What We Know That Just Ain't So
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” (misattributed to Mark Twain) I've just finished coaching at the Australian Junior Chess Champion...
GM Max Illingworth's Blog
Chess Puzzle 1-19-19
Black to play in this puzzle! What should he play? I will reveal the answer in about 30 hours from the time this was posted!
Harry the H-Pawn in the London
Here are two fun games from the Australian Junior Chess Championships, where Harry the H-Pawn gets involved in some thematic London System attacks. Two rounds later... And you thought the London System was just a quiet way to ...
Classical Chess Matches - Start with the Tiebreakers!
After watching the Carlsen-Caruana and Ju-Lagno World Championship Final matches, and many other World Championship matches in my time, I feel very strongly about the best future direction for classical chess matches.Put simply, I believe all clas...
The 2nd Youngest GM of All Time - Javokhir Sindarov
Earlier today, I learned that Javokhir Sindarov, the promising 12-year old junior from Uzbekistan, achieved his final GM Norm at the October 2018 First Saturday GM Tournament, at the age of 12 years and 10 months. Like most young players...
Fight Fire with Fire
Hello chess friends! For today's post I have analyzed a short game from last year's PRO Chess League, from which we can learn an important concept about playing positions with a material advantage: We shouldn't assume that th...
Overcoming Difficult Opponents
I feel a bit tired now after talking virtually nonstop for 12 hours today, but that didn't stop me from winning two blitz games tonight against an anonymous GM who only a few weeks ago was one of my most difficult opponents on the Chess.com server...
The Cat With Nine Lives
For today's post, I've shared a recent blitz game I played, where I used one of my nine lives to win a game where I got outplayed up and down the board. My annotations ended up being quite brief, so I've included them in full. Three th...
Introducing the Petrosian QID
In this post, I will introduce the Petrosian Variation of the Queen's Indian, so that almost any player can understand the basic ideas of this opening. It arises after the following moves: Why would White spend a tempo on a non-developin...
Endgame Tactics from Vidit-So
In this post, I've taken some endgame positions from my analysis of the recent Speed Chess Challenge match between Wesley So and Santosh Gujrathi Vidit, where you have the opportunity to find some nice ideas Vidit was White in each of the pu...
Don't Feed the Hippo
A few months ago, I visited Adelaide Zoo and saw many beautiful and interesting animals, including the Hippopotamus. I don't think I'll ever forget Brutus the old hippo - he would spend nearly all his time in the water, lured only by the prospect ...
Solution to Yesterday's Puzzle
The post I initially wrote for today ended up being quite long, so I've saved it for tomorrow, and today I'll focus on the solution to yesterday's puzzle. In case you missed that post, here is the position again, with White to play: 9.b4!,...
What's Your Chess Improvement Question?
As I am too jetlagged to focus on chess analysis for today, I figured I'd do a different type of blog post today - one where you, the audience, can make your contribution! Feel free to leave a question below on how you can improve as a chess pla...
3 Ways to Motivate Yourself for Chess Training
As I was flying back to Sydney, bobbing my head to Eminem's 'Revival' album, I started thinking to myself about how I could best encourage my students to do the difficult work, the 'deliberate practice' that makes one a stronger chess player. Wh...
Converting the Advantage - Queen and Rook Positions
Continuing my exploration of interesting games from the 2018 Olympiad, I analysed the Caruana-Mamedyarov game from Round 8, because of the fascinating queen and rook type of position that resulted. First, here is the full game without annotati...
Learning from the games of others
I've noticed that when I analyse a chess game, I tend to have a lot of questions about different moves that could have been played. So, I have a 'brief check' of what the engine gives, play out some natural-looking 20 move variation to dra...
Learning from your Losses
Now that I have finished the Olympiad, I will share my analysis of one of my games, which contained some interesting moments before an unfortunate blunder on my part. I'm about to head off to the Closing Ceremony for the Batumi Olympiad, bu...
Winning in Walbrzych
For today's post, I will give you a series of puzzles to solve, and questions to answer! Question 1: Where in the world is Walbrzych? Answer: Walbrzych is a city in south-western Poland. It's also the venue for the European Senior Team C...
Mar del Plata Master - Bobby Fischer
As you've probably noticed by now, I like to investigate the games of the leading experts of particular chess themes. Be it Rubinstein's rook endings, Nakamura's Nimzo-Larsen, or, in the case of this post, Bobby Fischer's expert handling of the KI...
Jobava's Four Pawns Attack
In this post, I'll share a nice game from last decade by Jobava, where he defeats a strong GM with energetic play in the Four Pawns Attack of the King's Indian (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.e4 d6 5.f4 0-0 6.Nf3). Because of the variation's...
Planning Puzzle
White (to move) is obviously pressing in the above position, due to Black's multiple pawn islands, but what should his plan be? White to play. I'll share my analysis of this position 24 hours after the initial posting. In the meantime...
Converting a Material Advantage
This post will be for players relatively new to chess, showing how to convert a material advantage into victory. I hope you enjoyed this blog post and learned something useful to apply in your games! Keep in mind that, when you are starting ...
Opposite-Coloured Bishops and Rooks
In this blog post, I annotated a game from the Croatian Junior Team Championship, which featured an interesting opposite-coloured bishop endgame with rooks on the board. Such positions can be quite difficult for humans to play and for engines to u...
A Major Success at the 2018 Doeberl Cup
This post is all about the 2018 Doeberl Cup, which was just played over the Easter holidays in Canberra - but my focus won't be on the Premier Division. One player has already shared an introspective of his Premier tournament. Note: You may have a...
A World Champion's Caro-Kann Counter
For today's blog post, I would like to show you how a World Chess Champion defeats the rock-solid Caro-Kann Defence. The opening concept is so easy to understand, it will be sufficient to share two game scores: Now, we can say that the ele...
