There are many famous personalities in the history of chess. People talk about them, write books about them and follow their games. But there is an even bigger number of unknown chess players who never achieved any great tournament results or disc...
    Dr. Richard Eales' great book "Chess: the History of a Game" in part traces the popularity of mostly modern chess through time. I was chagrined, however, by its minor mention of the Turk in this regard. Obviously I consider the exploits of...
© 2015, José Diaz  Links Interview with José Diaz José Diaz Official Website
A few months after I started playing, my coach showed me an ultra-famous game. I recall grinning from ear to ear, thinking that nothing quite so beautiful would ever see the light of day again. Although Lasker's double-bishop sacrifice is sicken...
In part 1 of "The Scandinavian Defense: A History," we learned about the earliest beginnings of the Scandinavian Defense, and also saw some games with the slightly less usual 2...Nf6 in response to 2.exd5. Now we will see how the Scandinavi...
In our first two installments of “Mastering Squares,” we looked at some extremely instructive positions from one of my students. In the third installment, I stepped back and looked at square basics. Now that everyone is “on poi...
    Once again I'm indebted to my dear friend Deb for finding this. We were searching for the whereabouts of a certain chess board and chess set that once belonged to E. B. Cook and was used when Frederick Perrin, Thomas Frere and Willard Fiske...
Chess is not a team game. It's an individual struggle between two minds to destroy each other -- at least, over the chessboard. But that doesn't mean chess players have to be loners. It's only natural that passionate chess players are drawn to...
Chess can serve as an extremely powerful education tool. It instills key lessons that aren’t directly taught in the classroom. Through my own chess upbringing beginning when I was five years old, and later through passing on knowledg...
The year was 1985. Garry Kasparov just became the world champion, and together with his mentor, ex-world champion Mikhail Botvinnik, he was running the first session of the famous Botvinnik-Kasparov school. A group of young aspiring c...
The discovered check is a key weapon in every attacking player's arsenal. To be sure, it has received excellent coverage in chess literature, its potency examined from every angle. However, players still frequently tend to underrate its power....
The time has come to look at the history of perhaps the first chess opening: the Scandinavian Defense. Also known as the Center-Counter, the Scandinavian Defense can be viewed as the most direct and forcing counter to 1.e4. The intrep...
I noticed that some readers had trouble understanding what a weak square is. I don’t like leaving people behind, so I am going to devote 75.23 percent of this week’s “Mastering Squares” article to square basics. Of course...
Although his association with Paul Morphy was somewhat minimal, Frederick Perrin's chess career was very often viewed though Morphy-colored glasses. When Morphy first arrived in New York for his national debut, Per...
In the movie Groundhog Day (1993), Bill Murray plays Phil Connors, a weatherman who inexplicably starts repeating February 2 every day in the groundhog-crazed town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Connors spends an unknown amount of time stuck i...
Some chess players love to play offbeat openings. I knew one class-A player who was a die-hard devotee of the Vulture Defense (1.d4 Nf6 2. c4 c5 3. d5 Ne4?!). He was showing me a book (why do they kill trees to publish such books?) that explaine...
© 2015, José Diaz  Links Interview with José Diaz José Diaz Official Website
Topic for next month: Chess Teaching (Please start submitting questions concerning the above topic for the next column. Questions outside of that theme should be submitted to other Chess.com departments. If I get a chance to tackle a different ty...
The ability to recover after a tactical oversight is a difficult skill to master. Indeed, the temptation to panic after blundering an ostensibly crushing sacrifice or combination is overwhelming. It is the mark of a strong, experienced player to r...
Last week, we examined the origins of the Smith-Morra Gambit. As the Smith-Morra began to encounter strong players, a variety of different responses developed. In the early days, declining the gambit was actually quite popular. In fact, ...
In part one, I discussed a game that I feel is extremely instructive. There were opening nuances, tactics, and the usual highs and lows. But the main thing that fueled the game’s soul was the existence of two potentially weak squares on e5 a...
There were a few 19th century London chess players who, although they weren't quite on par with the best, were by no means second-rate players and made names for themselves both locally and abroad. &...
The idea of a “bucket list” is not a new one. It’s an age-old concept to compile a list of things you’d like to do before you “kick the bucket,” or pass away. Unlike traveling the world or buying your dream ho...
The game we are going to analyze today is quite typical for the style of Mikhail Tal. It features sacrifices, crazy attack and a lot of fun! Also, as it happened to many Tal's sacrifices, it was proven incorrect. Of course it took "only" a...
