If any of us were asked "What makes some chess players better than others?", we might come up with a number of different responses. Some replies might be: They are better at seeing tactics, They have a better memory for openings, They can calculat...
I am very happy to see a large number of comments to the first article in the series about planning. I read through all the comments and was impressed with the numerous creative ideas that the readers came up with. With strategic positions there i...
This week we shall study The Chebanenko Slav.This system is considered to be a super solid opening and the number of its followers seems to be growing fast.This system has become popular in the last few years thanks to the efforts of Grandmasters ...
In my last tournament in Navalmoral, I finished with 7.0/9 and in clear 3rd place behind Fedorchuk (who beat me in a game I annotated here last I week: http://www.chess.com/article/view/building-a-fortress). I had 5.0/7 going into the last day, an...
Teaching Chess to Children and The Rasik Variation Ripper asked: I would like to know what your suggestion is for Black when 1.e4 c5 2.Bc4 is played. Dear Mr. Ripper, This is one of those perfectly reasonable moves that every Sicilian pla...
Larry M. Evans was born March 23, 1932 in New York City. At the age of 15, he became the youngest champion the Marshall Chess Club had ever had. In 1949, he tied for first place with Arthur Bisguier in the US Junior Championship. He began playing ...
The Ruy Lopez is one of the most popular positional openings. In fact, Capablanca recommended to play the Ruy Lopez in order to improve your positional play. So, what should a tactical player do in order to avoid the notorious " Spanish Torture"?...
It's nice to win games by playing amazing moves, surprising tactics, and slashing attacks, but we all know that those are rare and that we can't expect a steady diet of brilliant wins. It's like the lottery. It would be nice to win once in a whi...
Today will mark the start of a series of new articles that will span the next couple of months. The topic of the articles will be "Planning in Chess." One has to differentiate between the ideas of strategical play in general and a ...
This week we shall deviate from studying main lines and focus on a side line instead. At the request of some of our readers, this week we shall see The Fried Liver Attack (aka The Fegatello Attack) in the Two Knights Defence. The first known game...
“When I play White I win because I am White, when I play Black I win because I am Bogoljubow!”Efim Bogoljubow (April 14, 1889 - June 18, 1952) was a Russo-German chess grandmaster who won numerous events and played two matches with Alexander Alekh...
I recently completed a tournament in Navalmoral de la Mata (Spain) where I finished with 7.0/9. My only loss of the event was to the top seed, GM Sergey Fedorchuk, in the 3rd round (Fedorchuk coasted to first place with 7.5/9). The game featured a...
I’m Singing Those Old Dragon Blues! Dan asked: My question is about White alternatives to the Yugoslav attack in the Sicilian Dragon. Basically, I hate it! I’d definitely prefer something that didn’t explode all over the board. Problem is, in...
Last week we discussed the old main line of the Four Knights Game, the one where Black simply plays symmetrical moves hoping just to equalize. Modern treatments are getting more aggressive and sharp,which is why the Rubinstein Variation is t...
In the following game, played in a simultaneous exhibition against a well-known senior master from Maryland, White plays a variation of the Bayonet Attack vs. the King's Indian Defense, throwing in 9. Nd2 before 10. b4. A war is waged over contro...
Vasily Panov (Nov. 1, 1906-Jan. 3, 1973) is known today for the Panov Attack in the Caro-Kann Defense. He won the Moscow Championship in 1929 and played in the USSR Championship five times. Unfortunately, not all of his games are found in database...
There were some comments inquiring why b4 is better than the normal Ne1 or Nd2. I am not saying it is better or worse, it is an alternative and time will show how good it is. Positionally, it makes perfect sense: white gets space w...
The Petroff Defense. The name itself rings a “boring” bell to many people. Also called the Russian defense, the Petroff has a reputation of being a drawish opening. Considering the high percentage of draws turning out of this opening it is defini...
Francois André Danican Philidor (September 7, 1726 – August 31, 1795) was born in Dreux France. His father was seventy-nine at the time! He was a French composer whose operas were successful and widely known in his day and who was a famous and rem...
I don't work on my openings as much as I'm sure the very top GMs do (mostly because I have so many other areas of my game to work on), but I do try to spend some time every week looking at some opening line in depth. Back in August, in preparatio...
Chigorin Ruy Lopez and the Mystery of Statistics Niranjan Navalgund asked: My question is about the Chigorin Variation of the Ruy Lopez. 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.O-O Be7 6.Re1 b5 7.Bb3 d6 8.c3 O-O 9.h3 Na5 10.Bc2 c5 11.d4 Qc7 12...
As I noted in the previous article, "No Fire From This Dragon", English GM Jonathan Mestel recalls receiving a telegram from the British Chess Federation at the World Student Chess Olympiad in Mexico City in August of 1977 that read "Miles says b...
Alexander Beliavsky (Belyavsky) was born December 17, 1953 in Lviv, Ukraine. He is now living in Slovenia. In 1973, he won the World Junior Championship. Beliavsky won the USSR Championship in 1974, 1980, 1987, and 1990. He was a candidate for the...
I would like to apologize for the error in the last column, which prevented the viewers from seeing the analyzed games. It is corrected now and you can go over the games. It has been almost a year since I started writing the weekly column and ab...
