didn't it?", you marvel at your amazing attack. Yet it did have help from you. If you play active, de...
Sometimes a move has more than one purpose. And sometimes, the obvious purpose is so non-threatening, and relaxes your opponent so much, that he ignores your move and doesn't look for any other, more hidden, threats. In the first game, White's 5...
This article is about playing f4 as white in different parts of a game like Bird Opening,King's Gambit,Bishop's Game,Sicilian. After viewing the article don't forget to lookup the Kairav's chess masters (KCM) homepage:http://www.chess.com/groups/...
Chess puzzles. Ya gotta love’em. Speaking personally, I can’t get enough of them. Nothing satisfies the soul like solving a chess puzzle that you deem truly worthy of your intellect. Working chess puzzles actually can give a serious boost to y...
