Recently I was doing commentary on the Icelandic Championship. One important game featured an incredible amount of x-ray tactics.....and in fact missed x-ray tactics! I hope after this post you will be better equipped to anticipate and find x-ra...
Most of you should be aware of the excellent post-game engine analysis that is available on the Chess.com platform. You will get a nice CAPS score, giving you a decent idea of the overall play you gave in the game. You will also be shown the blund...
*** Update April 2nd 2021 ****** This was an April Fools prank. The content should be enjoyable nontheless ;-) ***GM Hikaru Nakamura often organises viewer Arena's on his streams. I joined one of his Arena's and the goal was of course to play the ...
I am sure nobody missed this "masterpiece" of a game at the end of the Magnus Carlsen preliminaries Both players had qualified at this point so there was really nothing to play for. An alternative way would have been to actually play a real...
It was a truly incredible scene at the Icelandic Cup yesterday when Grandmaster Hannes Stefansson, a 13x Icelandic Champion and former World U-16 champion calmly played the move 16...g4?? The horrible blunder 16..g4?? Quite shockingly his opp...
For the second match in a row, Magnus Carlsen was tested to the maximum, this time by the French #1 Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. Magnus had a relatively smooth day 1, just like in his match against Dubov. First he struck a blow to the Grunfeld. ...
The Quarterfinals of the Opera Euro Rapid produced the same matchup as we saw in the Quarterfinals of the Airthings Masters. World Champion Magnus Carlsen vs the People's Champ, Daniil Dubov! Last time around Dubov produced the upset, what happene...
The people's champion Daniil Dubov continued to impress with his creativity and fighting spirit on the final day of preliminiares at the Opera Euro Rapid. His enterprising play earned him a spot in the Quarterfinals at the end of the day as he bea...
Today at the preliminiares of the Opera Euro Rapid, Daniil Dubov went for a most interesting opening experiment against Anish Giri. He played the so called Urusov Gambit. The Urusov happens when white offers to gambit the second pawn in the Bish...
One of my Youtube subscribers pointed out an absolutely savage rapid that was played here on chess.com. I don't know the players but they are both reasonably high rated and/or coaching. The opening played in this one was the Smith-Morra gambit....
If you like to play the London system, you are more than likely to meet this system in your online games.... 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bf4 c5 3.e3 Qb6 4.Nc3 a6 Before tackling the line (or lines) that I propose to use for white while peop...
Sniper Mate is a term I came up with for this checkmate pattern. Many people like to refer to the long range capability of the bishop as being akin to that of a sniper. The key piece in this pattern is indeed the bishop and it very often works fro...
Blackburne’s Mate is a rare checkmate pattern that involves two bishops and a knight against a castled king. The pattern is named after Joseph Henry Blackburne, a British chess player who once demonstrated this checkmate in one of ...
The very imaginiative and creative Daniil Dubov truly stunned Sergey Karjakin and the chess world with his opening innovation in the final round of the Russian Superfinal. Karjakin had chances to grab his first Russian crown but Dubov simply had...
In this blog we will look at examples of the Boden's mate. The mate is named after Samuel Boden who executed this mate perfectly with the black pieces in this game from 1853 played in London. The skeleton Skeleton of the mate The Bode...
One of my favourite checkmate patterns is this one,the one called Anastasia Mate. In it, a knight and a rook team up to trap the opposing king between the side of the board on one side and a friendly piece on the other. Often, the queen is first...
Arabian mate is the oldest and one of the most important checkmate patterns there are in chess. The pattern can prove the decider in both the middlegame and endgame alike and mastery of it will guarantee you many chess wins in your career. The m...
Tuesday, November 19th marked the start of the 1st round of the World Champions Tournament at the Selfoss Chess Festival in Iceland. The tournament has a unique lineup where everybody in this 10 player round-robin is a former World Champion in the...
The fourth round of the Xtracon Open in Denmark featured a fantastic game by Danish/American IM Kassa Korley. He had the black pieces against super solid Ukranian GM Alexander Moiseenko. Moiseenko had a peak rating of 2726 in 2011 and is a very ex...
The fourth season of the LCWL (Live Chess World League) got under way last week and the first games in the 1st division were played over the weekend. LCWL is now in it's 4th season and keeps growing every season. The league has four divisions with...
The start of a video series explaining how to play this system/opening for white! Hope you like it :-)
International Master vs FIDE Master blitz game here on Chess.com in Live Chess. I have the black pieces and my opponent uses the exchange variation against the French.
A 3-minute game played here on Chess.com with a very similarly rated Fide master from Brazil. Have a look at this game with my thoughts and post-mortem. Subscribe to my YouTube channel for varied type of chess videos!
Have you tried Puzzle Rush? It's a great new innovation here on Chess.com which allows you to train and test your tactics and compare your score with some of the best players in the world. You have 5 minutes to solve as many tactics as you can...
I plan on doing video recaps on my channel after each game. Lets hope for a great match!
