Gregory Kaidanov (pictured) was born October 11, 1959 in Ukraine and moved to the United States from Russia in 1991. In 1988, he had become a grandmaster. In the U.S., he has kept active as a player and teacher of chess. Perhaps, his most impre...
I was asked to write an article to help players of about 1200 strength with planning. I questioned myself: how do 1200s play? What is the difference between 1200 and 2200 rated players for example? Of course, masters see so many more hidden resour...
Today we will study the King's Indian defense 7...Na6 variation by studying from none other than the newly crowned US Champion, Gata Kamsky's game. After nineteen long years of wait and and and interesting career map, Kamsky has regained the covet...
Edgar Colle was born in Gent, Belgium, in 1897, best known for the eponymous Colle System: 1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.e3 e6 4.Bd3 c5 5.c3. The formation c3-d4-e3 is the famous Colle triangle, a species of reversed Semi-Slav Defense. This placid-looking o...
Psychology is an integral element of chess. To win a game (tournament, match) one needs to be strong not only in chess, but in the psychological sense as well. Every chess player can recall moments when he/she could not recover from a terrible los...
Richard asked: I have been experimenting with the Fritz chess engine and it uses a number of evaluation symbols as it analyzes alternative moves. I think I get some of them, like +- means white is winning. Does the symbol always apply to White, o...
Pal Benko was born July 14, 1928 in Amiens, France to Hungarian parents and raised in Hungary. In 1948, he won the Hungarian Championship. He was an international master playing board one for Hungary in the World Student Team Championship of 19...
When a famous Grandmaster Aron Nimzowitch invented a new defense against 1.d4 which was later named after him, the new hyper modern opening took the chess world by storm. Many chess players were attracted by this solid, positional opening which w...
Pawns do not go backwards – this is an expression which shows how committal pawn moves can be. Moving a pawn to one square does not seem to be the most important decision one makes in the course of a game. But sometimes one such move can be of cru...
This week we shall study a rare system against the Slav defence, 5.b3. Many players who wanted to avoid the meran and other mainlines have chosen this system and had success with it. The advantage of this system is that the ideas for white are muc...
The French Defense is one of the most widely used responses in black’s chess arsenal against 1.e4. It is a known for being a robust and resilient defense that can lead either to boring, maneuvering play or to raging attack and sacrifices. As ...
This is a placeholder for the second video in the series "Thinking your Way to Chess Mastery." We will study Gruenfeld Exchange theory and... understand it. :) Two related games in this segment: Bhat-Kudrin US Championship 2010 and Curt H...
To reach the current evolution of chess knowledge, chess like science, art and sport, has absorbed the best of the most outstanding and gifted players, as well as many other not so famous but who contributed with many ideas that after have bee...
Millvillage asked: In your years of getting around the chess circuit, have you heard of any medication/treatment for the inflamed blunder gland? Sometimes mine acts up even when I am not playing chess. Dear Millvillage: This kind of inflamma...
As you probably already know, the World's oldest Grandmaster passed away last week. Just three days after celebrating his 99th birthday, Andor Lilienthal died. It is difficult to believe that just a week ago there was a living person who had wins ...
In case you haven't heard about it already, Andor Lilienthal passed away recently. He was a Hungarian chess master who played against ten male and female world champions. During his long career, he defeated Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Euwe, Botv...
Bill Hook was born May 28, 1925 in New Rochelle, New York. He died May 10, 2010. He was a photographer, an artist, a writer, and a translator for writers. While doing these things, he was a chess master. He played in numerous Olympiads from 1968-2...
The past article generated many positive responses and seemed to be helpful for the readers to better understand the training process for achieving better results in chess. That is why I would like to continue upon the previous topic, despite the ...
When I posted my first article for chess.com about a week ago, a wise reader criticized me for the mild title- minimal advantage for Anand. A whole point advance and the opportunity to start the second half with the white pieces- this sounded real...
[ed note: you can read an English version of this article at http://www.chess.com/article/view/anand-won-the-toughest-match-in-his-life] Когато преди седмица написах първата си статия за chess.com един мъдър читател ме критикува за твърде мекото ...
In the month of “Chithirai”, 27th day, 2010 (for information about the Tamil calendar you can see the following link, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_calendar ) in Sofia, Bulgaria, Mother India danced with pride and in her forehead the rich and...
[ed: an English version of this article can be seen here: http://www.chess.com/article/view/viswanathan-anand] சித்திரை மாதம், இருபத்தி ஏழாம் நாள், இரண்டாயிரத்திப் பத்து: பல்கேரிய நாட்டின் தலை நகரமான சோபியாவில், நில மடந்தையின் சீராரும் வதனமான...
A long time ago I read some book where the writer explained how Benjamin Blumenfeld, an excellent Russian player between the First and Second World Wars, took the idea of his gambit (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 c5 4.d5 b5!?) from the famous game Nimzow...
A chess match is an exciting struggle between two persons which, in most cases, allows one to find out which of them is the better player. The more games, the more justified the result (as long as no one dies from exhaustion). Therefore, it is n...
