When I first started playing, it eventually dawned on me that there were only two gears to play chess: Try your best or resign. For a critical tale of how I reached that conclusion, please refer to The Train Story. Today I would like to relate an...
After a long break I played again in the Hungarian team championship league on Sunday at 2nd of February. I was excited before the game. I planned to use my prepared ideas in the slav defense. 2 years ago I helped an Indian student, a woman grandm...
Every chess player dreams of improving his game. He might simply want to smash his friends. He might want that 1200 rating to turn into a 1600 rating. Or he might be sick and tired of not knowing why he lost games X, Y, and Z. Study certainly help...
The number one reason players lose chess games is... They move too quickly. First off, how long should a standard time control chess game last? The answer is 3 to 5 hours. Every titled player earned that honor by playing mostly five hour games...
Many openings (especially when you play Black) have specific strategical problems typical for that particular opening. If you play the French Defense, then the bishop on c8 is your constant headache. In the Tarrasch Defense you need to live with a...
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Today's article is the last in series of positional methods from Magnus Carlsen's games. Being aware of the World Champion's style it is no surprise that the topic of piece exchanges wraps up this theme. Carlsen is extremely good in this area - he...
Greetings, chess fans! This is the final part of my series of endgame studies. This month I have learned so much about these wonderful pieces of chess art and their composition. The beauty and majesty of this royal game we all love continues to am...
Professor: Hello, class. Are you prepared to get scientific about things? That is, are you ready to talk about bishops today? Lucian: Bishops?What bishops? Bad bishops? Zephyr: Or good bishops? Professor: Not quite either type. No, I’m th...
En el siguiente post quiero recomendar algunos libros que me parecen esenciales para cualquier persona que quiera dar sus primeros pasos en el ajedrez. El primer libro que quiero mencionar se llama "Fundamentos del Ajedrez" de José Raúl Capablanca...
FIDE Master Curt Brasket was a towering figure in Minnesota chess, having won the state championship a record 16 times. On January 24, 2014, he passed away in his sleep at the age of 81, having battled Parkinson’s disease for nearly 40 years. His ...
"And the rest is technique..." You've seen that annotation before. What does it mean? The rest is easy? Or we should pay less attention to the rest because it is less artistic? In fact, the technique of winning with an extra pawn is one of the m...
When I was in high school, our school had no chess team, so I would frequently travel after school to our arch-rival high school and hang out with their strong team. One of the players on the arch-rival's team was Ricky S. Ricky was a year or so ...
The Order of the Mandarins of the Yellow Button In the second half of the 19th century, a group of chess players in the Boston area formed a somewhat informal, yet exclusive coterie along the lines of the famous German...
Curse of the Hasty Pawn Advance EvgeniyZh (1192) – raj475 (1324)ICC Live Game (30-0), 2014 1.e4 b6 2.e4 e6 3.e5 I’ve seen many sub-1500 rated players make this kind of hasty pawn advance, and I will take this opportunity to make a comment abou...
As you might remember, in the "Personal Mona Lisa" series we analyze the best games played by strong chess players who as a rule are not that well known. Of course most of you probably heard about GM Isaac Kashdan thanks to his numerous books and ...
"What can I do to get worse at chess? Right now I am playing too well." Great question, and possibly not as silly as it may sound. After all, GM Znosko-Borovsky once wrote a book called How Not to Play Chess, so why not look at ways to get worse?...
Please Note: This rating comparison is from 2014. For the most recent comparisons, please visit https://chessgoals.com/rating-comparison/ Many players are curious about how the different chess.com ratings stack up against each other. ...
One of the first principles that an early, intermediate-level chess player learns is that rooks on the seventh rank are powerful. In Russian we call the seventh (or second) rank “obzhornyi” (обжорный ), roughly translating into &l...
Hey everybody! My month of endgames and beauty is drawing to a close. This week was pretty harrowing for me. I was uninspired and frustrated, staring at a chess board for hours without seeing so much as a tiny tactical twist. Creating endgame stud...
Professor: Good afternoon, class. --- Lucian and Zephyr: Good afternoon, Professor. --- Professor: I hope you’ve both been having a good day so far. It’s so nice and sunny out that I’ve been walking around enjoying the warmth. --- Lucian: But Pro...
Greetings everyone! I am grandmaster Rafael Leitão, from Brazil. My FIDE rating is 2645. I am going to write a series of articles about chess preparation. Many ambitious chessplayers do not know how to work in order to achieve a master and grandma...
A distinctive structure arises from the French Defense, featuring White's space advantage and Black's restricted light-squared bishop. Against this, Black hopes for counterplay via the pawn break ...f6 and queenside counterplay on the c-file and o...
The style of journalistic writing from over a half century ago is somewhat different than that of today, in some ways perhaps a bit harder to read but in other ways more enjoyable. Looking through old "Time" magazines is also enjoyable and o...
