Can you attack like World Champion Smyslov? Vasily Smyslov a World Champion known for his positional play. However, you don't get to be a champion without also possessing attacking genius. FM Andrey Terekhov demonstrates five of Smyslov's best a...
There's a tendency for all of us to define chess through its best and most successful adherents. I've always been of the mind that, while there is no doubt that world champions, potential world champions and all other players near that str...
Are you ready to start playing chess? Watch these videos to learn what you need to know to get started! Not what you're looking for? Go back to the video guide. Want to skip ahead and try the quiz? Check out the challenges here! Try The...
The question in the title of this article might look stupid to many readers. Indeed, who wouldn't like to study a game annotated by a strong player? Well, I am not sure that I have an answer to this question anymore. When I was a kid, an ann...
Many American chess enthusiasts regard FM Alisa Melekhina as one of the strongest female players in the United States. Melekhina has participated in eight different U.S. Women's Championships and has represented the country abroad in two...
GM Ian Nepomniachtchi won the 2020/21 FIDE Candidates tournament and will challenge world champion GM Magnus Carlsen for the world championship beginning in November 2021. Nepomniachtchi won the tournament by playing well in both halves while seve...
josephyossi: “Why don’t you play games?” JS: Almost everyone has some sort of job. My job is chess. For decades I played in many tournaments, winning the American Open, the National Open, the U.S. Open, and other events. And th...
In 1843 Andrei Alexandrovich Ascharin was born in the Estonian coastal town of Pärnu. His parents were of mixed origins: Alexander, of Russian extraction and Louise, of German extraction. This was common amo...
About 30 years ago, the famous Soviet coach Vladimir Zak wrote a book "The Ways of Chess Improvement." I already expressed my opinion about this chess personality in a prior article. Nevertheless, the book was quite interesting, mainly because Zak...
Jan-Krzysztof Duda, the youngest player in the world’s top 20, speaks to David Cox about his experiences of Polish reality television, being superstitious, and why he can’t stand it when other players don’t observe the dress code...
The Catalan is one of the most popular openings at the Grandmaster level and can be a fearsome weapon in the hands of club players as well! Follow along as Grandmaster Georg Meier, one of the world's leading Catalan experts demonstrates how to win...
Chess.com's newest Coach of the Month is CM Gabor Horvath! Gabor is a much-acclaimed coach on Chess.com with numerous enthusiastic testimonials on his profile. He is also a top blogger who regularly shares some of the most instructive blog content...
In the late 1860s, the legendary Paul Morphy had almost entirely retired from chess. He was not the same young genius that he once was. But he still managed to introduce an important opening idea which hadn't been seen in chess before. After the...
Ding Liren, the current world number-three and strongest Chinese chess player in history, speaks to David Cox about the rise of Chinese men’s chess, his remarkable 100-game unbeaten streak and the difficulty of maintaining a relationship whi...
As everyone knows, there are books about tactics and books about positional skills. However, in serious chess, you often don’t know if either are useful or powerful. Perhaps you don’t see anything, then your moves melt into nothing but...
Endgames with opposite-colored bishops are probably the most difficult endgames for lower-rated players to understand. The common misunderstanding here is that all of these endgames are drawn. I wish I had a nickel for every time my students sai...
When I reflect on the earliest stages of my chess career, it's not the thrill of victory, the five-foot trophies that I could barely lift from the ground, or even the accolades, certificates and triple-digit rating gains that dominate my recollect...
The chess world is full of intriguing players and intriguing stories going all the way back to the enigmatic Paul Morphy—but even among this hallowed, august company, Ossip Bernstein manages to stand out. Bernstein's career is noteworthy f...
Even though chess and checkers have the same checkered board, these two games are completely different. Chess is much more complex and therefore it is chess, not checkers, that is frequently used in commercials to underline the depth of a b...
My last article was about how George Koltanowski slowly got better and better as a chess player; first in the early/mid 1920s (boring and slow), and then in 1928 when he embraced dynamics. Though he was a strong player at that point, he was e...
Would you like to represent your homeland in the "Olympics of chess"? The Live Chess World League will soon begin season five on Chess.com with dozens of countries and thousands of players competing from around the globe. The Live Chess W...
The 10th world champion Boris Spassky was married three times, but unfortunately all three marriages ended in divorce. Describing his first marriage, Spassky famously said, "we were like bishops of opposite color." When I saw this catchy phrase ...
Positions with material imbalances are difficult to play, especially for less-experienced chess players. You will never see a positional queen sacrifice or an exchange sacrifice in games played by people rated below 1700 or 1800. At this level, ...
GM Dejan Bojkov is back with a series about how top Grandmasters create counterplay and defend the most difficult looking positions! Try The Challenges! Not what you're looking for? Go back to the video guide. Get Rid Of Annoying Pieces:...
