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...
Here is a game from the 2009 Copper State Open, IM Ginsburg - WFM Cardona with full annotations and commentary: This was a nice game to observe as it shows a common theme in chess. The b7 and b2 squares for both sides can be a sens...
Here is a game from the 3rd ACP World Rapid Cup, GM Movsesian - GM Tregubov with full annotations and commentary: I believe this is a very instructive game which can change the mind set of playing against the Sicilian Defense. Many...
Having the correct mindset when going into a chess game is critical in the way you play out the game, even if you only need a draw. My coach told me that you play what the position gives you and go from there. I was recently at the Ontario Open in...
Often when a player is paired with someone ranked much higher, he doesn't follow his usual routine. A player who usually uses the Morra gambit against the sicilian suddenly goes for a quieter line. Others will try to trade off as much material as ...
Black to move. Mate in 13. I know there are lots of variations to this puzzle so don't lose your cool if the variation you play isn't the correct move.
Hi chessplayers, here s a funny match i have played, from first sight, it appear a boring game, but the fun is at the end !! ( you know!like a rock concert!) , perhaps the title is somehow strange, but it will show it self in the game..i want to s...
Here is a game from the 16th Asian Cities Team Championship, GM Ghaem Maghami - IM Eid with full annotations and commentary: This game was very interesting as it featured two important points where both sides made questio...
This principle applies no more so than in the tricky d-pawn 'specials' (Torre Attack, London System, Stonewall and the Colle Systems). Here I'm going to show 2 games which I hope may be useful in illustrating this: one of my own games and then a...
"The pawn (♙♟) is the weakest . . .piece in the game of chess, representing infantry, or more particularly armed peasants of pikemen."[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pawn_(chess)] It's true that a pawn only has a value of 1 point. But let's try to l...
