It’s rare to see the king going on the attack, especially in the middlegame with queens on the board. However, it can happen and when it does it is usually aesthetic and shocking. We learn early on to protect the king, and quickly begin to see hi...
Mr. O’Dowd said: “I’m struggling to get to my best form at the moment, and this game may encapsulate some of my worse thinking – it certainly shows some of my lower areas of positional understanding (I wouldn’t send you anything I played as Black ...
During my studies in the National Sports Academy we had many other subjects besides chess. Anatomy, psychology, biochemistry, sports medicine, etc. Some of them were not really related to chess, some very close to the aspect of our game. We also h...
First of all, I would like to congratulate you on your most recent article. It was very well written. However, I have one question. All titled players that I know say that you should learn the ideas behind openings, more so than the opening lines ...
Grandmaster Varuzhan Akobian is currently one of the United States' highest ranked chess players. He became an IM at the age of 16 and a GM at the age of 20. Akobian has won three World Opens, played for the U.S. in two Chess Olympiads, and qualif...
After reading your feedback for the Tactical Super-test that we had a couple of weeks ago (http://www.chess.com/article/view/classical-games-everybody-should-know-tactical-super-test), I learned 2 main things: 1) A majority of the readers enjoye...
Today we will look at a game where the transition from opening to endgame did not go well for one side. White ended up with a busted bishop on b3 with no prospect of activating it due to doubled c-pawns. As a few probably guessed by now, the game ...
What is “space” on a chess board? And why is it so important? A simple answer to the first question is that space is “control of squares”. So a player with a “space advantage” is one who controls a greater number of squares. This could even be du...
Mr. BallsofSteeel brings us yet another movie-based name (for some reason, with a 3rd "e"), this time from Christopher Walken’s ping-pong film, BALLS OF STEEL. BallsofSteeel (1512) vs. The Butcher’s Daughter (1879), Tournoi De Culo 2...
A positional sacrifice implies giving away material for long-term positional advantages. Such exchange operations don’t lead to a straightforward win of the game or material. While any piece can be positionally sacrificed, the most common victims ...
Hello Magesh and Arun: As my question subject suggests I have a problem calculating complicated chess positions. Although I can see a single line in considerable length, when the variations become complicated and the tree of possib...
While doing my research for the "Classical Games" series, I have discovered many interesting and exciting things. And I am not talking just about games. Today I want to talk about an intriguing chess personality from the past - Josef Cukierman. I...
This is how the German team must have felt after winning the prestigious European Team Competition. I am a kind of breaking the chronological turn of events, but so be it! What these players did was surprising, exceptional and thrilling. After all...
With the next couple of articles we will look at transitions from openings into endgames and explore the significance of endgames in opening preparation. Gata Kamsky once gave me advice on how to study openings. In addition to theory he recommende...
I would like to show a game in this week’s article which really amazed me when I first saw it. In the 36th Soviet Championship a fairly little-known player Igor Platonov took on the legend of attack, Mikhail Tal. Playing the Najdorf Sicili...
The guy playing White has a wonderfully colorful name. For those not in the know about what "boomstick" alludes to, it was used in the movie ARMY OF DARKNESS in which Ash (played by the legendary Bruce Campbell), after being accidentally transport...
Heavy pieces endgames are endgames when only queens and/or rooks and pawns are left on the board. The key factors are space and open files. Controlling a vital open file can be a decisive advantage. Here are the most typical plans you can employ ...
Greetings, in many of the openings that I play, I end up with a 4:3 kingside pawn majority while my opponent has 2:1 on the queenside. We generally both have at least one rook and a minor piece. What would you suggest is the best way to solve this...
Most chess players have probably heard the saying "Chess is 99% tactics". While it is an exaggeration, the goal of this saying is to emphasize the importance of calculation in chess. Indeed, the fastest and most efficient way to improve your ...
Today’s article is a continuation of the queen endgames theme. The last article we looked at stalemate ideas in queen endgames and today we will look at pawn sacrifices. In the first example, black sacrifices a pawn in hope of perpetual and an eas...
This is an intriguing game. After Gomes is forced to weaken his kingside pawn structure, Netto uncorcks an extremely subtle 14th move. Its purpose is only made clear after his next few moves, in which he blasts open the g-file and finds a winning ...
from time to time we hear complaints that chess is doomed because opening theory has been exhausted. These complaints have come from amateur players and professionals alike. In response, many people have proposed changing the rules of chess in som...
Probably the vast majority of games you will see in articles on chess.com or other places end decisively. But overall, at least in the higher levels of chess, the majority actually end in draws. We have been seeing mostly games where the balance w...
rvkoivu said: “I have one interesting game to offer. It was a 15 10 game played at Chess.com against an opponent rated 2152. I was rated 1521 at that moment, currently 1596 (1930 in CC). I have played chess for three years, and I tend t...
