 Theme music begins. Fade in on The Stranger, who is walking along a city street at night. He stops at a window and peers inside, where many chess games are going on. He watches as the theme music continues. When the music ends, The Stranger op...
 Paul Keres was born in Narva, Estonia January 7, 1916 and died June 5, 1975. From the 1930s to the 1970s he was one of the world's best players. After winning the AVRO tournament in 1938 he was to play Alexander Alekhine for the world champion...
The last article was about how to collect a library of positions and use it to improve your chess. This would improve your technique, increase the quantity of familiar positions, and make you overall a better player, but chess is a game too and on...
In 1968 the movie entitled The Thomas Crown Affair was released, starring Steve McQueen as Thomas Crown and Faye Dunaway as Vicki Anderson. Thomas Crown stages a two million dollar bank heist while Vicki is the insurnace investigator who suspects...
This week we shall take a look at the Ruy Lopez Chigorin defense. Personally I (Magesh) have played this variation as both white and black for quite some time. Not that I can call myself an expert in it, but we felt I have had quite a few interest...
Last week we saw the sidelines of the Botvinnik System and for this week we shall head into the mainlines of this system. This system a couple of years ago was considered very dangerous for Black and was played only by few Elite Players. But now t...
For better or for worse, the opening tends to be the aspect of the game that gets the most attention. More books have been written about that phase than the middlegame and endgame combined. This importance, though, is probably overstated at lower ...
ChessPaladin2009 asks: The subject of my question to you is: when White opens with the Queen Pawn, what are black’s best defensive opening option(s)? Some people say that Queen Pawn Openings always lead to positional chess games that often lack a...
Hi again everyone,  This time we will try to take a look at how black can answer a variation which a lot of sources consider to be critical to the whole survival of the Dragon. I’ve tried to include a lot of possible deviations for black that c...
Arthur Bisguier was born October 8, 1929. He became an International Grandmaster in 1957. He remembers when "there were so few of us." He was the US Junior Champion in 1948 and 1949. He was the US Open Champion in 1950, 1956, and 1959. Fischer won...
The Petroff defense is loved by super GMs and hated by the average chess players! Why so? Here is what the Wikipedia says about this opening: "The Petrov has a reputation of being dull and uninspired."Â Indeed, this is a weapon of choice for many ...
               Two years ago I spent the summer in Ukraine, a chess Mecca, took chess lessons, played a couple of tournaments. In theory I know many methods that are designed to improve your chess, but in practice I hardly ever put any of them to...
This week in our article we shall see The Botvinnik System. We wanted the readers to understand the opening clearly. So to begin with we decided to check the side lines that are played by white against this system. In this system White is consider...
Chess training program for ratings < 1200 Disclaimer:These advice are taken from my personal (short) experience. They are written by a novice for the novice. I only release my ideas today to the public. Nobody ever tried these programs and I ...
Hi guys, you know the rules to predicting these games, stop when you hit the highlighted portions and answer before moving on. Take all the time you want and good luck! Â Â Â Almasi,Zoltan - Watson,William N German Bundesliga, 1995 Â 1.e4 c...
Before playing in the Montreal International this fall, I spent a good amount of time studying strong GM games (usually Kasparov games) and middlegames, but I also spent some time reviewing some technical endgames and my openings. For such a stro...
A blog appeared by farbror (10/05/2009) that claimed I seemed to be recommending the Latvian Gambit to chess.com readers while badmouthing the same opening on my site. Dear farbror and all the people that think I have turned into a Lativan Gambit...
The Ponziani Opening is one of the oldest openings in chess (it was mentioned for the first time in 1497!). Yet it was never really popular. Top chess players avoid it because Black has many reliable ways to equalize. For the club players the open...
I have long said that chess requires intelligence and character. This is the motto of the Grandmaster Chess School operated by Alexander Khalifman and Gennady Nesis. They express it as a formula, "chess = intellect + character." The school is in S...
Unknown asked: What do you think is the best food to be eaten during a big tournament? Â Dear whoever you are: Actually, this is quite an interesting question! Of course, most people eat all sorts of unhealthy things before an event, but shoul...
I just came back from the US Women’s Championship and want to share with you my impressions as well as chess game fragments. First of all, I would like to thank all the chess.com fans who were rooting for me during the Championship; it is amazing ...
This week we shall see an old line in the Sicilian Pelikan or the Sveshnikov Variation. This system was very popular in the seventies and after taking a break it sprung back to life in the late nineties especially after a couple of strong wins by ...
Karl Schlechter (1874-1918) was born into extreme poverty in Vienna, Austria. He learned to play chess at the age of 13 and very quickly become one of the strongest players in Vienna and one of the strong masters of the late 19th century.In the ch...
One of the main ways to combat the Stonewall Defense is to break down Black's strong central pawn chain with f2-f3 and then e2-e4. Assuming there are pawns on c4 and d4, the pressure on d5 will likely force some action, leaving the e6-pawn weak in...
