jdcannon's Blog

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4 Player Chess Improvements!

It's time we highlight the 23 improvements added to 4 Player Chess In the last two weeks alone! - No more ugly gray pieces cluttering up your captured piece list. - We now measure ping when loading player popup.  - Team chats ar...

PCL Test Cross Table HTML

Kangaroos Pandas Wang Yue Ju Wenjun Xu Xiangyu Zhai Mo 10 Alexey Sarana 1.5 Anton Smirnov 2 Temur Kuybokarov 0.5 Brandon Clarke 2 6 3 3 3 1 @j...

Test your CrazyHouse Mating Skills!

Since Chess.com introduced Crazyhouse, I've been a little obsessed with the game.  I found the new and unique kinds of combinations quite fascinating and thought it would be fun share some of the more interesting positions from my games ...

Iowa Summer Open Tournament Report - Round !

How in God's green earth am I ever going to get a title if I don't play more OTB?  And thus, I signed up for the Iowa Summer Open.  Do you guys still get nervous before a tournament? The event was to be 5 rounds of G120 D5 on a Satu...

Improving Practical Rook Endings

I am well aware of the theoretical Rook endgames: Lucena, Philidor, Rook on long side,  3 vs 4, frontal attacks etc etc… Yet when I find myself in more complicated Rook Endgames especially in time pressure, I find that my instincts oft...

How to Beat the English Attack with the Sicilian Kan

If White insists on playing the English Attack—Be3, Qd2 and 0-0-0—against the Sicilian Kan, Black doesn't just get an equal but complicated game or just some hopes of going into a promising sideline. No, he gets an out right advantage thanks to th...

Dr Phil Plays Chess - A New Chess.com/tv Show!

Chess.com welcomes you to join CHESS THERAPY a new TV show airing live on Chess.com/tv August 24th at 2:30 pm PT and is free to all members. Hosting will be none other than yours truly: jdcannon. Not only will I be joined by a string of titled pla...

Winning Pawn Structures: Sacing on h6 with an IQP: Part 3

Welcome to Part 3 of Sacing on h6 with an IQP. If you recall from Part 2 we focused on a key piece formation for White the lends itself well to a Bishop sacrifice on h6. To enumerate: Queen on h3 Bishop along the b1/h7 diagonal Knight on e...

Learn Attacking Chess #1 Karolyi vs Hector - Budapest Gambit

Jacob Aagaard is of course a famed chess author and I decided it high time that I see what all the fuss was about. I picked up Attacking Manual vol 1 as I've always felt that attacking was a weakness in my chess understanding. By working though hi...

Winning Pawn Structures: Sacing on h6 with an IQP: Part 2

Let's learn some more about the Isolated Queen's Pawn. The game today brought us an IQP via the Caro-Kann Panov-Botvinnik and features a typical formation that you should burn into your memory as its the ideal piece formation for a sacrifice on h6...

Winning Pawn Structures: Sacing on h6 with an IQP: Part 1

Let's learn some more about the Isolated Queen's Pawn. Today, Kamsky is going to introduce us to yet another plan for White that is both dynamic and exciting—the Bishop Sacrifice on h6! In a normal looking Nizmo Indian, Kamsky blasts open the Blac...

Melik & Me: 8/6/15 Highlights

Welcome to the Melik & Me Highlights. I hope you all joined us for the last Melik & Me before the GM Khachiyan head out for a two week vacation! If you didn't you can watch the replay HERE or enjoy my recap of all the main ideas right here...

Defending Against Sicilian Attacks: White's E5 Push: Part 2

In this second installment of Defending Against Sicilian Attacks we feature an amazing displace of positional acumen by none other that Caruana plus another great match up where White's premature e5 push totally blows up in his face as Black is ab...

Defending Against Sicilian Attacks: White's E5 Push: Part 1

The Scheveningen is a rich pawn structure fraught with myriad breaks and transformations. I enjoy pawn structures which features thematics break and so it is no surprise that I was attrached to the Sicilian Kan which tends to be less sharp than Yu...

Winning Pawn Structures: The Rook Lift with the IQP: Part 2

Welcome to Part 2 of Rook Lifts with the IQP where we explore more instances of the Rook lift proving too much for the Black defenses to handle. If you are just joining us, this recent blog series is following the games of Baburin's Winning Pawn S...

Winning Pawn Structures: The Rook Lift with the IQP: Part 1

As promised, I am continuing my coverage of the IQP from Baburin's Winning Pawn Structures; this time dealing with Rook lifts as a key Kingside attacking theme. If you don't own this book you really should! These games and Baburin's prose merit re...

Winning Pawn Structures: Attacking f7 with the IQP: Part 2

In this blog, I am going to finish out the games displaying the IQP's attacking potential against f7/f2 with a couple more games from Baburin's Winning Pawn Structures. We ended last time with Botvinnik's classic game featuring a knight sacrifice ...

Winning Pawn Structures: Attacking f7 with the IQP: Part 1

Baburin's Winning Pawn Structures is an absolutely fantastic investigation of the Isolated Queen's Pawn structures. I first encountered this book several years ago and immediately fell in love with the IQP structure owning largely to Baburin's cle...

My Simult With IM Attila: An analysis of the a6 Slav

Saturday, I participated in IM Attila Turzo's weekly Simult. Its really a great service that Attila is providing in offering these simults as he gives weaker player a chance to play a longer time control game against a strong opponent. More than t...

Melik and Me: 7/17/15: Ice Cream Social

The Three Stooges gather once again to honor Melik's absense with another great eposide of Melik & Me. But don't worry, Melik makes an entrance in spirit as the boys review a fantastic wins of Melik's against none other than the legandary GM S...

Melik and Me: 5/14/15

Melik is back, over his jet lag, and to prove it upped the ante on this week's “Melik and Me” featuring Shaun McCoy as resident amateur questioner. Melik attempted to squeeze three games worth of his sage-like advice into a mere 60 minutes this we...

Student Game Analysis #2: Misplaced Pieces

Mikusbunkarus is a rapidly improving student of mine who plans to soon make his Over The Board chess debut. Already rated 1400 online, I am sure he will have a successful first outing. To prepare, we've been learning pawn structures as that is a ...

My Instructive Failures #1: Karpov Counters b5 (Queen's Gambit Declined)

Learning the Exchange Queen's Gambit Declined was an Aha! moment for me. I first read about the opening in John Shaw's "Starting Out: The Queen's Gambit." In his introduction, Shaw bemoans White having to wonder which of all the different variatio...