I think that Alexander Alekhine is underappreciated nowadays. The following was written back in the mid-1970s: Like a magician using the art of misdirection, an Alekhine combination was often initiated after a series of harmless looking moves th...
My previous blog posts on Henry Bird, the 19th century's eccentric visionary of chess, are here and here. puzzle 1: complete game: puzzle 2: complete game: puzzle 3: complete game: puzzle 4: complete g...
Alekhine's Impressive Tournament Record Alexander Alekhine won or shared first place in eight out of the fifteen strong tournaments that he played in from 1921 to 1927. He played in ten tournaments from 1929 to 1933 and won every one of them (i...
Henry Bird, a renowned chess author from England, was a remarkable figure in the chess world. While his primary occupation was accounting, he dedicated a significant portion of his life to chess, playing at a high level for an impressive 50 years....
Great attacking game by Anish Giri, perennially ranked in the top ten chess players in the world, against the sensational young chess talent Dommaraju Gukesh. Here is the game for you to run through: If you enjoy this post, please check out my...
My introduction to Johannes Zukertort can be found in my previous chess.com blog post here. Here is the game for you to play through before I take a deep dive into the analysis, annotations, commentary, just as I did with the unforgettable Paulse...
These are some of my attacking victories which I have recently posted on Twitter. These games are truly brilliant in my own mind. But I submitted these to chess.com analysis, and got brought down to earth. They are a mixed bag - some from a few ...
See my introduction to La Bourdonnais in my previous blog post here. See my analysis, annotations, and commentary on another game these two played here. The maestro of Romantic era chess strikes again. Here is a variation of this game which I ...
See my introduction to La Bourdonnais in my previous blog post here. In this game, the maestro of Romantic era chess performs another brilliant attack. Here is the game for you to play through right off the bat. e4 e5 d4 exd4 Qxd4 Nc6 This i...
The middle game is the field of battle on which victory or defeat is decided. The middle game is a war between the pieces and pawns of both sides. image credit: medievalchronicles.com The middle game has all of the possibilities of planning a...
I have used editorial reviews mixed in with my opinion to take a fond look at these ancient books. Chess: Win in 20 Moves or Less, Fred Reinfeld 73 outstanding short chess games spread out over a hundred years, instructively annotated. The autho...
In the history of superb attacking chess, before Paul Morphy, before Adolf Anderssen, there was La Bourdonnais, a French chess master. La Bourdonnais played in a time before a World Chess Championship was established, but was considered to be pe...
This was the final game, played for first place, in the First American Chess Congress. The tournament was the equivalent at the time to, or maybe you could say the predecessor to, the United States Chess Championship. Here is the game for you to ...
In the opening - Control the center, develop your pieces, and protect your own king by castling. Going into the middle game - Coordinate your pieces to work together, activate as many of your pieces as possible to have a purpose, and make a...
"Almost every day, I play chess using chess software, including Chess Titans and SparkChess on my desktop and Chess Free from A1 Factory on my older cellphone. Many of the games I have reviewed and analyzed using one of the chess sets from my coll...
"Paul Morphy, from New Orleans, was the 'The Pride and Sorrow of Chess' for his sensational, but all too brief, chess career. Considered the unofficial chess champion of the world from 1857 to 1859, he was decades ahead of his time in playing the ...
"Johannes Zukertort, artist of the chessboard, as he was called by biographer Jimmy Adams, was the top chess player in the world for 56 separate months between August, 1878 and February, 1886, according to Chessmetrics. He was born in Poland, then...
"Adolf Anderssen, German mathematics professor, was the most successful chess tournament player in Europe from the 1850s through the 1870s. Anderssen was considered the leading chess player in the world during this time, except for the brief Paul ...
The eccentric visionaryHenry Bird was a noted chess author from England. Although he was an accountant by profession, he played chess at a high level for about 50 years. Bird was rated by Chessmetrics as reaching as high as number two in the world...
"We are going to check out the bag of tricks of George H. Derrickson. This chess prodigy was a resident of Philadelphia. Derrickson briefly came to prominence in the chess world shortly after the Paul Morphy era." (from my new and first chess bo...
Off and on, for the past several years, I have been following the career of GM Hou Yifan, fascinated by her brilliance, phenomenal talent, and artistry. But more than that, her intelligence and how she seemed to do things her own way in that chess...
