Last week, one of my students, whose USCF rating is around 1000, asked me: "What will my rating be if I beat Magnus Carlsen 8-2?" Don't laugh, the kid is just 10 years old and he was not going to do it in 30 days. Besides, he has a predeces...
Forget about the Super Bowl and get ready for the biggest weekend of action in PRO Chess League history. For this incredible event we are bringing back our fantasy competition for a chance to win $10,000! You can watch all the games Satur...
As everyone knows, all professional sportsmen have to stay sharp or their fitness and skills will quickly decay. In chess, a few months away from the game is enough to leave you out of sync. So it’s hard for me to understand how Henry Ern...
Zwischenzug is a German word that means "in-between move." Such moves are common in chess, but many times they can be quite unexpected! Other terms which mean the same thing in chess literature are intermezzo, intermediate move, and ...
The PRO Chess League kicks off an exciting week three today, as Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, and more of the world's best players will do battle on the chessboard. You can watch the actual competition live and on demand at Twitch....
If you use Slack and have a Chess.com account, you can now easily connect them and get some cool functionality inside of Slack! Head on over to Slack and check out our new @chessbot. The best way to get started is to hit @chessbot help a...
World Champion Magnus Carlsen is back to star in week three of the Pro Chess League. Be sure to watch all the action this Wednesday, starting at 8 a.m. Pacific, on Twitch.com/prochessleague. Carlsen's Norway Gnomes face off against t...
Some time ago my friend complained about his stock market misfortune: "Whenever I buy a stock it immediately starts going down! Greg, it almost feels like somebody is watching me. The stock could go straight up for years, but once I buy it, i...
In April 2016 I wrote an article called "Dancing With Yourself." After looking at a lot of amateur games (on Chess.com and also in tournaments)—and at those by titled players—I see (sadly) that most people are still dancing with them...
As the Professional Rapid Online (PRO) Chess League heads to its second week of matchups, we have already seen some of the top players in the world put up monster performances. This Thursday, Hikaru Nakamura will be making his deb...
Magnus Carlsen is a genius. I doubt that many people would argue about this well-established fact. It is a totally different question why we call him a genius. Is it because he is the world champion? I don't think so. Max Euwe was the world cha...
CHESS REVIEW Chess Review (from 1933 to late 1969) was without any doubt the best American chess magazine until, in 1961, it ran into a remarkably improved Chess Life. Both tried to beat the other (interest exploded due to the advent of Tal and,...
The concept of "fake news" is itself in the news recently. While most of the fake news discussed these days is about politics, there is plenty of fake news in our favorite game. Stronger players should be able to easily debunk false chess stat...
The third world chess champion Jose Raul Capablanca once famously said : "In order to improve your game, you must study the endgame before anything else; for whereas the endings can be studied and mastered by themselves, the middlegame and th...
In one of my recent articles, I asked readers to share their goals for 2018. Despite my explicit warning that the goal of gaining rating points can be counterproductive, this is exactly what majority of our members wish. Well, your wish is ...
CHESS LIFE Chess Life, of course, has had its good times and bad times; the late 1970s brought about a cut in the page-count while the Fischer drop in membership forced austerity, including removing many columnists. It never came close to its gl...
Chess as Art had been debated over and over. Whether or not Chess is Art, there does seems to be some affinity between the two disciplines. Marcel Duchamp, a devotee to both, explained that it was the compl...
Every Wednesday at 12 p.m. Pacific Time (8 p.m. GMT), everyone is invited to join the Arena Kings Chess Tournament: where everyone can play but only streamers can win cash prizes! Please read the full rules and eligibility criteria here Schedu...
Cryptocurrency mania is surely upon us. Interest in these digital assets has soared like great blooming tulips, and prices have grown even higher. You can't turn on CNBC for more than a few minutes without seeing someone talking excitedly about ...
For most club players, blunders are a very big problem. They can ruin a game or even a whole tournament! Besides, they prevent a chess player from getting better results and a higher rating. That's why some time ago I wrote a six-part arti...
Chess.com returns in the new year with its next Death Match, though without quite the amount of excoriating banter from the previous battle. Still, it won't be the monotone voice of Siri either. As in the last match, the two combatants will largel...
CHESS LIFE AND REVIEW I was recently thinking about the best U.S. chess magazines ever. There were quite a lot. Two favorites are Joel Benjamin’s magazine, Chess Chow (1991 to 1994), which was hilarious, and Inside Chess, Yasser Seirawan&r...
Evidently, many titled players resolved to play more Titled Tuesdays in 2018! With 259 entrants, this month's Titled Tuesday was easily the largest yet. With an impressive 9/10, GM Gadir Guseinov was clear first. I recently read GM Judit ...
Too many times, people don’t try their best. They don’t have the keen spirit; the winning spirit. And once you make it you’ve got to guard your reputation—every day go in like an unknown to prove yourself. That’s why ...
