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...
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...
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...
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...
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 ...
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...
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...
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...
This is the game that secured Caruana his 2018 Candidates victory, and a World Championship Match with Carlsen in November 2018! Of the players in the tournament, Caruana was clearly in the best form. He prepared a strong repertoire for the tour...
In this short post, we'll learn the dangers of the committal ...f4 break in a major line of the Sveshnikov Sicilian. Such moves signal an intent to attack the White king, shifting the play from central pressure to whose flank attack will be faster...
What differentiates a 'good' blitz player from a 'great' blitz player? The answer to this question lies in my experience playing online blitz for over a decade ago. Back in 2007, I was rated in the 2800s on the late Internet Chess Club - which e...
Do you want to know the key to turning a better position into a win? Essentially, converting an advantage is all about keeping control of the position. To do that, we need to have the initiative. What is the initiativ...
Do you find it difficult to use the range of chess resources effectively? Are you lost and confused for where to begin your chess training? On Friday 1st December, I (GM Max Illingworth) will be presenting a free webinar on How to ...
Hello chess friends! This is your chance to play me, and watch me commentate my games live! At 10pm Sydney time (11am GMT), I will be taking on all-comers in the Live Chess Server on Chess.com. I hope you are as excited as I am in doing my ...
Hello chess friends, For many years now, as a professional chess coach and writer, I have been thinking about how to help others improve their chess (including their chess performance) as much as possible. To make chess learning from ...
On Wednesday 27th September, 21:00 Sydney time, Candidates qualifiers Levon Aronian and Ding Liren (pictured above) will slug it out in rapid (and if necessary, blitz) tiebreakers to decide who will win the 2017 FIDE World Cup! I will be streaming...
Hello readers, here are a few quick puzzles, starting with a recent super-GM game. It is White to play in the position below: Below is a mini-study I constructed just now. White to play and win. As a bonus, I present a compos...
If you haven't heard of Chess Informant, I can say with near-total certainty that you were born after 1966. For it was in this year that the Yugoslav GM Aleksandar Matanović (with Milivoje Molerović) published the first issue ...
It's been a fabulous long weekend for me in Australia. No, not because of my equal first place at the NSW Open - although that was also a very satisfying result for me! True, most of my games were against much lower-rated players, but this ca...
(This blog post title was brought to you by Alphabetical Aerobics's alliteration and assonance 'Artificial amateurs, aren't at all amazing' ) Before you suspect fellow GM Paul Motwani of hijacking my Chess.com account today, I should share wit...
For this blog post, I would like to share with you some games featuring club players. Through these games, we can learn about some typical mistakes at the amateur level, how to punish them and how to avoid them. Furthermore, when we are trying to...
This month has come to an exciting start with several strong tournaments either kicking off or winding up in the last few days! If you liked the 2004 film 'EuroTrip', you will love going around and enjoying the highlights in this post :) Now we k...
I'd always assumed that Capablanca's rule was nearly as well-known as how the bishop moves, but after playing through a game from the German Bundesliga, it occurred to me that good old Capablanca's pearls of wisdom could be like the Orthodox Queen...
After a long hiatus in blogging, I am back with an interesting concept to share with you - namely, when the central pawn break goes wrong! But before I delve into this, I'd like to share with you a position from my coaching files - one I must hav...
Of all the things one can discuss in chess, players (especially club players) tend to be most attached to the concept of their 'chess style'. Early on in your chess career you surely heard Player A say that Player B 'is a good positional player' o...
