The 2018 PRO Chess League Playoffs start at 9:00 a.m. Pacific tomorrow with 16 extremely talented teams including eight super-grandmasters vying for a trip to the finals weekend in San Francisco. Here are some things to look for in each of these t...
PCL Finals FAQ WHEN? WHAT? WHERE? WHO? HOW? OTHER Q's? Member: Hey Chess.com, I just read your article and I want to see this myself!...
Yes, you've caught me! Whenever I see a checkmate, I cannot help but re-phrase the well-known joke of Steve Martin. You see, Wikipedia has a page about different mating patterns, and it turns out that the checkmates I knew since childhood all have...
What is the strongest chess country in the world? There are many ways to measure the strongest chess nations. By sheer volume, Russia dominates, with 2,559 titled players, including a remarkable 243 grandmasters. In fact, Russia has more grand...
A popular saying insists that there are no bad questions: there are only bad answers. Well, I have a confession to make. There is a sort of question that is really difficult to answer. It usually goes like this: A student rated around USCF 1200 co...
We already have 13 for the 13th. Thirteen of the Professional Rapid Online (PRO) Chess League's teams already know they'll be playing more chess during the opening week of the playoffs on March 13. That leaves only three openings left heading in...
In his famous book My Great Predecessors, Garry Kasparov titled a chapter about Mikhail Tal "Bluff as a Weapon of Victory." Indeed, there is no other world champion who sacrificed as many pieces and took as much risk as Tal. Yet as GM Averb...
A Chess.com member asked: After 1.c4 Nf6 2.g3 d5 3.Bg2 dxc4 5.d4 every chess engine tells me the best move for Black will be capturing en passant right away (which is why I never thought about playing d4 as White here). Still, in the databases ...
Magnus Carlsen is the current world champion, and many say he is the best of all time. He certainly looks to be at the peak of his chess powers right now. Eventually, though, someone has to take the world title from him. But who will be the one ...
This is a story of a trinity: a store, a man and a masterpiece. Nearly a century ago, a man named William Lindenberg opened a jewelry store on 1314 E. 45th St. in Seattle. This was in...
Playoff scenarios are beginning to take shape in the PRO Chess League's second season. With the announcement that the final four teams will play in person in San Francisco, we can call these last two weeks of the regular season the road to the "ch...
Today we are going to talk about a very simple trap that any experienced chess player is supposed to know by heart. Yet,at least two legendary world champions fell into this trap in the most unfortunate moment: when they played their world champio...
As many of you remember, I’ve used "BB’s" games as good examples of both right and wrong ideas and moves. He plays a lot of one-game-a-week USCF rated games, and sometime he also plays two tournaments at the same time (on different day...
Earlier this season, the Professional Rapid Online (PRO) Chess League held a full weekend of chess, dubbing it "Super Saturday" and "Super Sunday." For each team's seventh match, the league will reprise the free-for-all format, but all the action ...
ChessKid.com, the scholastic extension of Chess.com, has added a flurry of new features in the last few months. Several new members of the programming team have been hard at work delivering the kinds of fun learning features that kids, coaches, an...
The Chess.com Crazyhouse Championship (a 15-round 3|0 swiss event with 100 qualifying invitees) is this Thursday at 10 a.m. Pacific. Don't miss the live show with IM Danny Rensch and one of the game's great commentators and crazyhouse pl...
These days, when opening theory grows exponentially, it is very difficult to come up with an opening novelty. The new move you are considering was either already played by someone, analyzed in some publication or already stored in somebody's com...
The Chess.com member Kurniadigautama said: “I am currently trying to improve my understanding of positional play. The engine told Black to castle kingside while White is threatening to double take on c6. If White does take after Black cast...
There are many things for which you can "hope" when playing chess: for example, you can hope that your opponent doesn't see that your move was a blunder and fails to exploit it; you can hope that your opponent doesn't see your threat and will let ...
Curling, one of the 15 sports of the 2018 winter Olympics, is in the spotlight this week as millions of viewers worldwide tune in to watch the icy game of strategy and dexterity. Curling has been called "chess on ice," and the comparison is a go...
According to some sources, the 2011 World Cup Final between India and Sri Lanka was the most-watched cricket match in history. Still, "merely" 558 million viewers tuned in. For its part, Agon has constantly claimed that more than 600 million peo...
People love magic tricks! Yes, we know that the magicians trick us and they don't really saw women in half, and yet we cannot help but admire the miracle that happens right in front of our eyes. Now tell me, when was the last time you saw ches...
Take a look at this game. As you can see, the pawn structure makes the whole dance work. To make this clear, if you don’t understand pawn structure, you will find yourself making moves that have nothing to do with the position. You’...
In the first part of this article I described how AlphaZero calculates variations. In this part I’ll cover how it learns, by itself, to play chess. I’ll have to gloss over some details, but hopefully there’s enough to give...