What's up, guys and gals? It's been a while since I've written to you. Why have I not been writing? As is the case for many people, "life" got in the way. School, friends, family, prom, chess coaching, etc have been eating up my ener...
In this second part of my article about Candidate Moves, we will have a look at some situations where you have many moves to choose from. Let's start with a very simple case. Black to play. He is a piece down, but we can sense a back rank moti...
.....and the seal roared with laughter! A few weeks ago I posted a blog about how both Rubinstein and Botvinnik learned from Chigorin a system with Black against the Symmetrical English Opening, achieving a favorable formation with pressure o...
The date was August 5th, 2018. I was on Twitch watching a streamer by the name of "Bertrout". He was accepting challenges on Chess.com so I obliged. It was just a normal game, me playing the London System and him loathing it.&n...
So, next Thursday comes and we have a continuation of the blog about the "Secret" Gambit of Von Hennig.In the first part we broke off on the second line of our opening. After some discussion in the blog, I remind you that I am not a sel...
Before getting to my planned post on the BDG, a few quick updates: 1. Taming the Tennison on Chessable A few weeks ago I wrote a post on Taming the Tennison Gambit. Now my free course on it is out on Chessable. Get it HERE ...
I've come across a trap in the Alekhine defense, Scandinavian variation. Since I haven't seen it written up elsewhere, I thought that I'd share it here. If you play the Alekhine defense as Black, you might want to be aware of this trap in ...
Beautiful photo, isn't it?! It's Marienbad 1925, a tournament with Gunsberg as its director that started just 10 days after the end of Baden-Baden 1925. 10 players participated in both. Alekhine and Bogoljubov were also invited but didn't make it....
In the 5th round of the Budapest Spring Festival, I played with the young Hungarian Talent Tamas Tancsa. I played the Breyer variation, the first time in my life. The center and the queenside became totally closed and his attack looked strong on...
Hello chess mates. Magnus Carlsen played Gashimov Memorial last week, he had a great performance (close to 3000), and beat some really strong players. In this post we are going to study one of the greatest victories of this contest: Carlsen vs Gir...
In the 4th round of the Budapest Spring Festival I played with English FIDE-Master Adam C Taylor. This is his chess.com profile: https://www.chess.com/member/tayip99 You can check the current standings at http://chess-results.com/tnr411068.as...
Happy weekend everyone. There is a strange thing that happens when you do what I do. I study chess players - their games, style, approach to chess, and how they fit in to the chess of their time. As I have said before, buying a 'Best Games O...
"During the month of December, 1923, interest in chess was at a high level on this side of the Atlantic, largely due to the presence of Alexander Alekhine and his remarkable performances. At a social gathering on New Year's Eve the possibility of ...
In Round 9 I was White against GM Santos Ruiz, rated 2560 and one of Spain's brightest prospects. I noticed he had some problems in the Ruy Lopez and I expected him to switch to the Najdorf, his other main opening. I again managed to use a line I'...
In the 3rd round of the Budapest Spring Festival I played with a Hungarian Junior Talent, Tamas Gunes Ongut. In our last game I played the accelerated dragon and we played a draw in a long game. This time I decided to start with e5. He ...
In this 15 min/10 second game on chess.com I reply to the Sicilian with the aggressive 2. d4!? entering into the Smith-Morra Gambit. After a full month of studying Mayhem in the Morra by Marc Esserman I was quite happy to see if I could get ...
Chess.com India's Bihu Celebration Blitz Tournament for North East India!Chess.com India celebrates Bihu with a FREE tournament with Cash Prizes and Memberships ONLY for North East India players. Tournament Schedule and FormatThe tournament fo...
In the 2nd round of the Budapest Spring Festival I played with the strong Russian Grandmaster Artyom Timofeev, " Artyom Timofeev (Russian: Артём Тимофеев; born January 6, 1985 in Kazan)[1] is a Russian chess gr...
You may be wondering: what was the inspiration behind last week's post? Well, I noticed a common pattern among my student's questions - which, by the way, were among the best I've been asked in my 15+ years teaching chess! Namely, sever...
Hello! Today will blog about one of my favourite gambits. This opening is known as Blackmar's or Blackmar-Diemer (with moves 2...de 3.Nc3 Nf6) Gambit. This gambit have a many fans, and there are players wh...
Yesterday I started to play in a tournament, the Budapest Spring Festival. It is a very strong tourney with over 20 International Grandmasters. You can check the tourney at http://chess-results.com/tnr411068.aspx?lan=1&art=0&fed=ARM&tu...
The Washington Class Championship is traditionally a big tournament, the second-biggest of the year, and is held in Lynnwood, a suburb about 20 miles north of Seattle. Normally I've commuted, but this year my husband suggested I get a hotel ...
In case you haven't heard by now, the sensational 8-year-old talent Tanitoluwa "Tani" Adewumi is pretty good at chess. Although he's only been playing for about one year, and despite being homeless and a refugee from Nigeria, he recently won ...
Portisch and Spassky are two very special individuals in the world of chess. Spassky, like Bronstein, belongs to the "Romantic" type of player. If I remember correctly, one of his first trainers, Tolush, used to tell Spassky not to show him any ga...
Hello everyone. As you already know, tactics is a very important aspect of the game if you want to raise your level. In this post, I’m going to explain 7 selected puzzles, where you have to win using a Tactical Theme we call Elimination of t...