Why is it that chess is officially recognized as a sport? Sport is defined as follows by Oxford Languages: An activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another and others for entertainment...
Who remembers that in the 1963 James Bond film 'From Russia with Love', a chess game was played? As a big movie fan, I'm sharing the full story behind the game played in the movie, between the fictional characters Kronsteen (a Czechoslovakian...
What is the most spectacular king march ever played in a Chess Olympiad? Many of you are probably already familiar with the concept of the incredible king march in a middlegame full of pieces. It is very rare for this to be successful in prac...
What should you do when you don't know what to do? Many of you shared that you struggle to find a good plan in the middlegame or endgame.Therefore, I will give you a simple blueprint today, that you can learn in 3 minutes. Namely: ...
How could a 12 year old FM checkmate a GM in just 12 moves?The short answer is that it was a blitz game, and the FM caught the GM in an opening trap! I prepared a special video for you, so that you can see and understand the trap (and how to ...
How did I win my last round game in the 2018 Australian Championship, and thereby become the Champion? It's a long story, but the short answer is that a key piece of knowledge I had - that my opponent didn't - allowed me to get a winning position...
I will DESTROY your chess mindset. It's not because I want to. It's because you NEED to evolve your chess mindset, if you want to become a chess master or chess champion one day.If it's not an absolute necessity for you to improv...
Can you crack this monster of an endgame study by Y. Bazlov, released in 2015?It's a path that many a brave Knight has travelled...but very few have lived to tell the tale of their encounter with the mysterious monster...known as this endgame stud...
'How do I become a Grandmaster?' That's a common question in the chess circles, right? Well, the more common phrasing of the question is 'How did you become a chess Grandmaster?'. But many of us (including myself, in the past) asked this questio...
I haven't seen anything like this in a chess game...How could a future Blitz World Champion, and the world's youngest GM of all time, Sergey Karjakin, lose a game in only 10 moves?Even in a blitz game, that's something that 'should' never happen, ...
Earlier this month, I played in a Grandmaster blitz tournament called the 'June Solstice Blitz Down Under'. You want to see the games? Sure, here are the two I will analyze for you today: Here's the mistake I see so many chess pla...
What do you think Karpov, playing White, went for in the position above? I was initially going to save this lesson for my group chess training that I'll be launching in the next ...
I'm sure you'd love to see a very sneaky opening trap, right? Well, when I was recording an upcoming video course, I remembered a trap I had created in 2007. It was very crafty, because it's a move that looked like it fell into a tactic ...
How did the World Champion, Magnus Carlsen, smash a fellow Grandmaster with the Scandinavian, getting a completely winning position by move 10? I show you how he did it in my latest Grandmaster video lesson, walking you through the game.&nb...
Why is the Scandinavian is so easy to learn and master, and so effective against amateurs and masters? There are four key reasons: 1. You virtually force a specific pawn structure in the Scandinavian. This means that you only need to master ...
What's the most annoying opening that your opponent can play against your repertoire, with either colour?When I was a junior, it was definitely the Rossolimo (1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5). You see, I had some great books on the Sveshnikov Sicilia...
The above position comes from Ding Liren vs. Daniil Dubov, Lindores Abbey Rapid Challenge Semifinal. Black to play - do you see Black's winning combination? I'll reveal the solution at the end of the post.I've observed that the English Open...
How would you like to learn how to attack with the London System as White? I show you some typical ideas in this annotated game below: What were the main things you learned from the game?For more GM mini-lessons like this daily, click here to...
How do you win in just 24 moves against another top Grandmaster?In this game, Caruana followed a 'suffocation' strategy of grabbing as much space as possible with a strategically ambitious opening approach. When Giri failed to generate enough coun...
Black to move. Would you take the draw or play on here? This position comes from a game between Qi Jingxuan and English GM Tony Miles. Black is down the equivalent of a rook (as the kn...
Welcome back chess friends!For today's post, here is a short Youtube video, where I show you how to provoke and then exploit weaknesses in the opponent's position!Feel free to pause the video at key points and try to figure out the best moves for ...
Hello chess family,For today's post, you'll learn how to deal with a common club player mistake in the Caro-Kann! It's all covered in my short video below, where White wins in just 16 moves!I hope you enjoyed this mini-lesson! See you in...
Wotawa, Deutsche Schachzeitung 1967. White to play and draw! Now we have a long space so that you aren't accidentally 'spoiled' by the solution below! (Note: I deliberately didn't...
This post takes my answers to some interesting questions that my friend Brendan Norman recently asked me on my Facebook profile. Also, with 16 Chess.com posts in the last 48 hours, it's not like many people will read this anyway, so a fast post is...
It's hard to soundly attack White's position from the start in reply to 1.e4. But it doesn't stop many intermediate players from trying! So, we should be ready for these aggressive attempts by Black to take the initiative. T...
