I'm the Head of Community for Chess.com. I earned the National Master title in 2012, and in 2014, I returned to my home state of South Carolina to start Strategery: Chess and Games. In late 2015, I began working for Chess.com and haven't looked back since.
You can find my personal content on Twitch , Twitter , and YouTube where I further indulge my love of chess.
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...
Expectations for Emanuel Lasker in New York, 1924 were murky at best. He should have been rusty after a long chess hiatus, and in his match with Capablanca, the Cuban had been dominant, losing zero games. Lasker shocked the world by winning in c...
GM Arnold Denker was known as the Dean of American Chess. Born in 1914, Denker was a fixture on the American chess scene until his passing at the age of 90 in 2005. He was US Champion in 1944 and defended in a challenge match in 1946, and he org...
My #9 best chess game of the 1920s is a cheat—plain and simple. I'm going with two victories by Richard Reti over a young Max Euwe from their 4-game 1920 match. Astonishingly, Reti TWICE offered the ultra-rare double-rook sacrifice in the ma...
Carlos Torre is probably the greatest Mexican chess player. In 1915, his family left Mexico during the Mexican Civil War, and they soon settled in New Orleans. There Carlos drew attention for his chess skills and garnered comparisons to New Orlean...
The 1930s were a chess decade in transition. At the decade's outset, Alekhine and Capablanca were clearly considered the two strongest players in the world, and there was a justified clamor for a rematch after their 1927 World Chess Championship m...
What is the origin of one of the finest, maybe THE finest, chess combinations ever played? Remarkably, the story behind the incredible promotional sequence in this game is complicated and contentious. The promotional combination has been published...
In 1935, Max Euwe shocked the world by winning a World Chess Championship match against the great Alexander Alekhine. Euwe's success was so surprising to the chess world that Euwe's reputation as a world champion has often been quite small. I thin...
Mikhail Botvinnik and Jose Capablanca were two of the great world chess champions. Capablanca was gifted with possibly the most natural "feel" for the harmony and strategy of a chess games that has ever been seen, and Botvinnik was a master ...
Paul Keres played about 1500 (!) correspondence chess games as a very young player. Many of these games were played before he turned 20, and at one point he is said to have been playing 500 games simultaneously! One would have to imagine he was an...
Imagine that you have one single recorded chess victory. Then imagine that this victory is one of the greatest games ever played, dubbed the "Ukrainian Immortal." This is the case for Efim Korchmar, a strong player who won his immortal in the 1937...
Andre Lilienthal was a great Soviet Chess Champion and a popular figure in chess. An attacking player, he had a unique style and an even more unique hairstyle. Lilienthal was one of the first players awarded the grandmaster title by FIDE in 1950, ...
In 1933, Mikhail Botvinnik was the new Soviet chess champion and the leading edge of a generation that would eventually come to dominate, not just Soviet chess, but chess worldwide. Botvinnik was still in need of international training opportuniti...
Thanks for reading! Follow me on Twitter or Youtube 
The Best Chess Games of all Time
Top 10 Chess Games Before 1900
Top 10 Chess Games of the 1900s
Top 10 Chess Games of the 1910s
Top 10 Chess Games of the 1920s
Top 10 Chess Games of the 1930s
Top 10 Chess Games of the 1940s
Top 10 Chess Games of the 1950s
Top 10 Chess Games of the 1960s
Top 10 Chess Games of the 1970s
Top 10 Chess Games of the 1980s
Top 10 Chess Games of the 1990s
Top 10 Chess Games of the 2000s
Top 10 Chess Games of the 2010s
The Best Android Apps for Chess
25 Books Guaranteed To Improve Your Chess
Why Is Stalemate A Draw In Chess?
