Our life-preservation instincts generate fear and awareness of danger. At a chess board a player also experiences similar reactions. One can hear from time to time that this or that chess player has a "good sense of danger." Among super-grandm...
This week we shall see the 8.Qe2!? idea in the 6.Bg5 Sicilian Najdorf System. 8.Qe2 has always been considered to be one of the dangerous systems against the mighty Najdorf. Many Elite players like Ivanchuk, Radjabov, Shirov etc have included this...
William Davies Evans was born in Pembroke, Gales, January 27, 1790. Marine by profession since age fourteen, he became sea Captain in 1819 in the United Kingdom Postal Service. By 1818, he had learnt the moves of chess. During his free hours in of...
Last week, I shared my best game from Seville. This time, I'll move on to my second tournament of the trip in Gibraltar (the GibTelecom Masters) and show my best game from there. After a win in the first round, I had drawn my next 3 games against...
Athanatos asked: Hello, I have a question on the King’s Indian. I don’t really know if it is the good place to do that, but after reading a lot of your post I decided to ask. My last game (I’m White) was like this: 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nf3 Bg7 4....
Pogonina vs the World match took place from December 24, 2009 to March 28, 2010. During these three months a few thousand chess players from over 100 countries have been competing against top female grandmaster Natalia Pogonina. Among those who ha...
The Chigorin Defense was never a popular opening, but this situation has been changing in the last decade. A super GM Alexander Morozevich managed to prove that in the good hands (see the picture) it is a very powerful weapon. The idea of the open...
Here is yet another exciting game where the players castle on opposite sides. Both quickly begin an attack, starting with some sharp pawn thrusts. For a while, the situation looks unclear, but killer queen sacrifice and some pretty back-rank play ...
Viswanathan Anand, who was born December 11, 1969, became India's first grandmaster in 1988. In 1995, he played for Garry Kasparov's world title and lost 10.5-7.5. Anand won the FIDE championship in 2000 by defeating Alexei Shirov 3.5-0.5. He lost...
Today we will look at examples where forming plans involved moving the pawns. Pawn moves can change the structure of the position and the associated plans. We open the game by sacrificing pawns and grab space by pushing them forward. Sometimes, ad...
More often than not in our lives, we ask this question to ourselves, “Was it worth it?” We are sure that this question haunts many of our readers too in their games as Chess is just a mini version of life. Personally on several occasions, I have f...
I recently played a series of 4 events in Europe, and the first of those was in Seville, Spain. I tied for first in this tournament, and my best game of the tournament was my win against the young Argentine GM Damian Lemos. Here's how that game st...
I noticed two questions (posed by several readers) pertaining to my earlier article titled, “Finnish Defense & Tournament Prep.” Both questions are about an analysis I gave, and both are more than reasonable … on one level. Let’s take a look a...
In my old article "Hard Candy" which was published here exactly one year ago (http://www.chess.com/article/view/to-be-named) I wrote that "some openings are very venomous despite their innocent appearance." The Colle System is definitely one of ...
If you are a 1.d4 player, then at some point you have to find an answer to the question "What am I going to play against the Semi-Slav complex?" Indeed, after the moves 1. d4 d5 2 c4 c6 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. Nc3 e6, which can be played by many different m...
Arthur Bisguier was born October 8, 1929 in the Bronx in New York City. In 1950, the first year of FIDE titles, he became an International Master. He became the 39th International Grandmaster in 1957. He has told me "there were so few of us." N...
Today’s article features two losses that happened because one of the sides (which happened to be me) did not have a plan in the game. To have a plan in any position is a very important step in choosing a move and a trend that the game will follow....
This week we shall see the Queen's Gambit Declined 5.Bf4 system. The Queen's Gambit Declined is one of the most solid structures against 1.d4. QGD has been played extensively played throughout the history of chess. During the beginning of 19th Cen...
It is said that few people in chess have been so uncomplicated and frank as Miguel Najdorf, and for this reason he created around him a very good atmosphere. Maybe for that, it is not surprising that at Buenos Aires 1939 during the Chess Olympiad,...
This game is a very nice creative achievement by Kasparov. The opening played leads to a wide-open position, and both players race to see who can get to the opposing king first. Though at first it looks as if Ivanchuck has defended well enough...
Magnus Carlsen (pictured), today's number one, recently played the Ruy Lopez with 5.d3. This is something old, strong, and relevant now. Other players are making this move part of their repertoire. Sometimes, d3 is played later as part of an Anti-...
A chess player has to know how to use a variety of methods of chess strategy. Super grandmasters mastered numerous methods of leading chess battles. This is why it is good to go over their games and learn typical plans. Today’s two examples are ta...
It is time to get back to the English opening today. We will study one of the games I played which started off as a Reti opening and later transposed into an English opening. Annotating one's own game definitely has some advantages to it, it helps...
Rudolf Charousek (September 19, 1873, Prague – April 18, 1900, Budapest) was a Hungarian chess player. He had a tragically short career, and he was once called by Reuben Fine the John Keats of chess. A brilliant player and a tremendous talent,...
