You may be wondering: what was the inspiration behind last week's post? Well, I noticed a common pattern among my student's questions - which, by the way, were among the best I've been asked in my 15+ years teaching chess! Namely, sever...
This blog post is a continuation of a series - you can find Part 1 here if you missed it! Through my adult life, I had difficulty projecting my voice properly. In fact, I wasn't even really aware of this until last year, when vario...
What do all highly successful people have in common? Garry Kasparov Many people much more experienced than myself have already attempted to answer this question, but the way I see it, the one commonality all highly successful people have is...
For today's post, I will be giving my thoughts on a game that someone sent to me for possible feedback. I hope that you will find my comments and insights useful! Before we get to the game, here is a relevant puzzle: W...
For today's blog post, I will address a very good question that was recently asked by one of my students! The question was: Is the English an opening you can play without having to put too much work into it? What do you guys...
...Zeitnot17! But don't worry guys - I have another one of your games ready to give my feedback on tomorrow! I won't be able to analyse everyone's game, of course, but if I thought your game was particularly interesting, or fits well into a them...
Hello chess friends! For this blog post, I would like to try something a bit different, and see what you all think! As you probably know, I spend nearly all my time each day on helping others improve their chess in some way. I coach my numerou...
Nowadays, the main talk in the chess community is often about the latest young talent...for example: Which one is the most promising? Who will become the next World Champion? Personally, I think it's wonderful t...
For today's post, I'll share with you part of a really crazy game I analyzed from the Aeroflot Open! Black is up a lot of material in today's puzzle, but must find a lot of accurate moves to fend off the attack, consolidate the material advantage ...
How do you attack the opponent's king? 'You throw Harry the h-pawn down the board, sack some pieces, rush the queen in, and the mate will be there...' If only such dreams were that easy to realise! Fortunately, there are clear principl...
If your opponent gave you an inch, would you take a mile? I have been crazy busy lately, so today's blog post will again be quite short! Your homework for today is to come up with a good plan for White in the following position: Wh...
For this post, I've included a nice set of puzzles from games I have recently analyzed! Enjoy! Later in the same game... Now for another example from the same Svidler-Carlsen match: And from a variation to the third g...
This blog post will also be quite short, as I am about to check out of my hotel room! I recently analysed an interesting GM game for my private students, and I'd like to share a couple of the lessons with you here. Let's start from the followi...
Hello chess friends, I've been playing chess for two decades now, and I'd like to announce my retirement from classical tournaments (with the exception of the forthcoming 2019 FIDE World Cup, which I just qualified for). Some of you may ...
I have been pretty busy tonight, so today's blog post will be a short one! One of the themes I find really beautiful in chess is domination - namely, seeing a small unit dominate an equivalent or higher-value force. You can find many exa...
Earlier today, as I was playing my Round 6 game at the Oceania Zonal, I was sitting beside a game between two strong club players (rated in the 1900-2100 range), watching events unfold with interest. The game started as follows: At this ...
In this post, I will show some interesting tactics and ideas from a Grunfeld endgame that was played in the 2017 World Rapid Championship! Rather than present one really long game annotation, as I've done in previous posts, I have broken this on...
For today's blog post, I will do something a bit different, and try to explain the opening choice of Wei Yi in his first round of an open tournament (played live at the time of writing). Well, this is from Round 1 of the 2019 Aeroflot Open...so he...
...play the best move! On a more concrete note, here's my puzzle for today! It is White to move in the position below: I'll post the solution in the comments in about 24 hours, good luck! If you're finding this puzzle difficult, f...
Have you ever blundered in a chess game...only to find out later that your 'blunder' was a great move? You are not the only one...even World Champions do that sometimes! 'But hang on, it's not really a "blunder" if ...
When we're going through games, especially at a fairly fast pace, we'll often see the game come to a sudden end and ask, 'why did they resign?' Often the answer is quite obvious after looking for a few seconds, but sometimes, the reason requires...
This post is all about Capablanca's famous 'Copycat' game, which many of my students have shared with me over the years. So, I have included my own notes...but first, try and find all of Capablanca's moves yourself! Now, for the game with my...
How should you deal with piece tension in a position? My recent blitz game on Chess.com covers this subject quite concisely. It started as follows: White's last move (8.Qe2) is a good example of prophylaxis - stopping ...Ba6 while de...
What exactly is 'automatic' play in chess? It's when you play the first move that seems natural in a position, without calculating the consequences deeply. It very much resembles the thinking seen in blitz chess and could also be called 'lazy th...
White to play in this position! How should he proceed? I hope you enjoyed the puzzle! See you soon with another post!
