Chess.com Player Profiles: FM Eilyisum
Name: Evan Ju Title: Fide Master (FM) &n...
US Championship Endgames pt. 3
Today we will continue with the article series on endgames from the US Championship. The topic of today's article is the endgame from Shulman - Robson. Usually, I prefer to look at more than one endgame at a time but this endgame proved so full wi...
Mar Del Plata
The city of Mar Del Plata is located on the coast of the Atlantic – its name means “Sea of Silver”. It is one of Argentina’s biggest fishing ports. One alluring thing about chess, for those just beginning, is the names of the openings. Far away p...
Rules, Homes, and a Big Decision
BREAKING A WELL-KNOWN RULE luke-duke (1206) - bagpiper123456 (1198), chess.com (14 days per move), 2012 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 Here White usually plays 4.Ba4, keeping the tension. However, the Exchange Variation (4.Bxc6) also had/has many ...
Russians do not Retreat!
As the old chess legend goes, in one of his games GM Alexander Ivanov played Nf3-g5 and after his opponent answered with h7-h6, Alexander realized that the only reasonable move he had was Ng5-f3. After pondering for a while, GM Ivanov said "Russia...
Pin Ball 2
Here is another game that is full of pins. Radjabov uses several of them in succession around his twenty-fifth move. They are quite unexpected, and his opponent has no way to avoid losing his queen. The rest, as they say, is a matter of technique ...
A New Time Control
By IA Eric Schiller I propose a new time control to speed up games while preserving quality. Most games these days don’t require time in the prepared portions of openings or in technical positions in endgames. One minute per move is enough. Howeve...
U.S. Championship Endgames pt. 2
Today we will continue our look at interesting endgames from the recently-concluded U.S. Championship. I especially like the next example because it is almost like an endgame study. Onischuk is famous for his exchange sacrifices resulting in fa...
Polugaevsky's Boldness
Grandmaster Lev Polugaevsky was a complicated chess player. Although – ironically – his name means “lion”, it has been said that he was a very timid kind of guy, and that this was the reason he was never able to directly compete for the world cham...
Driving Down The Mega-Theory Highway
THE PROS & CONS OF SICILIAN NAJDORF MEGA-THEORY [As you can see, I did something a bit different this week. Other than the fact that I like to keep people guessing (you never know if you’ll get tactics, Tiny Tim, positional lessons, or...
Playing for a Draw
Mikhail Tal once described a typical case in his book. In 1959, at the Candidates Tournament (which was won by him, and which gave him the right to challenge the world champion at the time Mikhail Botvinnik) Tal was leading by 2.5 points ahead of ...
Smooth Criminal, Part Four.
Last week we analyzed games where Anatoly Karpov suffered because his opponents used the dynamic power of their "criminals" and with a timely push of their central pawns completely destroyed Karpov's position (http://www.chess.com/article/view/smo...
Chess.com Player Profiles: Natalia_Pogonina
Name: Natalia Pogonina Title: FIDE Woman Grandmaster, Grandmaster of Russia Date of birth: March 9th, 1985 Fide rating: 2447, highest - 2501 ...
US Championship Endgames pt. 1
Last week we saw some endgames from the U.S. Women's Championship; today we will overview endgames from the US Championship. This is Part 1 of the article and Part 2 will follow the next week. I will try to concentrate on specific moments of endga...
Video Series on Converting Extra Material
It is often said in chess that the hardest thing to do is "win a won game". This is because the tendency of most players, once a material advantage is achieved, is to relax, allow their opponent to slowly creep back into the game, until the positi...
One Game, Step-By-Step
Chess could be viewed as being composed of the elements of space, time, and quality (harmony). Perhaps you could even also see life in the same way, falling into the famous cliché of “life imitates chess”. Here we will see a game which fell from o...
Walk on the Wild Side
This game features yet another ridiculously bold king march. Petrosian decides to keep his king in the center and spurns castling when it becomes clear that Cardoso is mounting an attack. He then snatches at the opportunity to win some material, c...
Space, Negativity, and Dreams
IF YOU HAVE SPACE, NOTICE IT AND USE IT! mixiz said: “I think this is the key position. I think white must win this, having in mind that the opponent won’t play actively since he willingly came so far, and is obviously happy with t...
Women's World Blitz Chess Championship
My previous report was dedicated to the World Women’s Rapid Chess Championship, and now it is the time for blitz. The participants were the same, but not the results. The time control was rather unusual: 4m+2s/move. The typical one nowadays is 3m+...
Book review: Zuke 'Em
Zuke 'Em The Colle-Zukertort RFevolutionized by David Rudel foreword by Aaron Summerscale Thinker's Press August 2011 (Second Edition) ISBN 1-88871039X $25.99 at Amazon.com It is rare that one finds a book recommended by a grandmaster w...
Smooth Criminal, Part Three.
Before we continue the discussion that we started here and here, let me answer a concern some of the readers expressed in their comments. Let me quote one: "The article began with a quote about a passed pawn, and the title is about this quote...
Tragicomedies from the US Women's Championship
Today we will look at endgames from the US Women's Championships. The positions that I chose are from the genre of endgame tragicomedies. Either one or both sides misplayed the endgames presented here. There were big and huge blunders, blunders in...
Book review: Huebsch Gambit
Gambit Hΰbsch Antidote or Leurre? Eric Jego Collection savoir faire May 2012 ISBN 978-2-9536013-2-9 $17.12 Euros from http://thebookedition.com/gambit-hubsch-antidote-ou-leurre--eric-jego-p-79387.html As far as I know, this is the first boo...
Attack and Defense from Mikhail Tal
We all know that chess games can follow an almost infinite number of paths. Some become tactical battles from the very beginning, while in others the game might be heavy maneuvering the whole way through. In the game I will show you, after the ope...
