My Game with Nepo's Coach
On Thursday, I took part in Vladimir Potkin's simultaneous display in Moscow. I lost, of course, but put up something of a resistance.
Chess960 Was Accidentally Invented by Emanuel Lasker
In my historical researches, I came upon a Max Euwe interview that he gave to De Telegraaf on 15th September 1936, after the Nottingham tournament. That's what the world champion said about Emanuel Lasker: "Lasker is still full of great ideas. F...
A Wild Game in Sicilian Najdorf
Hi all, I'm all right in case you've been wondering, still working on chess and non-chess books. Wanted to share a wild game I played at another site. Got three minor pieces for the opponent's queen, but then, as it usually happens with me, blund...
The Fun of 1600-level Chess: A Couple Positions from My Games
I recently played a unique game: White had not one, but TWO extra Queens, but still got checkmated by force. The game itself is not particularly high-quality, and White really should have won, but the finish is truly spectacular. And another p...
Everything Old Is New Again, or Chess.com of the 1880s
While researching Szymon Winawer for my line of work, I came across two fascinating small articles that could have as well been written in the comments section of chess.com this year. The first is dated 1883, published as a part of the London...
My "Immortal Game"
I played a positional queen sacrifice, similar geometrically (but not too much positionally) to Lilienthal-Capablanca. Black decided to oblige, even though he very obviously was not forced to, gave White too much compensation and lost the resultin...
Arkady Dvorkovich: I Wouldn't Do What Dubov Did, But It's a Matter of His Personal Choice
Grigory Telingater, Championat.com https://www.championat.com/other/article-4547765-prezident-fide-arkadij-dvorkovich-ob-itogah-matcha-yan-nepomnyaschij-magnus-karlsen-v-dubae.html 11 games upset everyone, except maybe for Carlsen The world c...
Player Dominance Index, post-World Championship edition. Carlsen closing in on Alekhine
So, the over-the-board chess is back, the World Championship has ended, and the time is ripe to calculate the new update of the Player Dominance Index (the previous version is available here). The index shows the points percentage against an eli...
Ian Nepomniachtchi: "I Tend to Solve the Problems As They Come"
Interview by Andrei Kartashov, TASS https://tass.ru/interviews/12857261 Tell us about your relationship with Magnus Carlsen. At the first sight, it seems warm and friendly. Ten years ago, we had two or three training camps together. I even wen...
The Fate of Dus-Chotimirsky's Son
In January last year, I posted Ella Vengerova's memories about Fyodor Dus-Chotimirsky, one of the most original and eccentric players from the older generation of Russian/Soviet masters. In passing, she mentioned his son, who went MIA during the S...
Lev Polugaevsky. "How to Put the Elo Genie Back Into the Bottle". 1991
This article was written by Polugaevsky almost exactly 30 years ago for the 64 magazine (No. 18, September 1991). While some problems he described were solved since then, others are still being actively discussed. How to Put the Elo Genie Back I...
I Missed a Chess Brilliancy
I just won a 3+2 blitz game. Nothing special, especially considering my playing level, but computer analysis showed an incredible brilliancy that I missed at one point. A forced mate in seven, with a queen sacrifice and incredibly rare double-r...
Quickest Classical Losses by World Champions
Garry Kasparov amazed everyone (and not exactly in a good way) by losing to Shakhriyar Mamedyarov in 7 moves yesterday. But what about world champions losing quickly in classical games? This list is compiled from chessgames.com and may be not co...
From David Bronstein To Abhimanyu Mishra: Grandmasters With "Latest Birthdates"
This small funny table of is not the same as "the youngest grandmaster", even though they obviously overlap. Instead of "youngest ever grandmaster", it's "youngest living grandmaster". The table may be not entirely full, since I only know t...
Years of blogging finally paid off
You probably know me as the guy who posts old Soviet chess articles for fun. Last year, this "fun" finally paid off - I got a job with the chess publisher Elk and Ruby and got to do the same thing and get paid for it. I fully translated thr...
Two old Soviet proposals that might work for online tournaments: "Anonymous" and "Elimination Swiss"
I've been reading the old Soviet chess magazines a lot lately, not only out of interest, but for work as well. There, I found, among other things, a couple of interesting proposals for tournament formulas, one of which was even implemented. 1. T...
The Double Life of Susanna Mar, Poet and Chess Player
Susanna Mar (real last name Chalkhushyan, 1900-1965) was an Armenian-Russian poet and translator who translated, among others, the poems of Kipling, Chesterton, Yeats and de la Mare into Russian. She was born in Nakhichevan-on-Don (a suburb of Ros...
"Komsomol Chess": an obscure Soviet chess variant
While reading a huge book about Russian kids' games, I came across two Soviet variants of chess that were introduced in mid-1920s. One of them ("International", developed by Alexander Ilyin-Zhenevsky, among others) had rules more akin to modern ta...
London 1946 and the Soviet no-show: A Small Mystery
Digging through the London Times digital archive, I came across the letter from Conel Alexander concerning the 1951 Staunton Memorial. It was printed on 15th May 1951. Of course, I also searched for the Sunday Chronicle 1946 tournament...
Daniil Dubov: "I Sincerely Want to Fill Chess With Unexpected Ideas"
Interview: Oleg Bogatov, R-Sport Daniil Dubov, the world rapid champion, won a 12-grandmaster online tournament in June, defeating Hikaru Nakamura in the final. Daniil, you haven't been playing too successfully at the group stage of the tourna...
Nikolai Zubarev, "On Chess Strength" (1932)
Part of a larger book On Qualification, explaining in greater detail the system that was put in place by the 7th All-Union Chess Conference in 1931. On Chess Strength The process of chess improvement is linked with many hardships and tria...
Mikhail Botvinnik's press conference after winning his return match against Tal (1961)
From the Riga Sahs magazine, #12, 1961 Tell us about your methods of physical preparation. I couldn't exercise as much as I would like, because there was a very bad winter in Moscow, and I almost didn't get to ski. But physically I felt m...
Soviet Stats, Revisited
I have re-calculated the USSR championship stats (included all the championship play-off matches and tournaments and the 1931 semifinals, which were parts of the same competitions). This is a list of top 50 players who played at least 30 games and...
David Bronstein, Georgy Smolian. "Chess of the Third Millennium" (1978)
From the little-known book "The Beautiful and Fierce World. Subjective Essays on Modern Chess". Among other things, Bronstein and his co-author even predicted chess streams! CHESS OF THE THIRD MILLENNIUM So, we have tried to look at chess from...
Clash of the Generations
In the early 1980s, there was a curious tournament held in USSR - a "clash of generations" of sorts. It featured four national teams: the main team, the reserve team, the "veteran" team (players over 40 not involved with the main or reserve team) ...
