I'm definitely a candidate for "most excited that chess.com added chess960." I remember when I first joined the team in January, Erik and Jay asked what ideas I had about the future development of chess and chess.com. I told them that in my opinio...
Kasparov has written about chess as a game of "material, time, and quality" on a few occasions. Material is pretty straightforward - just count up the pieces on the board. By my understanding, time refers to more dynamic factors in the position, n...
Piotr Linek asks: When I play the Sicilian with the sequence 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 as Black, I don’t even think about it and automatically play …e6 because I find it stronger as it attacks white’s Knight and forces it to retreat and p...
If you study an opening long enough, and play through enough master games with that opening, and play a lot of games with it yourself, you start to get a feel for which moves are accepatable or playable within the framework of that opening. Such ...
Before we discuss today's typical pattern, I would like to thank my readers again for their comments and feedback. One of you suggested to me to use the feature "Board Coordinates" so you can see the notation better. Today I'll try it for the fir...
Paul Keres was born January 7, 1916 in Narva, Estonia and died June 5, 1975 in Helsinki, Finland. He became one of the best players in the world in the 1930s and remained near the top for almost forty years. In 1938, Keres came in first at AVRO, a...
All of us admire chess sacrifices. Sometimes it is possible to win (quite correctly, not as a result of an opponent’s blunder) even being a piece down. Usually it is connected with an opportunity to convey a tactical operation – give a...
In my younger years, I had a headache when there were too many pawns in the center and too many possible captures. With white pawns on d4, c4 and black on d5, c5 my thought process went like this: I take on c5, he takes back, oh no he takes on c4 ...
Sometimes openings have certain positional or thematic goals that they wish to accomplish. For example, in the King's Gambit (1.e4 e5 2. f4), one of the primary goals for White is to open the f-file and get play against the square f7 with a rook...
Are you embarrassed each time you thump a rook down on the chessboard in a blitz game because the weight inside rattles badly? You are not alone; my own pieces did this very thing for quite some time. Then one day I got motivated and d...
Hi everyone I want to tell you something about winning mentality. I personaly think that this kind of mentality is very important in every day life, in other sports and also in chess. I was training basketball for about 7 years and in that time I ...
Russians called Napoleon's 1812 invasion "The Patriotic War". The largest army up to that point in history, 690,000 French troops, crossed the river Nemen intent on taking the Russian capital Moscow. After brave defenses and dire predictions of ...
“Every once in a while a man comes to the game and changes the way the world looks at it.” This is a quote from an advertisement portraying Sachin Tendulkar as the “Man” and the game obviously being “Cricket”. If you do not know Sachin (You most l...
Publishing a quality piece of content is like preparing a good meal - it requires careful attention at each step. You must plan, prepare, execute, and serve with an eye toward the final meal. You don't want to serve junk food on fine china, nor do...
Sometimes you play games where things almost magically unfold before you, seemingly without any help from you. "Wow, that worked like a charm, didn't it?", you marvel at your amazing attack. Yet it did have help from you. If you play active, de...
The fifth world champion Max Euwe (1901-1981) was a truly interesting man: mathematician, engineer, astronomer and computer specialist. He is the only world champion that was not a professional! But this did not impede him from reaching the chess ...
I just finished playing in a reasonably strong round-robin in Montreal. I finished with 6.5/9 in the category 7 field (2411 FIDE average). In the third round, I played an interesting game with IM Thomas Roussel-Roozmon. The game was not perfect by...
Once upon a time, chess was a game for kings! How irresistible it is to note that this graceful and imaginative game indeed inherited a touch of nobility. Everything about this game was carefully crafted yet, what brings it to life is two creative...
Sometimes a move has more than one purpose. And sometimes, the obvious purpose is so non-threatening, and relaxes your opponent so much, that he ignores your move and doesn't look for any other, more hidden, threats. In the first game, White's 5...
ML asked: I've been having problems deciding on an opening repertoire for Black. I've been trying all sorts of stuff – Sicilian Dragon, Pirc, French, 1…e5, Alekhine, and even 1...b6.I’m searching for a repertoire which I feel very safe and comfor...
Figured I would share them. I analyzed them in Fritz 9. Click on "Moves List" to see the proposed variants. Some interesting games, in my opinion. I nearly blew the second one. I finished the tournament 2-1-2 (two bye's, due to a conflict on the m...
This article is about playing f4 as white in different parts of a game like Bird Opening,King's Gambit,Bishop's Game,Sicilian. After viewing the article don't forget to lookup the Kairav's chess masters (KCM) homepage:http://www.chess.com/groups/...
If you ask a chess player what opening is the most dangerous one in the sense that you can lose quickly if you don't know exact moves you are supposed to play, then most probably you'll hear the King's Gambit, the Sicilian Defense or some other no...
