I write this in the deserted Holiday Village Hotel where yesterday the European Club Cup finished. I am the last man standing as all the participants have left and the whole hotel resort looks like a ghost town. I was the captain of the women te...
Many chess players are intimidated by long opening variations. They resign themselves to playing the Colle System their whole life, or constantly end up in middlegames where they "don't know what to do" (because they've never learned their opening...
Before we begin! I started putting this all together some time ago. Since then I have been lucky enough to make contact with Malcom Barker himself - a wonderful man. He has been kind enough to go to a great deal of time and trouble to provide me...
Many thanks to the http://Chess.com team and FM Mike Klein for this interesting and exciting event!!! It was fascinatingly and fun!!! ☺☺☺ https://www.twitch.tv/videos/508706815
I first saw Paul Morphy's Opera Game as a young aspiring chess player avidly devouring chess books from the library and learning that this game was deeper than I imagined - MUCH deeper. I'm not entirely sure which book first presented the game (ma...
This is probably one of the shortest articles that you will read about chess but also, in my opinion, one of the most important. If you start following only those two principles described below - you will be better in endgames than 80% of chess pl...
As I already said in my last post, I am currently in Ulcinj, Montenegro, for the European Club Cup. I am coaching the Italian women team of Caissa Pentole Agnelli, just like last year. So far the tournament is going turbulently for us, we have w...
Thank you to everyone who participated in the contest! We had many excellent submissions . Many people found 5 or 6 of the references, including some of the sneakier ones! I'm glad to see so many Tal fans out there But, we do have a cl...
Hey there, Stacia here and I wanted to share another recent training game I played on our favorite chess site. I'm currently on a mission! I have set an ambitious to goal to reach 1700 by the end of the year. I am curren...
I have already posted Mikhail Tal's last game with annotations from Alexei Shirov, but recently, I came across a blog post by Tal's opponent, Vladimir Akopian. He sheds some more light on the situation and analyzes the game himself. An Epis...
Many thanks to the Chess.com team and FM Mike Klein for this interesting event!It was very exciting and fun for me! Stream link:https://www.twitch.tv/videos/507803264
This story was told by Yakov Damsky in his 2000 book, The Century of Chess. Damsky was a chess master, who trained under Rashid Nezhmetdinov in the 1950s, and later became a respected chess writer, journalist and arbiter. In the Soviet ches...
Prince Andrey Dadian of Mingrelia (good name) is one of my favorite historical figures. An actual prince from the actual province of Mingrelia (a part of modern Georgia and not depicted in either "Duck Soup" or the "Princess Diaries"), Dadian was ...
Dear Chess Friends! Thank you for participation in my Simultaneous Exhibition and now I’m glad to invite you to my 11th webinar “How to Play against French Defense: Winawer Variation”. Of course, you know that Winawer Variati...
Often in the random pool, I'm playing as a 2400 with three 1800 players, and I have noticed a few recurring patterns; opportunities that are often missed. There is no real structure to the things that 1800s tend to miss, so I just give these as th...
I don't know if my title could be counted as accurate. But consider that even the head photo chess position, that is a white to play and win, is based on a stalemate idea and threat. Anyway... I will come back to this in a following paragraph. L...
In his first Soviet Chess Championship, Mikhail Tal scored 10.5/17 and tied for fifth place - an excellent showing for a 19-year-old; however, the next year he would radically improve his score and win his first of a record six Soviet Championship...
“I did not want to write simply another repertoire book. There are entirely too many of those. Aside from the material on openings I’ve written in various media that people have valued, I felt there had to be something in addition that...
Last week I played two blitz games on the same day that demonstrated the limits of the queen against a rook and a piece. The first game I won in good style and didn't realize until post-game analysis that I should have forced a draw after winning ...
Hi chess fans. Lately I have been writing about some particular games, or endgames, or some specific situation on the board (taking advantage of my YouTube channel where I explain those positions or games). But I love to write posts about general ...
Welcome to the third part of our planned 4-part series on the infamous Blackmar-Diemer Gambit. Our aim is to find a Black response that gives us the most "bang for our buck". In the second part we covered two "accepted" options, 5...e6 (the E...
I have a Chess Song Contest... and its seems it's a damn hard contest, cause there is no winner yet ! Are you a Mikhail Tal fan, or expert ? Or are you a Chess detective, who knows the exact game sequences, quotes and personal facts about ...
At the age of 17, Malcolm Barker had been the British 'Boys' - i.e. under 18 - champion, three times running, and the runner up in what is now recognized as the first World Junior - Under 20 - Championship. Then, apart from one event a cou...
"Some consider that when I play chess I'm excessively cautious. But it seems to me that the question may be a different one. I try to avoid chance. Those who rely on chance should play cards or roulette. Chess is something quite different. -T...
Dear readers, I have a few books by Efim Geller, and they are all excellent. Starting with his books on the King's Indian Defense, and followed by his classic, "The Application of Chess Theory", his games emanate great power! In the following ga...