Andras Adorjan (March 31, 1950- May 11, 2023) was, in my opinion, a genius in the game of chess. He was one of Kasparov's trainers for his World Championship matches against Karpov in the mid-80's. His original contributions to chess theory...
Hi! Creative geniuses like Geller and Bronstein intersect today in this theme....sacrifice your Queen on c4! Bronstein's game has an interesting story. In the 1960 Mar del Plata Tournament in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Bronstein was due to play ...
Two games, 127 years apart......a Master from France and a Grandmaster from the Soviet Union....the difference in the amount of chess theory between these two Masters is staggering; yet the same concept can be applied to different positions in dif...
The Road Not Taken BY ROBERT FROST Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Th...
"Experience is the greatest Teacher." And I would have to add that good Teachers are those who are able to transmit the wisdom of their experience! In this regard, certain chess authors stand out as great Teachers: Chigorin, Steinitz, Tarrasch, ...
About a month ago my dear brother and friend (Suren) Torfi Leosson invited me to play, once again, for the Reykjavik Club in the Spring session of their Icelandic Chess Club Team Championship. To say that I am rusty is a gross understatement; I ...
Chess is so many things......different things to different people....to the chess professional, chess is work. To club tournament players, chess may be mostly a sport. To me, chess is Art. And thus it was with some of the greatest players of the...
Today's elite players are indeed great. They also play openings that our ancestors played more than 100 years ago! One of my favorite chess streams is Chessbase India, with Sagar Shah. He is really entertaining, and at the same time very profess...
Chess is not infinite; yet it is wide enough to baffle the human mind. While computers continue to amaze us with their capacity for calculation, elite GMs are still finding ways to stay creative. Chess is not exhausted, far from it. It is a game, ...
A few weeks ago I wanted to publish a multi-game post about Chigorin's endgame prowess. This came about because I had read a quote stating that Chigorin was a very skilled rook endgame player. The truth is, Chigorin was a world-class Master at eve...
"His games reveal the beauty of chess and make you love in chess not so much the points and high placings, but the wonderful harmony and elegance of this particular world." "In Nezhmetdinov, more than in anybody else, you can see the difference ...
There is great joy in sharing things that are beautiful or unique; sometimes both! The book "The Hypermodern Game of Chess", by GM Savielly Tartakower, is a jewel. He covers many different opening systems, and gives lucid explanations (and many ...
Great players are like virtuoso pianists...Rubinstein's play reminds me of Vladimir Horowitz..... The following game was played in Hastings, 1922 between George Thomas and Akiva Rubinstein, the great Polish player. Rubinstein's games ha...
Just wanted to take a moment to wish everybody a Happy New Year!
Fame and fortune are very fickle, unpredictable realities. Recently I was looking at Peter Romanovsky's book: .....and upon looking at one or two of his games, was reminded of what a great player he was! Yet I had never heard of him, unt...
Some variations and positions are evaluated in one way initially, and then some Grandmasters do some more research (this is before engines, thank God) and discover hidden resources and themes in it, and I love it! This particular variation that ...
Dear readers, sometimes a pattern is so unique and picturesque, it becomes embedded in my mind. I first came upon this idea when it was presented in the game Ribli-Adorjan, 1983, in Adorjan's book, "Black is Back!" (NEW IN CHESS, 2016) ...
Like many, if not most chess players, I have admired Tal and his wonderful games and combinations. His ability to "open up" a closed position seemed like magic to me! No wonder people nicknamed him "The Magician from Riga". Here is an example of h...
Bronstein, Tal and Nezhmetdinov are my favorite three players, bar none. All three of them exhibit qualities that I treasure: incredible imagination, a fearless creative spirit, and a will to explore the unkown. It is not surprising that Tal and...
Dear chess lovers, I want to present you with a few games that pivot around a particular theme in the Ruy Lopez. I first encountered this theme while looking at the game Bronstein-Keres, Budapest Candidates 1950. This was the last round, and Bro...
This is an intuitive post about patterns that intersect and overlap...ideas that criss-cross in terms of themes arising from an opening, tempo in the attack and decisive action involving a Queen sacrifice and the e2-square. Wow! A lot to cover, bu...
Patterns, patterns.....a great part of a GM's strength is patterns! This was demonstrated in the following documentary, "My Brilliant Brain" : Recently my good friend Suren (Torfi Leosson), from Iceland, gave me a wonderful gift: Joh...
Rashid, Rashid, what can I say? Your moves make me fall in love with chess. Your passion deepens my respect for you as an Artist, even though this passion of yours for attack and combinations often cost you points on the scoreboard. Rashid, you ...
Hi, dear chess lovers! I have not posted in a while, partly because of the natural rhythm of life, but also because of the humanistic crisis enveloping the world now. This crisis is not new, it has been going on for the last 77 years.....but tha...
Chigorin was a great pioneer of modern chess. His creativity was unbounded, and even when his health started to fail, he maintained his creative attitude to the game. In 2018 I published a small post, titled "Marshall's Attack is Actually Chig...
