Harry Nelson Pillsbury was one of the great masters of the early 1900s. Had his health been stable for longer, a world championship match between him and Lasker seemed nigh inevitable. With two rounds to go in the Munich tournament of 1900, Pill...
There are more than a few bad chess authors, but arguably none was as creatively terrible as Franklin Knowles Young who wrote many bestsellers around the turn of the 20th century. You can read some such as "Chess Generalship" on Google Books. Here...
My favorite thing in chess is discovering a new brilliant game or combination that I've never seen before. Chess is infinite, and there are ALWAYS fresh patterns and majestic ideas being discovered. Today's blog features an utterly brilliant gam...
World Chess Champion Jose Capablanca was the consummate master of intuitive positional play. His pieces always flowed harmoniously to the perfect squares and with a combination of short-term plans and little combinations. In his game presented h...
The 1900s were a turbulent decade for David Janowski. He had one of his great successes in the 1905 Barmen tournament, and in 1909, he drew an exhibition match against the World Champion Emanuel Lasker. Emboldened by this success, he challenged La...
Playing a brilliant move is a thrilling experience. Whether it's in a classical tournament or a mindless blitz game, finding that sound, incisive, and counter-intuitive move that fully merits the mystical "!!" is a special thing. It's rare for unk...
Mikhail Chigorin, the great Russian master, was a fine attacking player with a complex and unique style. For me, he recalls modern grandmasters like Morozevich, Rapport, and Dubov who always find creative and unique approaches to chess and chess o...
Has there ever been a more anticipated chess matchup than that between Lasker and Capablanca? Nearly as soon as Capablanca burst on to the chess scene, the public clamored for a match against the long-reigning World Champion Emanuel Lasker. While ...
Few rivalries in chess have been so consequential as that of Aron Nimzowitsch and Siegbert Tarrasch. Famously, in their first game, a game played in front of many spectators, Tarrasch asserted: "Never in my life have I had such a won game after te...
Few major chess openings can be traced to a specific origin, much less a particularly interesting one. The Marshall Attack in the Ruy Lopez is a rare and special exception. The perennial U.S. Champion Frank Marshall's deployment of 8...d5!! in the...
Akiba Rubinstein may have been the best player in the world in the late 1900s and early 1910s prior to World War I. While his mental health and chess play deteriorated far too early in his life, he left behind a tremendous legacy of tournament suc...
Dawid Janowski possesses a few ignominious honors. He lost what was likely the most lopsided World Chess Championship match ever against Emanuel Lasker by the score of 8-0 with a handful of draws. Additionally, in the 1920s, Janowski lost a famous...
Rudolf Spielmann literally wrote the book on sacrificial chess. His masterpiece, "The Art of Sacrifice in Chess" showcased his truly romantic style while laying out very helpful theoretical and psychological tips for approaching sacrificial aggres...
Richard Reti is rightly famous for his hypermodern innovations in the opening, but you must master the rules before you can break the rules. Against Alexander Flamberg, Reti showcases his masterful skills in the romantic chess tradition with a dyn...
Every sportsman dreams of scoring a critical victory in dramatic circumstances. One such fantasy for chess players is that of unleashing a special, new opening and scoring a dramatic and beautiful victory. Cases of such wild success are rare in ch...
Simultaneous exhibitions hold a special place in chess history and lore. The ability for the world's greatest masters to take on dozens and even hundreds of opponents at a single time, sometimes even while blindfolded, is a spectacular skill that ...
The 1920s were one of the most storied decades in chess. Emerging from the greatest traumas the world had ever known in World War I and the influenza pandemic, the world western and the chess world saw a decade of prosperity known as The Roaring T...
2020 and 2021 have been big years for chess, but perhaps no chess creator has had a bigger past year than GothamChess. The "internet's chess teacher" went from nearly no YouTube subscribers to 1,000,000 in just one calendar year. His video on how ...
Alexander Alekhine had an absolutely incredible decade in the 1920s. At the decade's outset, he was certainly an important challenger to Lasker and Capablanca, but few would have ranked him above those illustrious masters. Throughout the 1920s, ...
Savielly Tartakower is one of the most widely quoted chess players of all time. The great author coined many memorable phrases such as, "The winner of the game is the player who makes the next-to-last mistake." Another classic is, "The blunders ar...
Chinese chess (xiangqi) is an exciting form of chess, played nearly universally in China. It is so universal within the world's most populous country that many have argued that it is the most popular form of chess - even more popular than internat...
Name a more iconic endgame player than third world chess champion, Jose Capablanca. I'll wait. Now name a more iconic endgame than Capablanca vs. Tartakower, 1924. Capablanca's fluid, natural, and instructive play in this game shows him at the h...
Miguel Najdorf's most famous game must be his Polish Immortal, won against the little-known player Glucksberg. One might naturally think the spectacular game presented in this blog was played against the same player. Evidently, Gliksberg is a diff...
Many chess players become known for their famous games. Aron Nimzowitsch is highly associated with his Immortal Zugzwang victory over Saemisch. The game is a beautiful miniature culminating with the announcement of zugzwang with 25...h6!! As fam...
There aren't very many chess masterpieces played bu unknown players, but today's game is such an example. Imbad, possessor of just two recorded games, unleashes a high-level opening trap against his opponent Strumilo in a correspondence game playe...
