Introduction Hello there, reader, If you know the first thing about chess, it has a rep for being a stiff, serious game, think old men in waistcoats, silent rooms, and enough tension to shatter glass, among nonplayers and newbies. But hone...
1. The Membership Giveaway Scam of The Other Club (November 4, 2023) 2. The Ban Attack of Paladins of Chess (November 28, 2023) 3. Update on the Ban Attack (November 30, 2023) 4. Year in Chess: 2023 (December 22, 2023) 5. Merry Christmas! ...
I want to describe the beauty and diversity of this opening. The Scottish Game is one of the oldest chess openings, known for its straightforwardness and rapid battle for the center. It allows White to immediately activate pieces and put pres...
German grandmaster Matthias Bluebaum recently visited Uzbekistan to take part in the Zakovat Gambit chess tournament. He showed brilliant play throughout the event and eventually became the champion!
Castling Castling is a special chess move where the king moves two squares toward a rook, and the rook jumps to the square the king crossed over, all in a single turn. It's the only move where you can move two pieces at once, and it serves to bo...
My blitz rating at the time of writing this sentence is 706. Thus the title was originally "700+ Blitz Player Plays the Halloween Gambit". My rating has since decided to move to the 600s range, so I changed the title accordingly. I have decided ...
Dear Chess Friends, Let me tell you something that should blow your mind. In 1987, Viswanathan Anand became India's first Grandmaster. Just one. One! In the entire nation of over 800 million people, there was exactly one person who had achieved ...
Every day, millions of us log in to Chess.com with one goal: to get better at chess.And yet, somehow, we all end up meeting the same seven mysterious characters on the rating ladder. Let’s take a moment to appreciate these icons of chaos. ...
Dear Chess Friends! I'm delighted to share insights from my recent workshop "The Fixed Pawn as the Base of a Chain", where we explored one of the most fundamental strategic concepts in chess. Understanding pawn chains and how to handle them can ...
We all dream of that glorious moment: marching a pawn to the eighth rank and slamming down an extra Queen. It’s the ultimate reward for perseverance. But what if we threw the rulebook out and replaced the Queen with something… royal? ...
I’d queued up another rapid on a quiet afternoon, sitting around 1020 Elo and trying to keep my recent form steady. My opponent, Makflari (1042), opened with a Bishop’s-style Vienna setup — the sort of hybrid that can ...
Let me start off with a question, would you sacrifice a minor piece to destroy your opponents king's safety? I would, and I have. What I'm about to teach you has won me so many games, and now I'm passing this knowledge to anyone curious en...
Every now and then, a game teaches you something that no amount of theory study can. This one reminded me that not every passed pawn is a blessing — sometimes, it’s a lure that drags you straight off a cliff. I was the Black ...
Sometimes a game doesn’t unfold as planned — it just explodes. This one was over before it even began, but it taught me a huge lesson about luck, calculation, and keeping my eyes open for the unexpected. I’d just crept ov...
Every so often a game feels like a small journey in itself. This one started in sharp, modern Sicilian territory — all speed and tension — but by the end it had become a long, grinding march toward a single queening square. I op...
It’s October. The nights are colder. The blunders are bolder. And somewhere deep in the forest of opening theory, a cursed line rises from the grave: The Halloween Gambit. You sacrifice a knight on move four. Not for material. Not f...
♟️ “The Queen’s Gambit at Midnight” The old chessboard sat under a single flickering lamp in the back corner of Café Marigny, its squares faded from years of play. Every night at midnight, someone came to challenge El...
“A game starts with e4; on the 5th move, a knight takes a rook and checkmate. What are the moves played?” That question is taken verbatim from the TV mini-series, ‘Rematch’ (2024), a dramatisation of the chess match between...
THIS BLOG IS FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY. Chess players love numbers. We obsess over them. We chase them. We fear them. But no number defines us more than our Elo. This blog is a deep dive into the psychology, behavior, and explosive ch...
As late October approaches and Halloween looms near, you sit before your chessboard, its pieces seeming to stare back with an unsettling intensity. Suddenly, the room goes dark, and the g1 knight begins to emit a faint, ghostly glow, as if despera...
Have you ever heard of the "Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings" (ECO)? Or seen codes such as A00, B01, C30,... for example? By creating these codes, people can systematically organize the list of chess openings. Today, we will explore what does it ...
♟️ 5 Chess Openings That Are Easy to Learn Knowing some good openings can give you a good start and keep you from making mistakes early. Here are 5 easy openings all beginners need to learn: 1. Italian Game (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4) Goal: Ge...
I’ve been playing the King’s Indian Defence since I was a kid. Back then I didn’t understand pawn structures or fianchettos — I just liked how dramatic it looked. The knight jumping to f6, the bishop sliding to g7, the king...
This is the fastest checkmate you can do in chess! This when white opens the kings fianchetto where black queen can checkmate white.
Love him or hate him, Donald Trump has always seen negotiation as a battlefield — or, perhaps more fittingly, as a chessboard.Every move is deliberate, every statement a calculated provocation, every silence a test. Whether in real estate, p...
