Emanuel Lasker was born December 24, 1868 in Germany and died January 11, 1941 in New York. He was the World Champion for 27 years, from 1894-1921, while also being a mathematician and a philosopher. He dominated chess while champion and competed ...
The following game happened in the fifth round of the annual National Open tournament in Las Vegas. GMs Shulman and Friedel had a perfect score of four out of four. Josh captured the initiative out of the opening and did not let the advantage slip...
This week we shall see the King's Indian Defence Samisch Variation. Samisch Variation in the KID is the most direct approach of refuting the KID structure. White protects the e4-pawn with f3 and starts an attack on the kingside with Be3,Qd2,g4,h4 ...
Roberto Grau was born on the 18th of March 1900, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was a strong Argentine chess master and, above all, an exceptional and marvelous chess columnist and chess writer. It was his father, an amateur, who initiated him in...
An isolated pawn is a pawn that has no pawns of the same color on neighboring files. Chess theory has many variations featuring this type of pawn structure, e.g. the Queen’s Gambit Accepted, Caro-Cann and others. In these systems the d4 (for White...
Book Review: Chess 101 by Dave SchlossHello chess fans. I am here to discuss the text "Chess 101" by Dave Schloss which I have just read through the review copy I recently received from the author. Let me first break down the contents and structur...
We conclude our survey of weapons of chess destruction, with examples from the three most recent world champions. In each case we see them following the opening rules and then quickly demolishing the opponents position. This happens even though ...
From LondonSystem89: You mentioned your new book contains a section on chess psychology. I’m wondering if the material is different than the chess psychology information in your previous works: THE AMATEUR’S MIND and THE COMPLETE BOOK OF CHESS STR...
First of all, let me take this opportunity and wish to all my readers a Happy and Prosperous New Year! The goal of my highly unscientific research is to establish who was the best chess player amongst celebrities. And I am talking about celebriti...
In our survey of weapons of chess destruction we have now reached the glory days of chess. I was fortunate to be growing up during the period of the great superstars of chess that I believe has remained unrivaled in the history of the game. In ...
[Ed note: I am very pleased to kick off the new year with a tremendous tournament report from a new chess.com contributor, GM Sundararajan Kidambi. Happy New Year's!] The Indian National Championship is one of the strongest tournaments in the co...
Alexander Tolush was born May 1, 1910 in St. Petersburg and died March 3, 1969 in the same city, then known as Leningrad. Tolush won the Leningrad Championship four times from 1937-1947. He played in the USSR Championship ten times. His best resul...
Today, I will deviate from my usual format of playing out the endgames but instead will present the analysis of the endgame mentioned in the last article. The reason is that I followed the game in live format and at the same time analyzed with an ...
This week we shall see an interesting game in the Queen's Gambit Declined between Alexander Moiseenko and Artur Jussupow from the European Rapid Chess Championship. Moiseenko being a 2650+ player for quite some time and an opening theoratician who...
Sultan Khan, born in 1905 in Mittha in the Punjab, India, was the strongest chess player from Asia in his time and is unofficially recognized as the first Asian Grandmaster. According to the Oxford Companion to Chess ‘The greatest natural player...
From the very first steps in chess we learn the average value of the pieces. A queen is worth about two rooks, bishop and knight – about 3 pawns. Of course, it is an approximation. Chess is a very complex game, so quite often imbalances occur. Thr...
Countless chess “fans” say: “Please talk about chess moves and only chess moves!” Dear “chess moves and only chess moves” fans: Ever since I first put chess pen to chess paper, I have run into people that scream to the heavens when anything ...
All chess players regardless of their strength have their own chess gems. NapoleonBonaparte was not an exception and also had his own Mona Lisa. He played it not long before his death in his exile on Saint Helena. Here is the game: (Just like i...
The 3rd Remco Heite GM tournament recently was played in Wolvega, The Netherlands. The winners of the previous events, Van Wely in 2006 and Macieja in 2008, participated. There were six players competing in a round robin. The final crosstable show...
Every year, usually after finals, the University of Texas at Dallas prepares its top players for the upcoming Pan-American Collegiate Championship. And how better to prepare for such an event than to organize a GM norm event? This year's field wa...
We got another rather complicated endgame to look at. My coach and I had a hard time figuring out the plans for both sides. It is generally tough to deal with the tandem of rook + knight when there are a lot of pawns on the board. The knights can ...
by GM Magesh and GM Arun The Modern Defense is not one of the mainstream opening choices for elite chess players. However, it still surfaces at the top as an occasional surprise weapon. It is quite natural that several side lines that were dee...
In case you are wondering, the white pawn to your right is begging for you NOT to attack him... Unfortunately, his future isn't so bright (he doesn't wear shades ) as an Isolated Queen Pawn. That said, his teammates don't always mind his isol...
With the "King and Pawn Ending" video series I set out to achieve one simple goal: Provide the most fundamental examples necessary in order for someone to go from a basic/beginner's knowledge, to a master level understanding of the most critical K...
