GM Elshan Moradiabadi is teaching a series of online classes via Zoom in April and May to help you improve your practical endgame skills. There are four classes in total (they happen weekly on Thursdays) that will cover the following topics: 1. ...
Hello, everyone! After the Chicago Open at the end of May I made a goal of playing at least one classical event during June to try and stay somewhat sharp before the US Open. I played a weekly swiss event at my local chess club, which gave...
Hello all! I have two more posts in the works that cover my games from June and my recent US Open, but in the meantime I thought I'd share some endgame studies from my personal training. When I'm not playing a tournament, I try to do three...
Hello all, This is my second post about tournaments I played in May. Here, I'll cover some of the more interesting moments from games I played in the U2100 section of the 2018 Chicago Open. I performed much better than my last outing in thi...
Hello all, It's been quite some time since I blogged about my OTB tournaments so this is the first of three blog entries to catch up with my recent tournament play. I didn't play any events in March or April so I was very rusty coming into...
Hello, chess friends! As promised, here's the write-up on my 2018 US Amateur Team North. I was on a team with three of my students and the team finished 2.0/5 after a very bumpy start of 0/2. I played pretty terribly all weekend, but some...
Hello dear chess friends! A few weeks back I played in a rapid swiss event at my local chess club. It was only a three-round event, and my rapid rating was super outdated (I believe it was in the 1400's from about 4 or 5 years ago) so I decide...
Good time of day to you, my dear chess friends! In my last blog post I showed a few endgame positions from a tournament I played back in December. As part of my plans for improving at chess this year by playing more, I started January off ...
Good time of day to you, my chess friends! Since my last blog post, I've played in two classical tournaments and have some interesting positions to share. Back in December I played in the Wisconsin Memorial, where I was the 4th seed by rat...
Good time of day to you, my dear chess friends. It's been awhile since I updated this mini-series on practical rook endings (about 18 months). Last time, I showed a few rook endings played by Akiba Rubinstein where he converted an extra pawn ...
Dear chess friends, I finally made it to 2000 after scoring 4.0/5 in my most recent event, the Greg Knutson Memorial in Madison, WI. I'll start with some statistics, looking back at my journey thus far. I started playing tournament che...
Good time of day to you, my dear chess friends. I've recently come to realize a few things about myself, and more relevant to this blog, my chess. The first is that I have not done well to keep this blog true to its original purpose, which w...
Hello, dear readers. It's been quite some time since I've posted an update on my recent tournament results. My last classical tournament was in late February at the Amateur Team North competition in Schaumburg, Illinois. I played fourth board in ...
In this short blog post, I'm going to share some fun tactics puzzles I've been working on, both by myself and with my University Chess Team. Try solving them and posting in the comments. I'll post the solutions and relevant variations after some p...
Good time of day to you my chess friends, While I know it has been quite some time since I last updated any interesting material on this blog that was not related to some recent tournament in which I competed, I would like to return to more study...
Good time of day to you my dear chess friends, As promised in my last post on analysis in the Scandinavian, I am here to day to bring you some analysis of interesting games and positions from my games at the World Open U2000 played during the fou...
Good time of day to you my dear chess friends, I still need to make a post for the 2014 World Open which took place on the 4th of July Weekend in Arlington, VA, where I finished with 6/9 (quite disappointing). In the meantime, here is an...
It's been awhile since my last tournament (October of last year), and I expected going in to the Chicago Open this year to be completely out of form. My only "training" was in the week prior to the event, when I did a few hours of tactics trainin...
Hello all! Here is a game from round 1 of the King's Tournament which is currently active where Caruana starts off with a win as black in the Grunfeld. He takes on the 5.h4 topic variation with a very principled approach, perhaps inventing a no...
It is often understood that chess has evolved in a very linear progression since the beginning of its recorded history. A plethora of books discuss the very clean advance from the era of the 'Romantics' (Morphy and the Andersson-Steinitz match co...
Hello everyone. I recently competed in 2013 US Open held in Middleton, Wisconsin (although advertised in Madison). It was fun to play in such a large and competitive tournament so close to home (I am from Milwaukee). I met many strong players a...
In the ongoing Edmonton International there have been some recent developments of great interest. I have been following some of the games as there are some very strong players competing. They have made for a great subject of study to help me dev...
Hello All! It's been some time since I last made a blog post on my progress towards my goal of becoming an expert in the next two years. I've almost reached the half-way point (starting out as a 13XX rated player in the Fall of my first year at ...
I have been playing blindfold games at my dorm for chess training since last year around this time (I'm now a second year at the University of Chicago). Even before that, when I was a beginner in my senior year of high school I would play blindfo...
Hello again, everyone. I hope you all are having a pleasant summer. In Milwaukee, WI, where I have been spending my time lately, it has been an unusually hot summer so far, with several back to back days breaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit! Unfortu...
