The Knockout Blow
At one time or another, all of us have experienced the agonizing pain of drawing or losing a completely winning position. One move — one millisecond of imprecise thinking — can nullify hours of hard work and inspired play. ...
The 14 Most Amazing World Championship Blunders
Magnus Carlsen won the 2014 world championship match in game 11 today to defend his title. But the sixth game of the Carlsen-Anand match made waves around the world. Some chess journalists rushed to christen the astonishing m...
The Secret Weapon Of Super Grandmasters, Part 2
In the first part of this article, we discussed how Alexey Shirov discovered a beautiful idea during a postmortem analysis of his game vs. GM Azmaiparashvili. Unexpectedly, he got a chance to use a similar idea in the last round of the sam...
How To Save Yourself With Stalemate
In online blitz chess (and especially in bullet), resignation is largely frowned upon. Indeed, with so little time remaining, there is always a possibility that your opponent will make a disastrous blunder, an unfortunate mouse slip, or &mdas...
The Secret Weapon Of Super Grandmasters
The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once said: "Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized. In the first it is ridiculed; in the second it is opposed; in the third it is regarded as self-evident." There are ...
Chess is 99% tactics
Today, I want to show some great tactics. Tactics was always nice, because normally, who have more material, wins. But sometimes, the player with more material lose. Firstly, I want to show a well-known Lilienthal-Capablanca, where white sacrifice...
Secrets of the Super Pawn
Many folks see the endgame as the most boring part of the game, where it is all about the technique. Even though some endgames require a decent amount of technique and sometimes can look boring for inexperienced chess players, they can still ...
More of the Greatest Combinations You've Never Seen
Today, we will continue our exploration of brilliant combinations that have been wrongly cast into oblivion. First, I would like to share one of my own games from many years back, in which I missed a gorgeous mating sequence. It was a very pain...
The Greatest Combinations You've Never Seen
In this day and age, nary a chess player is unfamiliar with the most famous tactical games of all time: Morphy-Count Isouard, Anderssen-Kieseritzky (The Immortal Game), Anderssen-Dufresne (The Evergreen Game), Glucksberg-Najdorf (The Polish Immort...
The Move You Can't Afford to Miss
Imagination is a vital component of every attacking player's arsenal. When attacking, it is easy to assume that a certain move or sequence is forced, thereby allowing your opponent to build up a sudden defensive bastion or attain counterplay. In ...
How to Spot the "Invisible" Pin
Pins are very popular and powerful chess weapons, and I am sure you've used them in dozens of your own games. If you just started playing chess and never heard about pins, I strongly recommend you check the Tactics Trainer. But even if you are...
The Cab Driver Who Knew How to Play Chess
In the beginning of 1980s, a young and promising British international master (let's call him Nigel) played a chess tournament in the Soviet Union. At that point, a tournament in the USSR was the best possible chess school for any chess player, an...
How to Steal a Chess Game
All chess players, whether they're GMs or novices, have bad days. However, chess is not a cumulative game — one blunder, one moment of premature relaxation — can instantly nullify hours of hard work. A few months...
Parting With the Lady: Hanken's Ghost
Today we’ll enjoy a lighthearted (with a tad of “morbid” tossed in) look at the time-honored queen sacrifice. I’m calling it “Parting With the Lady” in honor of the late Jerry Hanken, who wrote a number of excel...
Hikaru Nakamura: Rise of the Machines, the Conclusion
In the first part of this article, we left our Chess Terminator playing countless blitz and bullet games during the last free day of the championship. In the following seventh round, Nakamura had a very tough opponent. By the way, this is a good...
Hikaru Nakamura: Rise Of The Machines!
In one of my previous articles, I compared Mikhail Tal to a chess version of the Terminator. To be fair, except for his ultra aggressive playing style, the always-friendly Mikhail Tal looked like anything but this terrifying creature played b...
You Won't Believe This Simple Trap Even GMs Miss
There are many different traps in chess. Some of them are so well known that you can hardly use these tricks even against relatively weak players. However, some traps are good enough to catch even grandmasters. Sometimes, the world's leadi...
How to Become a Tactical Wizard
There is no need to explain the importance of tactics for a tournament player. I bet you've all heard the cliche "chess is 99% tactics," or an anecdote about a grandmaster who was a famous endgame specialist. (Was it Smyslov? I don't remember.) ...
How to Play Unorthodox Combinations
Even devout Petrosian fans cannot deny that combinations are aesthetically pleasing by definition. However, keen tactical vision is no longer a unique commodity. Sharp combinatorial awareness has become a required skill of all serious chess play...
The Universal Opening Trap
The majority of chess players like opening traps. I believe the main appeal of setting a trap is not the chance to win the game instantly. What really makes an opening trap attractive for chess players of all levels is the thrill of a hunt...
The Chess Terminator: Hasta la Vista, Baby!
The game from round 17 of the Soviet Championship 1957 was more proof that Tal was getting back to his great form. Even though it was just a draw, this game was one of Tal's favorites. In his book, Tal wrote that he always loved the b...
Good Traps and Bad Traps: The Maung Story
Let's attempt to define a good trap: "Setting up an attractive, but faulty, sequence for the opponent that, if followed, would allow a tactic or, at least, a forcing sequence unfavorable for that opponent. However, if the opponent avoids that mov...
The Tactical Rook Lift
About a year after I learned the rules of the game, I became practically obsessed with rook lifts. In my (inexperienced and naive) opinion, no attack was truly complete without an aesthetically pleasing rook lift. Indeed I had a rook (or two) on...
The Chess Terminator's Ultimate Solution
If the title of this article sounds like the action movie "The Bourne Ultimatum," it is pure coincidence, since here we are talking about Mikhail "Chess Terminator" Tal and his first win in the national championship. As you probably remember, af...