Every chess player hopes to play his immortal game some day. Borrowing lyrics from the hit song of Kelly Clarkson "people wait a lifetime for a moment like this." You never know when it will happen, but if you look at the best games played in che...
At Moscow 1935 twenty players engaged in a nineteen round event. At the end, Salo Flohr and Mikhail Botvinnik were on top with 13 points. Flohr was undefeated and had seven wins to Botvinnik’s nine, but Botvinnik had two losses. Emanuel Lasker was...
The position that we will consider today looks very sad for black. Considering the fact that it was played between two top class players – Ivanchuk and Radjabov one can assume that white won without a problem. At such high level of play, white sho...
By GM Magesh and GM Arun The Tata Steel Chess 2011 (used to be known as the Corus, Wjk Aan Zee) has produced some wonderful chess games for the fans. I have decided to share a very nice game today played by Alexey Shirov against Vladimir Kram...
Eugene Znosko-Borovsky, born on 16 August 1884 in St. Petersburg Russia, was a multifaceted personality with different natural aptitudes: chess master, teacher, author besides music, dramatic and literary critic. In the latter two he achieved dist...
There are many different types of chess mistakes, but some of them are especially widespread. They keep occurring in one game after another and are popular with lots of players. These mistakes may be dubbed typical and fixed via purposeful work. ...
Chess_Enigma asked: You and other authors recommend creating an opening repertoire according to likes, dislikes, study time, etc. You lay down some basic examples like 1.e4 and Sicilian defenses are for tactical games and demand more study time a...
While doing research for last week's article about GM Klaus Bischoff's best game, I found the next cute attack where GM Bischoff was on the receiving end of a combo. (Just like in most of my articles I give you a chance to test your attacking ski...
Emanuel Lasker was born in 1868 and won the World Championship in 1894. He held the title until 1921. He still holds the record as the longest reigning world champion. He stopped playing in tournaments in 1925. After nine years he returned at Zuri...
Mastering the Chess Openings Volume 4 320 pages Gambit 2010 $29.95 ISBN 1-906454-19-1 For several decades now John Watson has been one of the finest writers on chess, and his latest volume lives up to the standards of his previous work. T...
The 4th Berkeley International concluded on Jan 8, 2011. This tournament, which was organized by Arun Sharma, was the strongest event in California since the disappearance of the Lone Pine events, with such stars as GMs Loek van Wely, Timur Gareye...
I was attracted to this endgame because of the final result at first. The rating difference of about 200 points between the player of the black pieces and the player of the white pieces is not that big a difference when seeing that white is up a p...
by GM Magesh and GM Arun After more than three months of break, I (Magesh) finally decided to play a couple of tournaments during the holiday season. My first one was the UTD GM tournament in which I did not fare very well. GM Alexey Dreev pretty...
Boris Kostic, born on the 24th of February 1887 in Vrsac in what was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was a Serbian Grandmaster and one of the greatest travelers in chess history, traveling the globe in the days before the beginning of co...
In my recent articles I have touched upon such intricate matters as material imbalances and initiative. Today I would like to share with you annotations to a baffling game of mine played at the Russian Superfinal against GM Tatiana Kosintseva (the...
Capltal asked: My rating is 1130. For Black, I’m interested in both 1.c4 e5 and 1.e4 e5! However, both have many variations so I bought two books: THE MARSHALL ATTACK by Bogdan Lalic and THE PETROFF DEFENSE by Forintos and Haag. Is it a good ide...
Here is a list of chess terms and personalities and their pronunciation. Abramov (ah-BRAHM-ahf), Lev - Russian arbiter and Correspondence International Master (IM)Acs (larch), Peter - Hungarian GMAdorjan (A-door-yan), Andras - Hungarian Grandmast...
Klaus Bischoff is another name that is virtually unknown for most chess amateurs. Indeed, he was never close to the chess elite and his best result was probably third place in the 1980 World Junior Championship behind Kasparov and Short. Yet he is...
One of Emanuel Lasker’s farewells to chess was at Moscow 1925. The aging former world champion (1894-1921) would not appear in tournaments for another nine years. The winner at Moscow was Efim Bogoljubow with 13 wins, 5 draws, and 2 losses (15.5/2...
I remember reading an interview a few years ago with a prominent Russian GM, I don’t remember exactly wether it was Bareev or someone else but what struck me back then was the complaint that Russia does not have enough young talented chess players...
by GM Magesh and GM Arun This week we shall see the King's Indian Attack by Robert James Fischer, who is considered by many to be the greatest player of all time. Fischer employed the King's Indian Defence with the black side frequently and trie...
Jackson Showalter, born on February 5, 1860 in Minerva, Kentucky, was the first officially-crowned Chess Champion of the United States! According to some sources he won the title five times! After being defeated in a match against Frank Marshall (...
Anpu3 asked: I would like to broach another aspect of “the psychology of chess” that always seems forgotten. While the focus of your “psychology” post is on the internal mental struggle, I always wonder about the more visceral expressions in OTB ...
According to some Russian chess books, the famous writer Leo Tolstoy played around 600 recorded games. I was able to locate only a half dozen of them. Based on them I can conclude that the famous Russian writer had a very sharp attacking style. ...
