November 2025 Recap: Sharp Lines, Long Drives, and Early Mornings Tournament Hall of The Columbia Club If October was about getting back in the ring, November was about seeing whether I could actually throw punches again. Over the course o...
Throughout my life, I have had the chance to meet and even play with some legends of chess. It is very likely that in the future I will tell you about other encounters I was fortunate enough to experience, but today I am going to talk about the da...
The strongest open chess tournament in the United States, the US Masters, kicked off on Wednesday at the Hilton Charlotte University Place! The US Masters is hosted by the Charlotte Chess Center, and follows the recently-completed Fall Nor...
It is one of the oldest chess prohibitions—and also one of the most frequently broken: Don't bring your queen out too early! The reason for its frequent breakage is clear. The queen is the most powerful piece—why shouldn't I use it a...
Hey Impressive Chessers!! I hate to inform you that I've been in a bit of a blitz slump as of late*. But the good news that comes with that is that I get to play chess players that play "hope chess". I thought that you all had stopped playing "h...
If I had to pick one idea about chess expertise that fascinates me the most, I think that would have to be the possibility that strong players see the board differently than mere patzers like myself. I've written about various aspects of this befo...
This past week, the Charlotte Chess Center hosted a Fall Norm Invitational tournament for players seeking IM and GM norms. Two participants emerged with their first-ever IM norms: 11-year-old FM Linxi Zhu and 13-year-old FM Andrew Jing! The pl...
Hey everyone, In October, we saw a slight decrease in the amount of accounts closed for fair play violations. September had around 125k closures, whereas in October, we had roughly 105k. As for titled closures, we saw 18 titled accounts banned...
Every week, thousands of titled players play on Chess.com and enjoy varying degrees of success. Some rattle off amazing win streaks or show brilliant form in a prize event, while others achieve rating thresholds that previously seemed beyond reach...
The finals of the UK Open Blitz Championships 2025 took place on Saturday 22nd November at the Woodland Grange Hotel near Leamington Spa in Warwickshire. There were separate Open and Women's finals with 16 of the top UK chess players in each. The ...
I beg to be forgiven; I am from another era. Started playing chess in 1972, when the Spassky-Fisher fever was on. wanted to be World Champion; would study sometimes 6 hours a day!Was champion of my country at 19; then, in a Zonal Tournament for th...
Viktor Neustroev’s journey in chess began long before he became a coach. It started in his hometown of Novosibirsk, Russia. He was one of the best junior players in his region. But it wasn’t until 2013, when his daughter Alisa was o...
Sometimes you may reach an apparently lost position which contains a saving resource based on stalemate. In this week's blog (the first in a series on common tactical patterns) English IM Paul Littlewood provides us with some examples of stalem...
I’ve been skipping over the annual Hastings tournaments, which were — especially in this period — an important part of the chess calendar. They were always organized by the British Chess Federation and held in the week between Ch...
Last week I shared a complete SHARP & SIMPLE OPENING REPERTOIRE. The previous post you can read here. It’s a practical setup you can use right away. No heavy theory. Just clear ideas that create problems for your opponents and give you a...
The MVP Chess November Scholastic Tournament brought together 29 players from Washington DC, Maryland, and Virginia. The event used a three round G/25 d5 format and included five sections to support a wide range of US Chess ratings and first-time ...
Susan Polgar Foundation Announces Rebel Queen Award at National Chess Championship Bellevue, WA – November 22, 2025 – The Susan Polgar Foundation is proud to announce the inaugural Rebel Queen Award, to be presented at the u...
Dear Chess Friends! I'm excited to share highlights from my recent workshop "Seizing Strong Squares", where we explored how to identify, occupy, and exploit strong squares to dominate the chessboard. Whether you're playing for a positional squee...
Identify Weaknesses 1.1. The Scanner Method 1.1.1. In chess, we often face the question: how to avoid blundering pieces and pawns? While many solutions exist, each has its disadvantages. The method I’ve created is both logical and cons...
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Hi everyone! I’m happy to share some good news! My friends at ChessMood are running their 4th annual Thanksgiving giveaway 🎉 Anyone who follows the link below will receive 1 month of ChessMood for free from November 20 to December ...
Our eighth and final quarterfinalist has now been decided. For those of you who missed the previous vote (see here), Chigorin technically scored the second "upset" (using seeding as a measure) of the round of 16, moving on and letting us explore t...
Before today’s neural-network monsters like Stockfish 17 or Lc0, early engines often struggled with long-term pawn structures and closed positions. And that made for interesting battles between man and machine. In this video, I breakdown H...
The GrossMeister Morshyn Cup was a Swiss system rapid tournament which took place on the 15th of November in the well known resort town in the Lviv oblast. GrossMeister is the name of a sponsor firm, located nearby in the city of Stryi, which prod...
Dear Chess Friends! I'm excited to share highlights from my recent workshop "Blocking Combinations", where we explored how to exploit cramped positions and create winning attacks when your opponent's pieces interfere with each other. Understandi...
