I decided to write a post about cross-pins because quite a few of my students said that they never heard about the idea before our lessons. Of course, there is nothing new under the sun: while I was collecting material for this post, I discovered ...
First of all a small puzzle to say good morning! If you would like to skip ahead and go straight to the free videos: Click here Today we are going to learn some plans in the Scheveningen. This is for the White side and part 1 of...
Never heard of Ciocaltea before, I've tracked him while searching for Sylvain Burstein, a French promising player of the 1950s with a really short chess career. They faced each other during a chess match between France and Romania played in 1955. ...
Yep, it's a strange sounding title! All will be revealed. I know that of late a couple of my young chess.com friends have been studying Rubinstein - and that is no bad thing. He is absolutely one of the best players to study from the pre - 1939 ...
Hey people of the 64 squares kingdom. Have you ever seen a spring between two pawns? In the first endgame of this post we will see one. Actually there will be a Relay Race (just like in Athletics ). In the second and last position we will see a go...
If you want to go directly to the video: https://youtu.be/O6iyev0hfdc Today we are going to learn some plans in the Dragon! Refute the lower level Dragon players by understanding the pawn structure and its plans better than your opponent!...
More fun from Round 9 at the FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss. The game that took most of my time was, unfortunately, more bad luck for my buddy Eric Hansen. Opening preparation has been his Achilles this event, and his own PRO Chess League team...
Welcome back, readers! It's Blake from ChessPathways.com, and I don't have any chess boards to show you today - just a simple philosophy for handling your opponent's "time trouble" that I wish I had learned long, long ago! ______________________...
Hi guys, my new post is about tactics. In the exercises below, you will find 17 examples from the Fide World Cup. The tests are quite hard but very instructive, some of them were found by the players, but many were missed by the...
Hello & Namaste! If you missed the first two parts of this ongoing chess fiction series, you can read it here: https://www.chess.com/blog/Geborgenheit/chess-for-pandas-chapter-1-chess-fictionhttps://www.chess.com/blog/Geborgenheit/chess-f...
In Round 8 at the FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss we had just about everything! To start, the main topic of the round was that we had two players "copying" each other, one removed from the playing hall, and all four players involved playing terrible ch...
3 Really fun games from Round 7 at the FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss! A queen gets trapped by Houska, we see an awesome "dark-square-dominated" assault by Harika, and then a super complicated game that I'm STILL not even sure I fully understand be...
The weekend before last I participated in the Bangor Congress 2019, a 6 round rapid tournament which has been revived after a 14 year break, thanks to the energetic organiser, Brendan Jameson and his team. Tournament Organiser/Arbiter Bre...
In that post, I would like to shed some light on the eternal competition: Bishop vs Knight. Both are called minor pieces are the value is the same: 3 points. But they are moving a different way. Bishop can move a lot of squares but only in one col...
I'm the type of person that actually enjoys studying openings way more than I should actually, and as a result I do get a lot of nice positions and sometimes even winning advantages out of the opening! What more could a chess player dream of...
The rest day is in full swing after Round 6 at the FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss, but those who follow my blog get to read the analysis and watch the videos even before they premiere on the live broadcast! This round, honestly, had my three favorit...
Last year my Adventures series of blogs examined endgame tablebases, software that provides perfect play information for any positions with up to seven pieces. I reviewed the remarkable capabilities of these programs – they play as God effec...
Viswanathan Anand has plenty of brilliancies to his credit, but one game that looked likely to be his greatest brilliancy slipped away at the critical moment. Playing Ivan Sokolov, Anand sacrificed a queen with the thrilling 21.Qxg4!! The sacrif...
Another day, another blog, Snoop always said (what, what!?)... Round 5 at the FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss is in the books! Anyway, I analyzed a few more games for you all yesterday, and I think we might have something to learn! If not about chess...
Many interesting endgames were played in the Fide World Cup. I am presenting you 11 challenging position where your task is to find a cunning way to win or draw. Good luck and enjoy it! Exercises Exercise 1 - Xiong - Giri What...
After a quick break for Round 3 on Sunday (forgive me ) I'm back at it again with the White Vans (I mean chess videos!) for Round 4 at the FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss. Here I analyzed 4 positions, crammed into 3 videos. Let me know if you're enjo...
Hi chess enthusiasts. Today we are going to study a miniature by the only Cuban who has won an Absolute Chess World Championship. The combination we see here is very famous; Capablanca sacrificed a rook and a queen. He used deflection to get rid o...
Most simul games are hack and slash affairs which pose little risk to the master who quickly punishes tactical errors from his amateur opponent. Tal's simul game from 1988 against Jack Miller initially goes according to script as a quick Bxf7+ net...
A small Soviet sci-fi novella by Aleksandr Abramov, published in 1926. The year is 1927. An elderly mathematician from Moscow claims to have built a true chess automaton that can defeat any human player. What happens if his claims are indeed tru...
Sometimes it happens that the game may not turn out the way you hope. The opponent does not make any mistakes or you blunder something very early - you feel that you are on the track to lose the game. Can you do anything to change your luck? There...