Because the answer is simple: get a chess coach and follow their advice. Not working? Get a different one and follow their advice. Repeat until you get good results. And before I forget, stop asking online how to improve your chess. I know some o...
Today, we are releasing ChessEver Desktop beta. How we got here Earlier in 2025, I was walking with a fellow grandmaster in Baku. He pulled out his phone and opened FollowChess. I was shocked. The app was basically dead by then. I remembered its...
Analyzing your own games with/without an engine is one of the best ways to improve. I would prioritize recent games. Old games may tell you what you misunderstood, but not always what is holding you back now. If you can find a partner and do thi...
The chess world was surprised to see a Grandmaster blundering mate in one in an advantageous position. This is a very rare occasion. GMs, as all humans, can and do make incredibly big blunders, but it is not often you see a mate-in-one blunder in ...
It sounds ridiculous at first since all chess games are free. Actually, it's not unusual at all. People all the time pay for a better experience. Listening to music is free too. Yet people pay for Spotify. Since I claim that it is possible, why ...
Imagine the strongest player in the world, Magnus Carlsen, challenges you to a game. Your goal is simple: survive longer than Bill Gates, who famously got mated in 8 moves (12 seconds total). Let me help you.I’ll explain everything from...
I’ve been working on ChessEver, a mobile app built specifically for following live chess tournaments on your phone. The app is now available on iOS and Android. What ChessEver does: Countrymen: Automatically follow players and games ...
I was asked to analyze a game I played 10 years ago for a book on the President’s Cup (the Final Four). That year our Webster team completely dominated the field. We scored 10 out of 12, the best result any team had ever achieved. I scored 3...
I created this game yesterday, coincidentally just before the chess world started debating ratings. I got this idea after watching Dubov’s interview on LevitovChess a while back. The idea is simple: Guess which players were top 10 in a cer...
Today we’re announcing ChessEver 🚀 A pro-grade app to follow chess like never before. Here’s a sneak peek of the app's unique features: Sign up now!
Your goal in chess is not to mate the enemy king but to avoid being mated first. Take the most famous example: according to the Lichess database, over 341,000 games allowed the simple Qf7# mate. The real number across history is probably 100 tim...
Last week, Ediz Gurel stunned the chess world with a brilliant queen sacrifice against Denis Lazavik. The queen sacrifice almost always creates a striking picture on the board. Why is that?The queen is the most valuable piece in chess. Beginn...
Fischer famously said, “I don’t believe in psychology, I believe in good moves!” Did he really believe that? I don’t think so. Intentionally or not, he kept opponents under constant psychological pressure by being unpredict...
Want a better way to follow chess? I did too. So I created ChessEver: simple, elegant, and to the point. View games and prepare for your own. Don’t miss our first move, sign up now! Update 1 : What sets the ChessEver app apart from exist...
What's the greediest chess move you’ve ever played? For me, it was this position from a 2018 game. My knight was on d5, his pawn on f4. I just needed 5 minutes to calculate the crushing Ne7 … But I grabbed on f4 because...
This well-known quote from the second World Chess Champion, Emanuel Lasker, has stood the test of time. But is it still practical? Time control in Lasker’s era was extremely long compared to today’s formats. Back then, if a player en...
I am proud to announce my fantasy chess project! We want to connect chess fans and players through fantasy chess. Fans draft their favorite players, compete with others, win prizes, and become invested in every move their team makes. Through these...
“Why is the position getting worse with every move even though the opponent isn’t doing anything extraordinary?” Obviously, every position is unique; however, the most likely answer to this question, in general, is that your po...
In the good ol’ days of the Romantic Era of chess, winning with a beautiful ending was a common end goal. Players would try to create aesthetically-pleasing finales; sometimes, even their opponents in a lost position would assist in crafti...
Why is the role of the center so important in chess? The main reason is that having control of the center allows the side controlling it to conduct its plan with ease. For example, a player's attack on the opposing side’s king is more like...
“Centralization of the king in the endgame is hardly ever incorrect. It can only be inopportune.” - from Endgame Strategy by Shereshevsky Mating the king is the primary purpose of chess; therefore, each side usually tries to ...
A ruined pawn structure around the king is a recipe for getting mated in the middle game. However, closer to the endgame, the chance of the weaker side being able to defend the king increases, which is why they usually offer trades to make...
During Chess.com’s coverage of the FIDE World Championship, Caruana said that he likes to go against the engine’s will in his opening preparation. Today, it is almost impossible to find any significant advantage in serious openings. ...
How do blunders happen in strong players’ games? Usually, strong players blunder when they encounter a surprise in some part of the game (for example, opening moves that they have not analyzed, moves that change the evaluation, etc.) that ...
When there is no light piece in front of the king, such as a knight on the 3rd or 6th rank, I call it a “lone king concern”. As you would guess, in these situations, the king becomes vulnerable, especially when enemy pieces are nearb...
