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) ...
The 16 years-old Alireza Firouzja is arguably the most discussed player in the world chess today. His peer Carissa Yip recently defeated women's world champion Ju Wenjun in a classical game. There are more and more teenage grandmasters cropping up...
Written by Zhanna Tal. Translated with her permission. Just One Day On that warm May morning, Zhanna was woken up, as usual, by a cheeky sun ray tickling her nose. She woke up serene, almost happy... she could not know that this day would chan...
Interview from the Sahs magazine, September 1969. Unsigned. How do you conduct an interview? In 99 cases out of 100, it's very simple: a grandmaster comes into the office of a chess magazine, you ask him a series of prepared questions. The ...
Inspired by Peter Doggers' news post, I found the old Match Of The Century book, edited by Mikhail Yudovich. Along with the forty games, there were short interviews by all 24 players, including non-playing reserves Bronstein and Darga. All pl...
The Digital archive of Russian Chess Federation has, among other things, a handwritten notebook featuring Alexander Alekhine's earliest correspondence games. Even at 10 years old, the young Alexander seemed to be ambitious: on the title page, he w...
Kirill Alekseenko gave this interview to Oleg Barantsev back in mid-January, and it was posted in the Check and Mate blog at sports.ru in early February. You can find a lot of photos in the original Russian article. For some reason, I'm hav...
With Carissa Yip despatching Ju Wenjun, I decided to check whether there was a club similar to the Chigorin Club (for those who defeated reigning men's world champions). There wasn't one, so there's my humble effort to establish it. The club is na...
Interview for the ChessNews.ru radio http://chess-news.ru/node/26741 Evgeny Surov: It's 22:03 Moscow time, Chess-News is live, and Alexander Nikitin is on the line. Good evening, Alexander Sergeevich! Alexander Nikitin: Yes, good evening. To...
A 1950 article by a prominent Soviet problemist Evgeny Umnov (1913 - 1989). Chess Game and Composition The question of relationship between chess composition and practical games is interesting and important. The correct solution will allow the...
Source in Russian: http://screenstage.ru/?p=1885 Dus Fyodor Ivanovich Dus-Chotimirsky with his wife and son lived in our kitchen. Not exactly in kitchen though - beside the kitchen, in the former servant room. The area of that room was 8 ...
And another statistical post for today. The year 2019 has ended, and so, it's time to calculate the Dominance Index (or Bestuzhev Index, as Vladimir Bestuzhev used a similar measure to calculate the long-term performance of Soviet chess players of...
Here's a New Year statistical treat: how the leading players' FIDE ratings changed over the years. The graph features January ratings of #1 player, #2 player, the average of top 10 (excluding the leader) and the average of top 100 (again, excludin...
This is not a typical post for my blog: usually I translate various obscure Soviet chess books and articles. But here, I would like to present you a series of games united by a common theme: a queen sacrifice on a certain square. I first came ac...
This story was told by Yakov Damsky in his 2000 book, The Century of Chess. Damsky was a chess master, who trained under Rashid Nezhmetdinov in the 1950s, and later became a respected chess writer, journalist and arbiter. In the Soviet ches...
Interview for the Russian podcast Kak Vy Eto Delaete ("How Do You Do That?") The source in original Russian: https://ria.ru/20191023/1559758752.html Natalya Loseva: Playing rapid chess is probably a nervous work? Sergey Karjakin: Well, ...
A small Soviet sci-fi novella by Aleksandr Abramov, published in 1926. The year is 1927. An elderly mathematician from Moscow claims to have built a true chess automaton that can defeat any human player. What happens if his claims are indeed tru...
Been looking through the electronic archive of the 64 newspaper (it's available at the Russian Chess Federation website for free). Among other things, I found a small report about the Margate 1935 tournament, including the famous Reshevsky (B...
Lyudmila Belavenets is the daughter of master Sergei Belavenets, who perished in the World War II. She's 79 years old and still active as a children's coach for the Moscow Chess Federation. This interview was taken in 2012, for the book Chess Fa...
Aleksandra Goryachkina's interview to the RIA Novosti reporter Oleg Bogatov, given on 20th June. https://rsport.ria.ru/20190620/1555738799.html Aleksandra, your victory was quite unexpected for many. Which goals did you set for yourself before...
Aleksandra Goryachkina has just won the Women's Candidates' Tournament, earning a World Championship opportunity against Ju Wenjun. I've decided to let the chess.com readers know a bit more about this young prospect. This interview was conducted...
Continues from Part 2. FISCHER'S STYLE AND MODERN STYLE Favoured Techniques Fischer's play very rarely features "irrational" strategic plans in the middlegame, with quick violation of symmetry and balance. But he's always ready to accept suc...
Continued from Part 1 - Openings NUANCES OF THE CREATIVE PORTRAIT Not only openings We can surely say that Fischer, especially in the last few years, gives much more thought to the decisive parts of chess games, both in playing and training....
Continued from Suetin's afterword for My 60 Memorable Games. OPENINGS Main repertoire Fischer scores a roughly equal amount of points both by Black and White. The reason is that his opening repertoire for Black is very carfeully prepare...
