A few weeks ago my article on Vera Menchik appeared in British journal "CHESS". Unfortunately, it is not (yet?) available online but you can buy this issue of the journal at the publisher's website. "CHESS" is one of the best journals in the histo...
Every bughouse player has different reasons for being drawn to the game. Some like the collaborative aspects, some like the increased depth, and some like the fancy checkmates. I'm sure if you try bughouse, you will be hooked like I was. This is a...
Update 8-18-19: Annotated game included. How do you keep up with the wide range of great chess content available online? Back when I was a professional chess player, I would be very eager to stay 'up to date' with the latest games, i...
I'm not a very serious, competitive chess player, but I love playing the game. It has been quite a while since I played a big tournament. Recently, I decided that I'd play in the National Amateur Chess Championship (India), not in a very competiti...
A lot of people begin their study of chess openings by diving right into complex variations, seeking to emulate the Grandmasters they admire. Inevitably, this leads to confusion. You'll hear disgruntled beginners complaining about how t...
While his friends in school would play cricket, Samarth J Rao, who was born with Cerebral Palsy, would sit in a corner and watch them quietly. He would feel left out but there was nothing he could do. He then decided to take on chess and is toda...
How do you turn the opponent’s weak pawns into won pawns? What is the key to converting a better pawn structure into a win on the board? I recently recorded the following video, to help you with this important technical aspect of che...
Ukrainian chess trainer and enthusiast Valery Voinarevich was born in 1943, Kakhovka town in Kherson region. He died exactly 20 years ago on August 10th, 1999. Mr Voinarevich has established chess club in his native town and has been l...
There are a lot of chess principles we hear all the time, but don’t necessarily understand, or never really investigate. The purpose of these posts is to take a closer look of those principles, and examine the logic behind them. One ...
Hello again! First of all, here are the links to the first 3 in this series. I would recommend reading them too, but you can still access the content in this post without having read the previous issues: Classical Dutch Strategy 1 - e4, f5 C...
I've recently watched a beautiful documentary, the Closing Gambit by Alan Byron (2018). I've found it in vimeo for rent or buy, and it's describing the unusual circumstances in which the 1978 Karpov-Korchnoi chess championship [Baguio City, Philip...
The art of Positional Chess is passed on from generation to generation. In this blog post we will see the invisible thread that unites Rubinstein, Smyslov and Anand, in their treatment of the Meran Variation, but also in some general patterns. C...
Hi everyone. This week we are going to study an endgame from a game between Gelfand and Shirov in 2009. Gelfand could win, but he didn’t see the amazing line. I find this ending very instructive. I’m just going to say that to win White...
My previous blog post was all about how to reach a good knight vs. bad bishop position. Now, we will see the other side to the story, and learn how to use the bishop pair advantage in the endgame! I was inspired by a very recent game Nepomniac...
If you are looking for an active answer against 1.d4 (and almost everything except 1. e4) - you should watch the course that explains most important ideas of the Tarrasch Defense. 1) Introductionhttps://www.chess.com/video/player/learn-to-play-t...
Preliminary Remarks on Chess and Bughouse Theory Much of chess opening theory goes out of the window in bughouse. Some of the most common chess openings are just not feasible, or barely feasible, in bughouse. The Sicilian defense is at best expe...
Winning a brilliancy prize is a rare and special thing. At one time, brilliancy prizes were standard at top chess tournaments. These days, they are quite rare, probably because some top players (*cough* Kasparov *cough*) took it a little too perso...
Visualization, Awareness, Imagination. Solving chess compositions enhance these three crucial aspects of your tactical ability. Studies train your eyes to unexpected moves, crazy ideas, and significantly improve your creativity. Welcome bac...
Morning everyone. Before I start, a big thank you to the inimitable @batgirl for providing some photographs and allowing me to link to a couple of her articles. So, in the comments to one of my posts a few weeks ago, I mentioned that a good su...
We've all seen positions where a knight dominates a bishop in a fixed pawn structure...but how do we reach such positions in our own games? Naturally, the key is to make a favourable exchange of our bishop for the opponent's knight, and ideally,...
The author of this post, RattleShakeFries, hails from an old site called FICS ((fantastically inaccurate chess site (not to be confused with FICS, the free internet chess server). Most blogs on bughouse, I imagine, contain examples of patie...
We've all heard of the 3 classical chess opening principles: Develop your Pieces Control Central Space Castle Early Beginners get these principles hammered into their heads early and often! Following them is a sure way to rise in the rank...
Anyone who's played over-the-board knows how to read and write algebraic notation. While you're playing you probably don't have time to reflect on the notation (you've got other things to think about!) But one esoteric question you might ask is, "...
Lyudmila Belavenets is the daughter of master Sergei Belavenets, who perished in the World War II. She's 79 years old and still active as a children's coach for the Moscow Chess Federation. This interview was taken in 2012, for the book Chess Fa...
Welcome everyone! Finally after a month long hiatus I am back writing again! Clearly my inspiration for writing is something that ebbs and flows, and at the moment it flows... Here are the first 2 issues: Classical Dutch Strategy 1 - e4, f...