So far this new series on “attacking the enemy King oriented tactics” has explored kingside weaknesses on h6, h7, g7, and f7 that often lead to some form of mating attack catastrophe. We added to the “h7-square as a target” via looking at the Clas...
The Torre Attack is not a particularly popular opening these days. Wikipedia says that " The Torre Attack is rarely met in modern top-flight play, and statistical analysis shows that it is not particularly advantageous for White." Maybe so, b...
I want to show you guys my game against Grand Master Omar Almeida and how I imitated Grand Master Boris Gulko but first you need to see how brilliantly effective Gulko plays so you can understand in what ways exactly I imitated him. There are m...
Have you ever played a chess game with a "ringed piece"? In these games, "a ring or band is placed around a particular piece, and the player giving odds must checkmate with that piece" (Source: Wikipedia). The following game depicts Max Lange pla...
Today's article is the last one in the "Tactics" series. The positions presented today show the role of tactics in modern practice. We will start with an example that shows how in complex strategic battles grandmasters of the highest caliber can m...
Once again we return to the "Attack and Defense" series. We will be discussing the difficult question of when to strike and when to keep control. I had several instances of this occur in a recent tournament, the Eastern Open in Washington D.C. T...
I'm back with some more Golden Gulko Nuggets. "More Golden Gulko Nuggets, please!!" "Honey, slow down, one box of Golden Gulko Nuggets costs 20 Euros!" Do you remember what Gulko played in the following position? What do you have to do whe...
Our final article on the Classic Bishop Sacrifice is simple and too the point: it features nothing but puzzles, which will allow you to see if you fully gasped the concepts we explored in Parts 1 – 3. ...
It's not the entire story - it's just what I know from talking to Michael on the phone, a series of email exchanges over a year+ period, and following the saga on the internet. As you will discover near the end, I only met Michael in person once.....
In last week's column we discussed a hustler's trick where he would offer you a position where you could choose White or Black and the hustler would take the opposite side and beat you. Sometimes top chess players borrow this trick from the hust...
A few weeks ago I played my first and only tournament of 2012. I haven't played in a long time because tournaments take up too much of my time but because I thought the world might end, I made an exception "Bye Chess! According to the Mayan Prop...
At the beginning of this week's show almost every question involved openings. Don't get me wrong; I think openings are important - it's the only part of the game which you are guaranteed to reach each time you play. But this obsession with opening...
Today's article features positions from the recently completed 22nd North American Open that took place in Las Vegas from December 26th-30th. It seems that the holiday atmosphere and the popularity of gambling in Vegas had its impact on the player...
This week we will be seeing a very entertaining book called Chess Combination as a Fine Art. This is a collection of articles by German master Kurt Richter from the magazine Schach. The subject of his column was "Lessons in Chess - Advanced School...
In Part One of this series, the main topic of the Bxh7+ thrust concerned the win of material. In Part Two, we explored what happens after 1.Bxh7+ Kxh7 2.Ng5+ Kg8 and 2…Kh8. In Part Three, we’ll move on to 2…Kh6 and 2…Kg6...
In my new weekly column "Pros and Cons" I am aiming to show that a well known strategical concept can be both an advantage and a disadvantage for you, depending on the position. Today is the special Holiday edition of the column and for your ...
Defensive methods have improved drastically in modern chess. It is really rare for one to see clean combinations, where one side finishes off the game without the other side putting up tough resistance. Top players over time have accumulated numer...
This week's book review will be of the classic Endgame Strategy by Mikhail Shereshevsky. This book - as its name implies - is about the endgame. However, it is not really about basic endgames (i.e. rook and pawn against rook). It is not a book o...
Fight the King's Indian, Gruenfeld, and Dutch defenses with ZUKA by David Rude.Thinker's press, Inc. 2012, Davenport, IA. 44e0 pages, ISBN: space 101888710-63-2 $29.95 at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Gr%C3%BCnfeld-Defenses-stand-alone-cohesive-...
In Part One of this series, the main topic of the Bxh7+ thrust concerned the win of material. This might have been boring to some, but it is no less important than a full bore mating attack. Now, in Part Two, we’ll let the blood fly! Here we...
Before I explain the strange title of today's article, let me show you what kind of position we are going to discuss: This kind of position can happen in many different openings (we can assume that there ar...
The Mongoose Press Prize for the best question went to LazyChessPlayer for: "One of the rules of blitz games is you can only move when your clock is running and you can not move until your opponent has pressed his clock. Although I heard of this ...
Today we will study games from the past where players used or failed to use tactics to gain a positional advantage or to achieve a draw in a worse position. It is no surprise that the games of Karpov and Petrosian show up as they were the masters ...
This week, as the holiday vacation draws near, I will be reviewing the book The Art of Defense in Chess by Grandmaster Andrew Soltis. Consider settling down in a soft and comfortable chair and reading this book during those snowy afternoons of you...
