As I write this, we are just hours from the opening pawn pushes of the 8th US Chess League season. And what an exciting season it will be! One of the major innovations of the season is that the games will be shown on both ICC and Chess.com, and th...
Tonight was the first night of the 2012 season of the US Chess League, and wow were these matches close! Two out of four matches were drawn: Philadelphia Inventors v. Baltimore Kingfishers Board 1- Erenburg (Phi) v. Enkhbat (Bal): with white an...
One of my students recently sent me some interesting games in the Ruy Lopez. Â He wanted some help figuring out middlegame ideas from both sides of the board. Â VivaChe graciously gave me permission to show one of his games in an article. Play thro...
As I write this, we are just hours from the opening pawn pushes of the 8th US Chess League season. And what an exciting season it will be! One of the major innovations of the season is that the games will be shown on both ICC and Chess.com, and th...
Tonight was the first night of the 2012 season of the US Chess League, and wow were these matches close! Two out of four matches were drawn: Philadelphia Inventors v. Baltimore Kingfishers Board 1- Erenburg (Phi) v. Enkhbat (Bal): with white...
The subject of our Chess.com player profile this time is none other than Norway´s chessplayer No. 2 after the not-so unknown Magnus Carlsen: You guessed it, it´s Jon Ludvig Hammer, better known as SultanOfKings here on Chess.com.  Hammer is a Ches...
The year is 1959 and a rising chess star beats one record after another one. The youngest GM in history, the youngest Candidate for the World Title... Still the main accomplishments of Bobby Fischer's career are in the future and for now he ...
In today's show there were many open-ended questions similar to "Hi! I'm 1600 and want to get to 1800. What books should I read?" or the more answerable "Hi! I'm 1600 and I want a good book on positional play. What do you recommend?" There's a to...
Endgames can be convoluted. Many ideas are interwoven, which makes it hard to isolate pure endgame ideas or technical plans. However, if one looks for a specific idea and searches through the games, one can be surprised at finding it under differe...
When I coined the term "Counting", many thought I was simply referring to knowing the value of the pieces, but that's just a minor aspect. By Counting I meant determining whether any sequence of exchanges led to gain or loss of material on any squ...
Today we will be seeing a game by grandmaster Svetozar Gligoric, who recently passed away. Gligoric was born in Belgrade in 1923 and died on August 14 at the age of 89. After first learning chess by watching people play at a local bar, he ma...
IMPORTANT: [At the end of the puzzles, you should click MOVE LIST so you can see my instructive notes and variations. If you are having trouble solving a problem, just click SOLUTION, and then MOVE LIST. Even if you solve everything, DO click MOVE...
Part I of this story dealt with the first five rounds of the championship. I was the leader with 4/5, and among my pursuers were Olga Girya and Alisa Galliamova, whom I was to face in the rounds to come. During the rest day I decided to take a f...
Every year we hold the charity Holly Heisman Memorial Tournament to raise money for women in need. Thanks to our organizers, the Ramachandras, our TD Joshua Anderson, and Howard Stern, who donates a trip to his studio which we auction off on EBay ...
With the death of the legendary Grandmaster Svetozar Gligorić (1923-2012), the Chess World has lost one of the biggest chess Giants of the last century. I never had an opportunity to meet or even see GM Gligorić but my generation of ches...
In any series of Candidates tournaments for the world championship of chess, you can count on your fingers and toes the realistic contenders for the crown - about 20 people - out of over 7 billion people in the world. Magnus Carlsen is one o...
Do you prefer a queen or two rooks? Â Everyone knows a rook is five points and a queen is nine points. Â 5+5 > 9 so the rooks should be a full pawn better, right? GM Larry Kaufman, who is an expert at computer chess, has determined the rooks are...
Today we continue with the endgame examples from the recent Washington International chess tournament. There were quite a few games where queen and bishop were well-coordinated and participated or could have participated in a mating attack against...
Last week I showed an interesting moment from my game against IM Goran Vojinovic in the Cleveland Open. In this follow-up article, we will see the entire game, which was a fascinating battle. I set off for this tournament Friday morning before i...
Last week, one of my students showed me a position and asked what I would do. I thought it was fairly instructive (it turned out to be!), so I will ask you the same question. In the following position, assume you are playing a long time control ga...
IMPORTANT: [At the end of the puzzles, you should click MOVE LIST so you can see my instructive notes and variations. If you are having trouble solving a problem, just click SOLUTION, and then MOVE LIST. Even if you solve everything, DO click MOV...
The main Russian chess event of the year started on August 2nd in Radisson Slavyanskaya Hotel in Moscow. 10 male and 10 female chess players were to compete for the title of the Russian Chess Champion. In each section, the contestants were: three ...
This is an Alekhine game that you may not have seen before. On his tenth move, he takes a bold risk with the classic Greek gift bishop sac. He even has the audacity to quietly castle in the middle of an attack! Several more quiet moves follow, but...
I receive a lot of messages from fellow chess.com members. Sometimes I am frightened when I open my mailbox since I know very well that I won't be able to reply to many of them. There are requests like "I am an attacking player, what opening shoul...
