After the Parsvnath International tournament the chesswagon moved to the south Indian city of Chennai. The two cities, separated by 2000 Kilometres, have quite different climatic conditions. Most of the players would have preferred the warmer cond...
The inspiration for the name “Pawn Fatale” is a recent Britney Spears’ album “Femme Fatale”. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, "femme fatale" is a seductive woman who lures men into dangerous or compromising situations; or a woman who attra...
These three letters might not mean anything to a Non-Indian, but trust me it means a world to Indians right now. MSD stands for Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the captain of the Indian Cricket team. India won the Cricket World Cup last week beating Sri Lan...
Emanuel Lasker was born on December 24, 1868 at Berlinchen, son of a Jewish cantor. At the age of eleven he was sent to Berlin to study mathematics, where he lived with his brother Berthold Lasker eight years his senior, who taught him how to play...
When I tell people who are not into chess that physical training is very important, they often don’t take it seriously, or are deeply surprised. At first sight, it seems that chess is purely a brain game which has nothing to do with endurance or p...
There is no wilder variation of the Spanish Gam than the Classical Schliemann. The controversial opening was first analyzed seriously by Jaenisch and has been a favorite of correspondence players, emerging briefly in the 1990 under he patronage of...
member Sulpolitix asked: As a beginning chess player, I would like to know the next thing I should learn after I learn how the pieces move. Dear Sulpolitix: I will deal with this from the perspective of a chess teacher, and what inform...
Amongst a variety of strategical and tactical ideas developed by Botvinnik, the one that really stands out is the position with an isolated Queen pawn on d4. According to Kasparov, this kind of position was a true Botvinnik favorite, where he dis...
Arturo Pomar Salamanca (pictured) was born September 1, 1931 in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. At the age of 11 he won the championship of the Balearic Islands. He was able to draw a game at age 13 with his teacher, Alexander Alekhine. He was the yo...
Last week we evaluated the following position and looked at a training game I played from here: Now we will continue with the same position, going a little deeper. Let me just remind you of the conclusions from the last article concer...
by GM Magesh and GM Arun After playing Chess for the past twenty odd years, there are two things that I (Magesh) have really gotten good at; getting into trouble and getting out of it! Active counter play and good fighting spirit has always gi...
He started playing chess at age 10, became a Candidate Master at 18, a Master at 24… At that point, it seemed as if this player would never emerge as a truly exceptional chess talent. He had the habit of playing fast, 15-20 minutes per game was ty...
The main goal in chess is to mate the opponent. This can be done indirectly by creating a decisive material advantage, or via a straightforward mating attack. However, one shouldn’t aim for an assault in any position. If there are no prerequisites...
The French Winawrer Poisoned Pawn used to be one of the wildest arenas of opening theory. It has calmed down a bit, lacking a champion at highest levels, but ius still a complicated and thrilling ride.
member Dannyhume asked: Why should I bother reading anything written by someone other than a top-10 or candidate super-GM from the last 5 years? If there is a reason, then why can’t that reasoning apply to reading the works of a lower master/expe...
Today we'll discuss a powerful opening/middlegame set up called the Maroczy Bind. The following diagram shows a typical Maroczy Bind pawn chain. To tell you the truth, I don't know where this name came from since I was not able to l...
Can you spot the promising sacrifices? Some are easy but the hard part was achieving the positions. ...
The tournament organized by the Dutch radio company, A.V.R.O., in 1938 is still considered one of the very strongest ever held. Its purpose was to find a challenger for the World Champion, Alexander Alekhine. The winner was to be that challenger. ...
Most people, when delving into the culture of chess, tend to write and read about the Great chess players, the Great tournaments and the Great games. But chess is about far more than those select few things. In fact, a very real part of th...
Seeing a new position for the first time, a chess player sees bits and pieces that eventually form into ideas and lead to a positional evaluation. The quality of the positional assessment depends on many things. Factors include how familiar the po...
by GM Magesh and GM Arun This week we shall see The Queen's Gambit Declined - Lasker Defence used by the reigning World Champion Vishy Anand against former World Champion Veselin Topalov. As you may know, Anand used this solid system in his final...
When asked which book had a profound influence on their development as players, most strong players would name manuals like Nimzowitsch’s My System or books with selections of games like Fischer’s or Kasparov’s best games. Modern players will name...
David Bronstein was one of the early adopters of the exchang sacrifice at a1 n the Exchange Gruenfeld. White gives up a rook for Black's powerful bishop. Bronstein's choice is not the main focus of attention these days but it rmains a good approac...
Who doesn’t like attacking? Improving the position, creating new threats, putting pressure on the opponent, sacrificing lots of material and finally winning. What do we have on the other side? Nit-picking for even the slightest counter-chances and...
