There are not many games in the chess history as popular as the next one played by the great Emanuel Lasker. You'll be hard pressed to find a book on tactics that doesn't mention this game. The combination was even named after the second World Cha...
I am frequently asked if the classical games played by great champions should be memorized. In my opinion it is not necessary. But what you should do for sure is to understand and memorize the key ideas of those games. If you learn typical p...
Wilhelm Steinitz is widely known as the founder of a new positional school of chess, so you might expect to see long boring games played by the first official World Champion. In fact, Steinitz created many beautiful attacking gems, so we can lear...
In this game, Berkes' slightly passive opening allows Judit Polgar to establish a lead in development. Berkes decides to set a trap, which Polgar seems to fall into. However, a White's neat 14th move showed that Black was actually the one that had...
Last week we analyzed one of Morphy's games and you had a chance to see why Fischer once said that by the precision of his play Morphy was the best chess player of all time. In Part 4 we saw that Adolf Anderssen would give his opponent a chance be...
First of all, let me assure you that I am not discontinuing my 'classical games' series. As a matter of fact, this is a continuation of our journey through the classics. But the game I am going to present today is so beautiful and instructive that...
At the age of 15 I had the wonderful opportunity to work with International Master, and world renowned chess trainer, Mark Dvoretsky. He visited Arizona, courtesy of the sponsorship of my father and grandfather, to work with a group of me and my p...
Since we finished last week's article with "the Immortal Game" it is only fair to start today with its twin - "the Evergreen game". (Just like in most of my articles I give you a chance to test your chess skills, so the games are given as a Quiz....
We continue our exploration of classical chess games with the next immortal gem. It is a truly unique situation when a chess player became famous because of just one ultra short game he played (just 7 moves). Moreover, as far as I know, it is the...
Here is a game that shows the dangers of ignoring the threats against your castled king. After some inaccurate opening moves by Smirin, instead of exchanging off pieces, as Sutovsky is preparing an attack, he plays to solve his problems by force. ...
Last week we started our little journey into chess history. We want to look at the most important classical games. The ones that moved chess theory and broadened the general understanding of the game. In my opinion no chess player can call h...
Once I had a conversation with a very strong chess player and he casually mentioned that he was going to delete all the old games from his database because they were practically useless. I don't remember exactly his definition of 'old games', but ...
The World Chess community celebrated the 100th anniversary of Mikhail Moiseevich Botvinnik a couple of days ago (he was born on August 17, 1911). He was the founder of the famous Soviet School of Chess which explains his popula...
In the final installment of our discussion about blunders I would like to talk about one of the most popular kinds of blunders. This kind of blunders is extremely popular in the games of not very advanced chess players, but from time to time even ...
Last week, when we discussed the way to avoid time trouble, one of the suggestions was "Prepare your openings! Besides an obvious benefit of playing good moves in a theoretical position, you'll also save some time on your clock in the opening!" &n...
The kind of blunders we are going to discuss today is by far the most popular one. There is no chess player who has never experienced this kind of blunder. 4.) Blunders due to time trouble I bet you can immediately remember the painful blunders ...
We continue our analysis of different kinds of blunders and today we'll discuss the most complicated one. The two kinds of blunder that I described in the first two parts of this article can be fixed relatively easily: (1) When you play a game you...
Today we'll continue to discuss the nature of chess blunders and the ways to prevent or at least minimize them. 2) Blunders due to premature relaxation This is an extremely common type of blunder and an especially painful one. It happens when y...
If you are a frequent participant of chess tournaments you can see a lot of different things there: different players, languages, openings, hairstyles etc. But there is one thing common to any chess tournament. You cannot miss it. It is in a tourn...
The first three parts of this article were devoted to the analysis of typical mistakes that cause opening disasters (and you would agree that it is a real disaster to lose a game in 10 moves or less!). Today you have a chance to demonstrate the kn...
I posted a brilliant game that was won by Dmitry Ostapenko a while ago. You can find it here. Ostapenko won another great game that I would like to show you guys. He sacrifices a knight while the game is still in its early stages; he then shockin...
In the previous two installments of this article we discussed how important it is to pay attention, know openings you play and watch out for forcing moves of your opponent. But even if you do all the above-mentioned things, there is still risk. S...
In the second part of the article we will continue to explore games where strong chess players (masters and grandmasters) lost their games in 10 moves or less. Today I want to discuss the most common reason (at least in my opinion) for quick openi...
In the last articles we discussed a good strategy to get a practical chance to beat someone much stronger than you. I want to emphasize the key words ('practical chance'), because as one of the readers (mightyrearranger) correctly pointed out: "At...
