Judit Polgar, the strongest female chess player of all time, speaks to David Cox about growing up as part of her father Laszlo's groundbreaking educational experiment, the famous touch-move controversy when she played Garry Kasparov in 1994 and wh...
When I was a student of famous Botvinnik-Kasparov school, the two living legends didn't just teach us how to play chess; they also taught us how to work on chess. The homework that each student would get by the end of a session was invaluable! O...
GM Larry Kaufman's book Kaufman's New Repertoire for Black and White is now available in Europe in all formats, and in the United States as an e-book. It will soon be sold worldwide in all formats, including as an e-book from Forward Che...
Check out the best chess games of strong players! How can you beat a World Champion? How can you beat Hikaru Nakamura with a quiet opening? How should you sacrifice two exchanges and win? Check out these brilliant games and more! Try The Challen...
halloween Chess Piece Costumes The perfect way to infuse fun and excitement into your next costume event Bots Spooky Martin has arrived and he brought some friends! Can you beat them all? Halloween Mystery Banter...
The Halloween Gambit is surely the spookiest way to start a chess game. If you're a conservative chess player who doesn't like to give away pieces, it may indeed be "2 spooky 👻4 u." Could this early knight sacrifice be a legitimate opening? No, ...
As we discussed in the previous article, people love chess for a variety of reasons. Our favorite game is a sport, art, science, fight and more, all at the same time! One of my favorite features of chess was well described by the great Ema...
The super-grandmaster Ian Nepomniatchi sat down with Chess.com ahead of his appearance in the 2019 FIDE World Fischer Random Chess Championship, where he will go head-to-head with Fabiano Caruana, Wesley So and the world champion Ma...
Samuel Reshevsky was born in Poland on November 26, 1911 and started to play chess at the age of four. He came to the U.S. permanently at age nine (1920). From 1924 to 1931 he quit chess completely to get an education in the U.S., and graduated...
IM Cyrus Lakdawala contributed to this article. In 1975, Bobby Fischer and Anatoly Karpov were set to play for the world chess championship. Fischer, the reigning world champion, argued with the world chess federation (FIDE) over the format fo...
In past articles we've discussed why people play bad openings and how to deal with such dubious lines. Are these openings really that bad for your chess? While the answer might seem quite obvious, the reality is not that simple. Let me giv...
Sports commentators love to mention chess during their broadcasts of football, basketball and baseball games, but often these shallow metaphors don't show a true understanding of chess. IM Daniel Rensch recently observed, while watching a sports...
Something Old Deep into the 19th century chess was still characterized by match play. The idea of tournaments was slow to catch on. Prior to the London International Tournament of 1851 (the...
When we learn the rules of chess and start playing, we never ask ourselves the question in the title of the article. We just enjoy the process of playing, that's all! But almost any person who has played chess for a long time is going to ask: "W...
One of the first things everyone learns playing chess is that the queen is the strongest piece on the board. Her power is amazing! She's worth nine pawns; she's majestic, extremely agile and has seemingly unlimited powers. Then, however, comes t...
For Jeremy Silman's article on the early life of Pal Benko, click here. Pal Benko: My ticket to freedom was, naturally, chess. First on my agenda was to qualify for an out-of-country zonal. Of course, I didn’t want to play in a Soviet-co...
The Global Chess Festival invites chess players around the world to celebrate chess. Now in its fifth year, the Global Chess Festival is an initiative by Judit Polgar that aims to unite the chess community and celebrate chess as a sport, science, ...
Chess.com's newest Coach of the Month is Colin Stapczynski! Colin is a familiar face on Chess.com and Twitch with twitch.tv/thechesscouch, his channel that he runs with his brother. Colin has recently been contributing to the chess.com/player...
According to Wikipedia, a Hail Mary is a very long forward pass in American football, typically made in desperation, with only a small chance of success. So, what's a Hail Mary pass in chess? Let me explain. Say your position is completel...
The 2019 World Fischer Random Chess Championship quarterfinals are here, with star players like Fabiano Caruana (@FabianoCaruana), Hikaru Nakamura (@Hikaru) and Alireza Firouzja (@Firouzja2003) set to take on five other elite grandmaster...
On Thursday, the opening ceremony of the 2019 FIDE World Fischer Random Chess Championship took place live on Twitch.tv/Chess. In what resulted in four intriguing matchups, the following pairings were drawn at random to determine pairing...
Life is easier when you have a good pawn structure. GM Aman Hambleton demonstrates five pawn structures that give you a great chance to win the game. Try The Challenges! Not what you're looking for? Go back to the video guide. The Marocz...
What should you do when you're losing a chess game? If it's not time to resign, it's time to swindle your opponent! WGM Qiyu Zhou demonstrates the tricks you need to survive lost positions! Try The Challenges! Not what you're looking for? ...
At the end of the last century when I played one of the big American open tournaments (I think it was North American Open in Las Vegas), I stumbled upon a very interesting book at the concession stand. Well, since the book was written by GM John...
