Doomclaw asked: When do you think is the right time to offer a draw? I have been confused by this question since I started learning about chess.Dear Doomclaw:An interesting question! There is actually a bit of etiquette related to draw offers. F...
Veterans Viktor Korchnoi and Jan Timman displayed their bona fides in the ealy rounds. Timman soared to first place while Korchnoi maintained a respectable 50%. Jan Timman showed true understanding of the Nimzo-indian with effective play against ...
David Bronstein (1924-2006) was among the world's great grandmasters. In 1951, he missed becoming world champion by one half of a point when he scored 12-12 against Botvinnik. His game was known for beauty, opening ideas, and complications. His ch...
As all the chess.com members here surely know, any game that comes down to K+B vs K or K+N vs K is immediately declared "drawn due to insufficient material". With just those three pieces left on the board, a mating position cannot be created eve...
In the first part of the article we learned some typical attacking ideas employed in the King's Gambit. Even though these articles cannot be a substitute for an opening manual, still today I would like to give you some basic ideas for how White s...
In the previous articles we discussed typical tactical patterns, good traps and bad traps, pawn promotions and Queen sacrifices. It is time to use this knowledge! Let's try to beat our next opponent in 20 moves or less! Of course we won't be abl...
On November 26, 1892, future world chess champion (from 1894 to 1921) Emanuel Lasker (1868-1941), age 23, gave a simultaneous exhibiton in Quebec, Canada. There were 18 players. He won 15 games, drew 2 games, and lost one game to Nicholas Macle...
World class chess coach Joseph Dorfman in his book “Method in Chess” discusses the importance of exchange in a chess game. He came up with a method that can be applied to evaluate any position. The method is easy to apply and consists...
Today we have decided to take a different perspective on opening ideas. We are sure that most of our readers have encountered a situation where you get the black pieces against a slightly or even much weaker player than you and they end up playing...
Frank James Marshall (August 10, 1877 – November 9, 1944), was born in New York City, and lived in Montreal, Canada from ages 8 to 19. His father taught him chess when he was eight years old. During the period from 1904 to 1909, Marshall won four ...
Here is a sparkling game from the second round.
Hi everyone, and welcome to my second "annotated" game from my vast number of blitz games played on live chess here. This time the game is set to a mere 3 minutes for the entire game. Be prepared for one heck of a beautiful attacking pattern. ...
I think that there is no one on Chess.com that can disagree that I like the Sicilian defense. From my articles I think that one is not on a Sicilian. This is because the Sicilian is what I know best. I am a Najdorf player, following the example ...
We begin our coverage with a sparkling game from the first round of the 2009 Howard Staunton Memorial chess tournament. the grand tradition of this event was enhanced by the appearance of a Staunton gambit on the chessboard at Simpson's in the Str...
In my last article, I showed my game with GM Josh Friedel from round 2 of the World Open in Philadelphia. The following day, I had the black pieces against IM Ray Robson, the 2009 Samford Fellowship recipient. I had planned to play a Winawer Frenc...
Emanuel asked:How much time do you spend daily studying chess? Also were you naturally gifted or did you just keep working hard at it? What did you study to rise from 1000 to IM? Anything specifically or just anything chess related that you could ...
Today we will continue our discussion about the hidden power of little soldiers of chess. But first I would like to remind you of a very useful feature of the chess applets used by chess. com to replay the games. If you click "Solution" and then ...
David Bronstein was born February 19, 1924 in Bila Tserkva, Ukraine and died December 5, 2006 in Minsk, Belarus. He earned the Soviet Master title at age 16 for his second place result in the 1940 Ukrainian Championship. He believed he was the you...
Recently, I studied GM Viktor Kortschnoj’s book “My 55 Wins with Black” (Russian version of it). I found it to be an excellent learning source. Kortchnoj goes into details of his decision-making process, explains positional concepts, and gives dee...
The title of this article refers to the computer program BELLE, which was the first one to reach master strength (unlike now when they are all grandmaster strength or better), Boris Baczynskyj, a master who annotated one of BELLE's games, and Arth...
Last week we had left off with the interesting Knight sacrifice on f7 in the Anti-Moscow Variation. Today we will continue our discussion and take a look at several other options that have been tried out over the last few years. This opening in pa...
Miguel Najdorf (1910-1997) was born in Warsaw, Poland. He was playing at the Buenos Aires Olympiad in 1939 when World War II broke out, and decided not to attempt to return home, taking Argentine citizenship.Today I want to share with you a myster...
The recent Chicago Class Championships was won by GM Dmitry Gurevich with a score of 4/5. My result was not amazing and I think fatigue was starting to settle in- I had played three nine round tournaments in a row and was not well rested. However,...
Andrea Coda asked:I am playing online chess mostly as preparation for OTB tournaments, and I am focusing on slow games; I believe that at my level it is very important to reason through every move, trying to increase my board vision and analysis s...
