Here's another endgame masterpiece played by Capablanca. Once again, like my last article featuring one of his games, his opponent is Yates. In this game, Capablanca is able to win a pawn in the middlegame and then simplify into a rook endgame whe...
Judit Polgar was born July 23, 1976 in Hungary. She defeated an international master when she was 10 years old and an international grandmaster when she was 11. In 1991, she became a grandmaster at the age of 15 years and 4 months. At the time she...
The Bulgarian Team Championships took place in Albena between 27 May and 2 June. The tradition to organize the competitions at nice resorts was maintained, as one of the greenest sea resorts hosted the event. Albena is situated on the northern par...
This week we shall study the Queen's Gambit Declined. No introduction needs to be given to this famous opening as this was the main weapon used in most of the World Chess Championship matches right from the First World Champion William Stenitz to ...
Ernst Franz Grünfeld (or Gruenfeld) was born on the 23rd of November 1893 in Vienna, Austria like many other chess players. He was the seventh of eight children. His father was from Silesia and his mother from Bohemia.His childhood was very unhapp...
The opening is a very important stage of the game. It often determines the course of events for the whole encounter. Underestimating (as well as overestimating) the opening’s role often leads to poor performances. To be successful, a strong ...
James D asked: I seem to have come to the conclusion that the advance variation against the Caro-Kann is the most aggressive, but what then? I’ve tried various ways to play the Advance for White, but the latest is 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 Bf5 4.h4 h5...
Last week we discussed one of the most aggressive openings against 1.d4 - King's Indian Defense (KID). But for the true KID fans it's not enough to play it against just 1.d4. They want to play their favorite opening in every single game, even whe...
Bent Larsen (pictured) was born March 4, 1935 in Thisted, Denmark. He won the championship of Demark six times from 1954 to 1964. He became an international master in 1954 at the Amsterdam Olympiad. He became an international grandmaster in 1956 a...
As a column wrap-up I would like to present a series of positions to solve. I will move from easier examples this week that are aimed at 1200s to harder ones in the next two weeks. In this Final Exam for my column's readers, it is important to tre...
This week we shall study the Catalan System which has been the favourite weapon of the former world champion Vladimir Kramnik and the reigning champion Vishy Anand who used it a couple of times against Topalov in the recent world championship matc...
Alice sighed wearily. `I think you might do something better with the time,' she said, `than waste it in asking riddles that have no answers.' `If you knew Time as well as I do,' said the Hatter, `you wouldn't talk about wasting IT. It's HIM.' `...
Thousands of chess players dream of learning all the subtleties of the game of chess. There are different ways to do so, but all of them are related to one and the same question: How do we study correctly on our own, so that we don’t waste our tim...
Unknown asked: How often do chess masters make beginner mistakes in tournaments? For example, one could have had too much to drink the night before and just gave away a free piece like a knight or bishop simply because they didn’t see something a...
I thought that this game was very interesting. Garry Kasparov faces off against The Times (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Times) in a 1998 charity consultation match. The game eventually transitions into a endgame where each side has three mino...
It's difficult to find a more agressive opening against 1.d4 than the King's Indian Defense (KID). As most of the hyper-modern openings, it voluntarily gives up the center in order to attack it later. But unlike many other openings with a simila...
Fridrik Olafsson was born January 26, 1935 in Reykjavik, Iceland. He won the championships of Iceland (1952) and Scandinavia (1953). He became a grandmaster in the interzonal at Portoroz 1958 and advanced to the Candidates Tournament of 1959. He a...
Planning needs to be done in a controlled environment. Creating a plan at a chess board is like carefully planning a scientific experiment. The similarities are that one has to account for all the possible things that can go wrong, sketch an outli...
We saw how black could make use of one of his knights on the queen side last week in the King's Indian 7...Na6 system. Today we will take a look at some of the shortcomings of this idea and how white can exploit them. Obviously it is almost imposs...
This is the companion article for the third Video installment of "Thinking your way to chess mastery." In this installment we are considering the topical Hedgehog opening and how to meet it as white with directed, purposeful play. We'l...
Friedrich (Fritz) Saemisch was born on the 20th of September 1896 in Berlin, Germany.A thoughtful opening theoretician, he has two major opening variations named after him, which are still played today at the highest levels! Nimzo-Indian, Samisch ...
By browsing Chess.com’s forums, I noticed that there are numerous threads dedicated to improving in chess, certain training practices, coaching and other issues of that sort. Let’s talk a bit about who and what can assist us in becoming a better p...
Dsachs asked: I had a question about a tactic in the lines of Pirc where white plays Bc4. For example, 1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 g6 4.Bc4 Bg7. In this setup Black has the chance to play ...Nxe4 when Nxe4 ...d5 forks e4 and c4 and regains the piece....
The Queen's Indian Defense is one of the most quiet positional openings. The World Champion Tigran Petrosian was one of the most positional chess players in the history of chess. So what do you get when you cross the Queen's Indian Defense and a ...
