Chess is a cruel game. One moment of negligence, one second of distracted thinking, and hours of hard work instantly go down the drain. For most chess players, the euphoria of success — a combination, a hard-fought victory, a positional mast...
This is the last installment of my tribute to IM Emory Tate. The first two parts can be found here and here. There are definitely people out there who knew Emory much better than me, so they could disagree, but I always had an impression that hi...
A few months ago, IM Jeremy Silman wrote an entertaining and highly informative article on why grandmasters blunder. I was particularly impressed with his opening remark: "Over the years I’ve noticed that whenever a grandmaster hang...
I run a chess club in a local school, and whenever I ask my students if a king can check another king, I hear a loud "No! Kings cannot kiss each other!" Of course, I know what they mean. Even beginners are well aware that this is the closest a k...
"Chess" circa 1913by Annti Favén "A combination is a tactical maneuver in which you sacrifice material to obtain an advantage, or at least to improve your position. So, strategy then, is...
If you follow my weekly column, then you probably noticed that I am a big fan of Magnus Carlsen. I like his chess style, his general attitude to play till the very end and his notorious disregard of the opening theory. I grew up at the height...
In every single position — whether opening or endgame, tactical or positional, winning or losing — our priority is to ensure the safety of our king. Indeed, the monarch spends most of the game cowering behin...
Sometimes we can observe a peculiar situation in chess: one of the pieces on the board practically doesn't exist. Yes, it is there: we can see it, we can feel it, but we cannot move it. Therefore, in most of the cases, for a practical purpose su...
Everyone gets tired from time to time, stress kills, and the periodic brain melt is pretty much impossible to prevent. — IM Jeremy Silman, Why Do Grandmasters Blunder? No matter how hard he works, or how strong h...
Some time ago, I wrote an article with a similar title where we discussed a sacrifice that happens when Black plays h7-h6 and attacks White's Ng5, but instead of moving the knight back, White plays Ng5xf7! starting an attack. Today we'll analyze...
Garry Kasparov is definitely one of the best players in the history of chess. His games have been analyzed over and over in hundreds of books and thousands of articles and videos. Then how can I be so sure that you somehow missed some of his bri...
Computers continually change the way we play chess. The reports about new cases of computer cheating are a sad reality these days. We already discussed the many way computers affect chess in this series of articles: (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 an...
Knights are tricky little pieces. Often seen dancing around the board like little mischievous imps, knights have the power to bewilder and confuse even the strongest of grandmasters. I want to take a deeper look at one particular knigh...
July was the month of chess weddings. Dutch super-GM Anish Giri got married to Georgian IM Sopiko Guramishvili, and Polish GM Radoslaw Wojtaszek tied the knot with Russian WGM Alina Kashlinskaya. If the title of this art...
The Chinese chess prodigy Wei Yi wins the hearts of fans with every new tournament he plays. It is not just his phenomenal results (with his current rating, he should be the highest-rated 16-year-old ever!), but also his sparkling style of play th...
At its heart, chess is a logical game. Every move — no matter how outwardly mysterious — can be explained and rationalized. To be sure, an idea can (and often should) violate general principles, but it still must satisfy the ...
The last month was rich for chess tournaments, so I cannot blame you if you missed the U.S. Junior Girls Championship. Meanwhile, I suspect that you'll hear a lot in the future about some of the girls who played there. If you ask me why I ...
Today we are going to continue our analysis of "chess-boxing" combos. According to Wikipedia, in boxing, the one-two combo is a nickname of a jab and cross combo. In chess, the one-two combo starts with a queen jab, which we discussed here. Then...
More than a decade ago, I took part in a small open tournament at a local chess club. After winning the first game in rather one-sided fashion, I became convinced that the next five games would follow an identical trajectory. In round two, I reach...
In my previous articles, I discussed two "chess boxing" combos, "The Chess Uppercut" and "The Chess Sucker Punch." Today, I'll show you "Fischer's Jab." The definition of a jab is "a quick, sharp blow, especially with the fist...
Some time ago, we analyzed a typical combination where the key move resembles an uppercut in boxing. (You can find the article here.) Today we are going to discuss a similar tactical pattern where the main piece is again a rook. In the "chess up...
Half the variations which are calculated in a tournament game turn out to be completely superfluous. Unfortunately, no one knows in advance which half. -- GM Jan Timman, The Art of Chess Analysis (1997) As we saw in part one, chess does not...
In this video series, IM Daniel Rensch is here to educate us all on some chess fundamentals. You will want to go through these courses more than once. This video series will cover everything from basic tactical patterns to complex mating nets. T...
There is a positional sacrifice that is quite popular in the games of top players, particularly world champions. It works like this: you have your rook on an open file and you have an outpost there. (I hope most of our readers remember that an o...
