I get countless questions that ask about taste in chess (No, don’t eat the pieces!). Taste, in this case, refers to a preference for positional or tactical situations. (However, if you MUST eat the pieces, please buy a chess cake or a ches...
Like a poorly rehearsed play, nothing seemed to go right. What started out as a brilliant idea was fizzling out before everyone's eyes. Perhaps it was ...
For our final article of this series on the world champions and their contributions to opening theory, we focus on the current champion, Magnus Carlsen. As many of you have commented on the earlier articles, it is difficult to link Carlsen with a ...
The European Team Chess Championship that took place last month in Iceland is already a part of chess history. There were many remarkable games and memorable moments over there. Some people will remember the double win by the Russian men...
After I learned how to play chess (age 12), I jumped into the game head first by playing in a chess tournament (even though I didn’t know the difference between checkmate and stalemate). Let’s just say that I was absolutely awful. Wi...
Many openings go by various names. The opening(s) we'll be looking at below not only go by many names, but the situations, like gambits themselves, can get messy, muddy and uncertain very quickly. The title of this article is Martin...
Like Veselin Topalov, Viswanathan Anand became FIDE world champion by virtue of his victory in a world championship tournament -- this one held in Mexico City, 2007. However, the chess public, which has always tended to see the championship changi...
In last week's article, we saw that breaking the classical rules of play in the openings is one of the cardinal sins of less experienced players. Another common problem that you can find in their games is missing basic tactical ideas. ...
George Walker George Walker's life (1803-1879) spanned one of the most remarkable periods of chess. As a chess player, he met and played such personalities as John Cochrane, William Lewis, Alexander McDonnell, Labourdonnais, Pierre Charles S...
[Editor's note: Here are more selected chess stories from IM Silman.] CELEBRITIES GONE WILD 1988 and I just landed in Mazatlan, Mexico. Though the main course was the world 30-minute championships (packed with the best players in the world)...
The World Youth Championship that took place in Greece last month was a great showcase of the best young chess players from all around the world. It also demonstrated the typical mistakes many young players make. While today we are going to...
© 2015, José Diaz Links Interview with José Diaz José Diaz Official Website
Chess is a cruel game. One moment of negligence, one second of distracted thinking, and hours of hard work instantly go down the drain. For most chess players, the euphoria of success — a combination, a hard-fought victory, a positional mast...
How Do I Become A Coach On Chess.com? First, coaches must have a verified account/identity with Chess.com. There are two ways to verify your identity: Become a premium member. (Upgrading your membership and putting your real name and credit c...
Jacob Henry Sarratt (1772-1819) Jacob Henry Sarratt, born in 1772, worked primarily as schoolmaster but was much better known for his avocations which, of course, included chess. After Philidor's death, Verdoni (along with Leger, Carl...
In chess, ego is king. Thus one often hears a player who just lost saying, “I beat myself!” The old “I beat myself!” is often a way to convince yourself that you could have beaten your opponent if it wasn’t for this...
This is the last installment of my tribute to IM Emory Tate. The first two parts can be found here and here. There are definitely people out there who knew Emory much better than me, so they could disagree, but I always had an impression that hi...
San Luis, Argentina, 2005: A double-round-robin tournament was held to determine the FIDE world champion. In those days the world championship was still split after Garry Kasparov and Nigel Short left FIDE for their 1993 match. The chess world l...
Miss Rosa Jefferson The champion women chess player of the world Rosa B. Jefferson Although she was a significant historical figure in American chess, Rosa Bradford Jefferson has remained largely unknown. Miss Jefferson edited a che...
Many players feel that chess is all about threats or attack or finding a combination or some other form of brute force moves. And, of course, that is exactly what many positions need. However, in many other positions those things are exactly what ...
In last week's article we paid tribute to a creative chess player and a nice person, IM Emory Tate. As a man who played Emory many times, I can tell you that a game with him was always just like our life according to Forrest Gump. Remember his f...
© 2015, José Diaz Links Interview with José Diaz José Diaz Official Website
A few months ago, IM Jeremy Silman wrote an entertaining and highly informative article on why grandmasters blunder. I was particularly impressed with his opening remark: "Over the years I’ve noticed that whenever a grandmaster hang...
Before the 2000 world championship match between Vladimir Kramnik and Garry Kasparov, the latter had been champion since long before I started playing chess. Kasparov dominated the chess world and seemed unbeatable. I naturally assumed that he wou...
