Players are often much better in solving tactical exercises than in finding tactical solutions in their own games when playing over the board. When you are looking for candidate moves in a real game, you do not know if there is a tactic in the pos...
Basis education is broken across domains. Think math, or foreign language acquisition. And yes, chess. Maybe an activity with most dropouts as an overwhelmingly huge number of chess entrants never move beyond the moves due to lack of meaning and ...
This is turning out to be a tit-for-tat contest. The players keep surprising each other! In particular, its been Magnus who is providing the element of shock. In every game till now, he has maintained his get-fabi-out-of-book attitude. To some ext...
Most players play bullet chess like its a bloody foot race, bashing out moves with no real thought or even an attempt at finding moves that contain the essence of real chess. (I call this kind of souless chess, "Mouse racing," I even have a blog o...
On the 4th training day, when I solved puzzles to improve my calculation skills to reach the Grandmaster title. It was a long session. I used 153 minutes to solve 45 puzzles. I enjoyed the stream, nice to have friends around when I am doing my tac...
On my stream last night, I had a particularly interesting game which focused on relative piece value. Before we dive in to that game, let's give this idea of relative value some context by defining it a bit more clearly. Since a lot of my viewers ...
The shortest game of the match so far and in fact there was only one critical moment in it. Carlsen opened with 1 c4, adding more options right from the start. Would Caruana try to go for QGD set-ups with 1...e6 or would he go symmetrical with 1...
A rather unconvincing showing by both players. Caruana deviated from Game 1 and chose the rare 6 0-0 in the Rossolimo (I'm afraid we won't be seeing an Open Sicilian any time soon). The omission of h3 introduces many subtleties in the upcom...
Paul Keres is a fascinating player with a fascinating history. Winner of the star-studded 1938 AVRO tournament, he was a presumed challenger to Alexander Alekhine when WW II intervened. After the war, his native Estonia had been subsumed by the So...
In the 2nd round of World Chess Championship 2018, the nearly four-hour game was significantly 'shorter' than the previous round. Once again, Black won the opening battle, became the aggressor, won time with each move, went into a pawn up roo...
Hi, all! Let me introduce you my funny, fantastic and interesting games at this week. The first game is dedicated to my favorite gambit. A complete list of my favorite gambits is here Top 5 gambits The game is not without mistak...
In this series I will be using the chess.com analysis tool to compute the players' CAPS, Avg. Diff., Best Move %, Mistake-Score, and Largest Advantage in each game. In addition to those metrics, a rerun of the Monte Carlo simulations of the ...
The players keep surprising me. In my Preview I argued that Carlsen would play 1 e4 because after it the preparation can successfully be narrowed down. The point is that after 1 d4 Black has more satisfactory defences than after 1 e4 (where basi...
WHAT IS OLDER IN CHESS AND ALL WARFARE, MOVEMENT OR POWER? The movement of chessmen has been a starting point in chess since time eternal. A sine qua non, a religion that has aged and hardened that nobody ever dared to question. But this moves...
24 October 1992. A star was born. Ding Liren has recorded a century in the field of chess. For his last 100 games, he has remained unbeaten. Ding Liren, a chinese chess prodigy, became a grandmaster at the age of 17. Since then, his growth ...
There is noise all around as the World Chess Championship 2018 is going to begin. Magnus Carlsen has picked the Black pieces, and the game begins with the expected 1.e4 by Fabiano Caruana. Berlin? Ruy Lopez? No! Magnus goes for the Sicillian ...
What a start of the match! I never expected Carlsen to be that aggressive from the get-go. In fact, I never imagined he could play something other than 1…e5. It was quite a shock for me to see the Sicilian! Is this a match strategy to be ...
Greetings, my friends! If this is not your first time on my blog, you may know that I am a real fan of the Scandinavian Defense. Games with this opening often decorate my creative series My Good Games, and also I have a blog with partic...
Starting from today, all chess eyes are turned towards London. I have nothing to say about the upcoming match, but, thematically, I am going to give you an interesting update on the London System. I promise, this will be my last post on the London...
One of Fabiano Caruana's most incredible achievements is that he turned Petroff defense into a fun and dangerous weapon. Think of it for a second. The symmetric and rock solid Petroff, the opening that makes Berlin defense look exciting in ...
I have often been asked to recommend chess books ... so much so, I dare not even count the number of times that I have been asked this question. (Via E-mails, messages, IM's, PM's, etc.) Since I played my first USCF-rated tournament in 1966 and I ...
I plan on doing video recaps on my channel after each game. Lets hope for a great match!
Hi Chess Friends, I was happy to play a nice combination in a recent blitz game, which got me thinking about an important attacking theme. First, see if you can find black's winning combination below. The move that struck me there was...
COMPARING A MODERN VS CONVENTIONAL EARLY CHESS LEARNING METHOD. NEW-AGE vs STONE AGE In 1929, Aron Nimzovich strongly asserted that the early teaching method was "fundamentally flawed." For nearly ninety years his idea hasn't attracted anyone's a...
Hi everyone. I have already written my thoughts about how to train to make progress in chess or about some mistakes you could be making in your training. Recently, as I was talking with some of my favorite students, I thought about some general ti...