There is probably no good time to play a super-grandmaster like Hikaru Nakamura, but there are some bad times. The fiercest chess competitors like Nakamura, Garry Kasparov, and Magnus Carlsen have generally been most feared right after a loss. ...
Even at a young age, Hikaru Nakamura was a tactical genius. In fact, as a scholastic player, Hikaru set almost all of the US Chess records for chess prodigies, beating an IM on his 10th birthday, becoming a national master at 10, defeating his fir...
The 1990s were a spectacular and turbulent chess decade. World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov made huge waves throughout the decade on and off the board. Kasparov held the #1 Elo ranking in the world for the entire decade, only being briefly tied b...
Today, Nigel Short is perhaps best known as the vice president of FIDE and an active player (He's won tournaments on each continent besides Antarctica.) and chess promoter who is never shy to share his opinion on Twitter. While many may be aware...
In 1991, Vasyl Ivanchuk was 22 and ranked 2nd in the world, an incredible achievement. The Candidates' quarterfinal match in that year between Ivanchuk and Yusupov initially favored Ivanchuk who gained an early lead and needed only a draw in the f...
"Planet Chucky" is used as a synonym for an insane chess game or insane chess position produced by the great Vasyl Ivanchuk. There's even a club on site with this name. Ivanchuk's definitive "Planet Chucky" game is his masterpiece played against...
Correspondence chess is little appreciated by the larger chess community, but the battles can be some of the deepest and richest in chess. The strategic complexity and long-term plans often resemble the modern approach by neural-network engines li...
In an ordinary year, Nataf's attacking masterpiece against John Nunn would unquestionably be the best game of that year, but sometimes great games sit in great shadows In any case, this gem is a showcase for the creative abilities of the many g...
Garry Kasparov was the world chess champion (disputed) for the entire decade of the 1990s. This feat has thus far only been matched by Emanuel Lasker who was world champion for two consecutive decades, the 1900s and the 1910s. Will Carlsen achieve...
One of the great chess rivalries of the 1990s was Vladimir Kramnik vs. Alexei Shirov. Today Kramnik's achievements are legendary, most notably defeating Garry Kasparov and becoming World Chess Champion in 2000. However, many may not realize how do...
The 1990s were PACKED with exciting chess. The 13th World Chess Champion, Garry Kasparov, dominated the chess landscape both on and off the board as he held on to his title throughout the entire decade, fending off challenges from Anatoly Karpov, ...
Chess players love blitz chess, but there aren't many blitz chess games that are considered truly excellent games outside the time control. After all, in blitz chess, it is usual that many errors in both attack and defense mar the play. For exampl...
I was pleasantly surprised when reviewing Tal's battles with Petrosian to come across a rare 20-move loss in a little-seen blitz game in 1975. Petrosian got his caught in the center and Tal unleashed a beautiful tactical sequence, winning almost i...
In some ways, Magnus Carlsen was at his most exciting in the late 2000s and early 2010s, still rapidly increasing his rating and impressing all, his playing style and opening approach were still forming, and his opponents had not yet figured out h...
Mikhail Tal conducted many fine king hunts, but possibly his prettiest conclusion was against the Englishman George Botterill. In fact, Tal was in trouble early on in a Sicilian Defense, but then he seized a big advantage and captured a pawn on ...
In a battle between two prior world chess champions, Mikhail Tal and Tigran Petrosian, Tal came out a shocking victor in one of Petrosian's fastest defeats. Petrosian was doubtless not at his best, but it is enormously impressive how Tal creates...
Few would willingly capture a poisoned pawn against Mikhail Tal, but GM Wolfgang Uhlmann thought the c3-pawn in the following game was only slightly poisoned. Unfortunately for him, the poison proves mortal as Tal finds two incredible moves to s...
The 2000s were a turbulent chess decade. After Garry Kasparov lost the World Chess Championship in 2000 to Vladimir Kramnik, the cracks in the world chess structure became particularly apparent. While Kasparov was the undisputed best player in the...
In one of the most complicated chess games you will ever see, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave battled Alexander Morozevich in a complex Sicilian. Facing a ferocious attack, Vachier-Lagrave buried his rook on h7. Morozevich can capture the rook at any point...
Hikaru Nakamura has long been one of the best blitz chess players online, but can he really defeat a chess engine in three-minute, no-increment chess?! In 2008, he did exactly that as he used an incredible anti-computer strategy of closing the p...
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave is one of the finest chess players on the planet today, but everyone starts somewhere; he too was once a young prodigy, hungering for his first elite victories. In his first (but possibly not last?) game on this list, a 17...
Many newer chess fans go to know GM Emil Sutovsky for the first time this week due to his off-the-board moves as Director General of FIDE. His on-the-board moves are some of my favorites as he won many brilliant games in the 2000s. His game agai...
GM Hikaru Nakamura is renowned for his dynamic and aggressive style and his fast tactical eye. These days his speed of calculation has even made him an internet meme more than a few times. In one of his most famous wins, Nakamura used only a few...
I previously christened IM Sulyemanli's excellent win the Immortal Space Invaders game, but that was only because I hadn't seen this delightful 2009 game in which GM Artyom Timofeev brilliantly overwhelmed GM Khismatullin with two spectacular posi...
Just as the 1950s are associated with the rise of the young Bobby Fischer, the 2000s cannot be separated from the rise of the young Magnus Carlsen. Today, we know Carlsen as a positional grinder, the player who (at least in the early 2010s) would ...
