The chess heritage of Francois Andre Danican Philidor is enormous. There is an opening named after him (1.e4 e5 2. Nf3 d6) and three endgame positions all called "the Philidor Position"! The Philidor position in rook endgames is o...
When you think of the word "threat," what comes to mind? A threat of checkmate, perhaps? A threat to trap your piece? An indirect threat against your queen? Whatever your specific mental representation, it is most likely tactical...
People spend too much time reading opening books. There you go, I have said it. Think what you may of this statement, but it seems to me that the chess market is saturated with opening books. So many people will blindly buy a book, add to their ...
You may be winning, but you haven't put the game away yet! In this series, you'll see what might lead you to fall short when possessing a material advantage. Make sure you've fine tuned your technique and are accurately evaluating your oppo...
You've pushed relentlessly to gain an advantage. Finally, you're in the endgame and slightly better, but you are facing a strong opponent. How do you sustain the mental toughness to close it out? Use the principle of two weaknesses! In this...
The Chess.com member JN wrote: I took up chess about a year ago when a friend introduced me to the game. Since then, he and I have taken to playing quite often; we typically play about four or five days a week, two or three games in a sitting. ...
His whole life, Robert James Fischer was fighting against someone or something. Thousands of books, articles and videos have been produced to describe the outlandish behavior of the chess genius. It is difficult to count all the social, moral...
Many a myth has been discussed about the "superhuman" power that a grandmaster holds over the chessboard. Amateur players tend to look at us GMs as untouchable geniuses that cannot put a foot wrong when shuffling our pieces about. I am now going...
Some time ago we discussed in this article the identical positions that can happen in endgames. I concluded the article with the statement "Deja vu is good for your chess!" Which of course means that the knowledge of certain positions, tec...
The last year was tough for the world champion, Magnus Carlsen. Not only did he lose a lot of rating points, but also some people questioned the gap between Carlsen and the other chess players from the world's top 10. I saw a chess article where...
Do you ever see a chess position and have a strong feeling that you've seen it before? No, I am not talking about opening positions, that you see again and again and again in every single tournament (damn you, the Berlin variation!). And I am no...
My childhood happened at the time when kung fu was all the rage. All the kids were discussing the latest martial arts movies and the "Kung Fu Fighting" song was at the top of the charts. The legends about the Shaolin monks were fascinating. Some...
In last week's article we paid tribute to a creative chess player and a nice person, IM Emory Tate. As a man who played Emory many times, I can tell you that a game with him was always just like our life according to Forrest Gump. Remember his f...
In the first part of this article I demonstrated by my own example that the biggest secret of the Soviet school of chess was the utmost motivation of the Soviet players. We simply had no right to do wrong since the consequence could be ...
Alone together. Foolish wisdom. Cruel kindness. Arrogant humility. All of these phrases are oxymorons, "combination of words that have opposite or very different meanings." The title of this article seems to fit this definition to the lett...
The famed Soviet school of chess has produced hundreds of grandmasters and dozens of world champions. Thousands of chess coaches teach their students using "the Soviet training method." But who can really describe what exactly was/is the So...
"Thank you, GM Serper for this profound statement. I would have never guessed it on my own!" Admit this was your first thought when you read the title of this article. Yes, chess is obviously not checkers and yet, when I was a kid, I heard this ...
One of the tips that you will hear from top-level players over and over again is that you MUST study your own games. Chess.com is here to do some of the hard work for you as the best coaches on Chess.com go over member games. They will highlight t...
When my journey to the chess world was still in its nascent stages, I picked up a dusty old copy of My System, settled down in a comfortable chair, adopted a grave, contemplative expression, and started to read. Everything went smooth...
While going over a game with my student, B.B., I noticed that his position wasn’t particularly desirable. I also noticed that he didn’t think there was much to learn from the wreckage before us, and he wanted to move on to another game...
I am not going to reveal a big secret if I say that the vast majority of chess players love tactical play and hate slow maneuvering. Indeed, tactics are beautiful and exciting and positional chess is weird and boring. That is, if you don't under...
I’ve written several articles that discuss the dynamics of chess teacher and student, and the kinds of things a student should expect from lessons. Though the teacher will give his charge a study program, there is nothing more useful and ins...
These days you can find anything on the Internet. For example, if you like hard rock and chess, then this video is for you! You can notice that they set up the board correctly (the a1 square is black!) and the position from their ga...
There’s cheating in chess? What a silly question. Of course there is, and the transgressions are many and varied. But when I came to the game as a callow youth, I didn't pay much attention to it. Naturally, I knew certain practices were i...
