Just like last year in Tbilisi, in 2012 in Gaziantep I had to score 2/2 in the final two games to qualify for the World Championship. In round 10 of the European Championship I won a nerve-racking game against Voinovich, and in the final round I w...
Now that I am an older player in my 60s, old age is creeping up on me (I can feel it in my knees), but I can still enjoy chess. Even after playing almost 50 years in hundreds of tournaments, I still like the chess tournament atmosphere and can al...
I would like to introduce you to a game, played by the 4th World Chess Champion, Alexander Alekhine. The game was played in 1925, when he was 33 years old. Two years later, he won the World Title against Capablanca. Alekhine played this ...
In the first part of this article we discussed the cases where two Bishops are a very powerful weapon. We also analyzed Steinitz's games where the first World Champion showed the correct way to take advantage of the Bishop pair. In the next ...
Best match player. William Steinitz played 27 chess matches from 1862 to 1896, and won 25 of the 27. He won 160 games, lost 70, and drew 57. Best Selling Chess Book. Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess has sold over one million copies. Best world c...
Last week we explored strategies for winning with an extra rook. Today we will explore the situation when one side has an extra knight or bishop for a pawn, two pawns or for no compensation. There is a famous joke my coach likes to use that can be...
In this and the next article I will be discussing the situation where one player holds an advantage which is tangible but not necessarily of the level we call a “winning advantage”. But while we are at it, what exactly is a “winning advantage”? ...
N.N. (1770) - Vanilla Cokehead (1820), England 2012 [time controls: 30 moves in an hour and 15 minute blitz finish] 1.e4 c5 2.Nc3 2.Nf3 g6 is known as the Hyper-Accelerated Dragon. Instead of playing 2...d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 g6...
Castling is a move performed simultaneously by a king and a rook with the aims of ensuring the king’s safety and connecting the rooks. There are three ways you can castle: long, short and 'artificial.' The latter is when your king and rook eventua...
This is a rather entertaining game that features the pin quite often. After an interesting opening, both kings are exposed, which leads to a rater double-edged fight in which both players fight to stay alive and checkmate the other side first. Ehl...
About 30 years ago I was playing in a kid's team tournament. I don't remember who won the tournament, my own result or even who played there. The only thing I remember about the tournament is what happened during one of our team's gatherings...
Today's article is for players rated 800-1000, and we will look at rook endgames where one side has an extra rook. There are several rules that one has to follow in realizing this extra rook into a win. I will go over the most important ones here....
There is hardly a world championship match that illustrates the dichotomy of attack and defense more clearly than the two battles between Mikhail Chigorin and Wilhelm Steinitz. Therefore, I have decided to use a game from this match for the week’s...
No time to study opening theory? Shock your opponent with an SOS! With an SOS you deviate early (usually before move 6!) from regular lines in mainstream openings. So you will reach positions you have actually studied without having memori...
N.N. (1950) - Sam (1850), Bristol District League 2012 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 Not so long ago, the extremely dangerous Taimanov Variation (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 3.d5 e6 4.Nc3 exd5 5.cxd5 d6 6.e4 g6 7.f4 Bg7 8.Bb5+ ...
The Danish Gambit is one of those daring 19th century openings that has inspired many amateur players. White gets a considerable lead in development at the cost of a couple of pawns. In such cases Black must be careful, of course, but here I feel...
Trading pieces is a typical technique in chess. While at the start of the game both you and your opponent have an equal chess army, later in the game your forces are starting to perish. Naturally, like Saviely Tartakover used to say, “It’s better ...
Since the chess.com staff seems to have run out of good April Fool's Day jokes, I have decided to post an article on joke chess problems. They are puzzles in chess which use humor as a primary or secondary element. ...
There are many openings where you fianchetto your Bishop (i.e. you develop your Bishop to g2 for White or to g7 for Black). There your Bishop is going to control the long diagonal and offer an extra protection for your King. But what is that? Your...
Today we will look at a complex middlegame position that resolved into an even more complex endgame. There was a stage of tactical fireworks that led to a theoretical endgame. White was pressing for most of the game but I managed to get a better h...
As chess players, most of us have probably at some point played a game or two of checkers. Perhaps you even played more than a few games before deciding, as Rashid Nezhmetdinov did, that chess is just the better game (I hope nobody gets mad about ...
If you are reading this, then you are using a web browser. It's your portal to the web. Your surf board for surfing the net. Your car for driving the internet highway. Your... you get the point. It's what makes the internet work. But does which ...
Collopy: “This game was played in a serious manner (about an hour each spent on it) - although without clocks.” David S (2066) – R. Collopy (1722), Friendly match 2012 ECO: E10 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 Nc6 3.Nf3 A...
From March 1st to 19th most of the strongest European female chess players gathered at Gaziantep, Turkey to compete for the classical, rapid and blitz titles. I don’t want to dwell too much on the statistics and peculiarities of the tournament str...
