Lately I have been drawn to Kramnik. A few year ago, when I bought his book "Kramnik: My Life and Games", co- authored with Iakov Damsky, I was struck by a few things....the force of his moves and concepts, the overall solidity and fluidity of his...
The first open Sicilian proved that it was worth waiting for. If only they started playing it from Game 1... It became obvious to Team Caruana that Carlsen was feeling more comfortable in the maneuvering positions arising from the Rossolimo, som...
On the 5th training day, I solved puzzles when I streamed on Chess TV, we had many Viewers who wrote their ideas. I used 110 minutes to solve 35 puzzles. My goal is to get the Grandmaster title and in the same time inspire, motivate and tea...
Perhaps I shouldn't have taken the World Champion too seriously. After all he is making everybody laugh at the press conferences. Carlsen said that having two Whites in a row was an advantage and one he was looking forward to. With these two Whi...
My Basman post brought back some memories of my time spent amongst one of the most awesome groups of young talents of the post war/ pre-computer era. Under the watchful eye of the great Leonard Barden, Britain was the envy of the World in terms of...
Last week, I was in London for business, and of course I paid a visit to the World Championship match between Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana. It wasn't my first World Championship visit. In 2013, for instance, I had the opportunity to v...
A game that shows Caruana's strategy. Carlsen chose a sterile line for his first of the two Whites he is getting. He tested Caruana's preparation and when the latter showed it they entered a symmetrical endgame position. Carlsen probably hoped t...
Hello! Hello! Hello! I am chess blogger from Ukraine and It looks like you're reading my game report this week! The first game contains a trick. As you may know, I use the Froms gambit against the move 1.f2-f4 Here is my blog about this&...
CONFRONTING A FALLACY AS OLD AS CHESS ITSELF THAT NIMZOVICH INTRODUCED IN 1929 I admit it, teaching chess without the moves being shown first, as hinted by Nimzovich, does sound crazy ― after all, everyone of us, ever since the Chess Dark Ages, ha...
The World Chess Championship 2018 has been quite exciting so far, with some really interesting moments. The current scoreline is 2.5-2.5, and we are yet to see a decisive result. A seperate news report will be written on round 5 and the gam...
The time difference between London and Australia is a bit of a pain for watching the World Championship match. Luckily, one of the perks of being a new dad is that I occasionally wake up outrageously early, which sometimes allows me to catch the e...
Caruana tried, but failed to impress anybody. At first sight the move 6 b4 looks exciting and aggressive, but it was in fact a test of Carlsen's memory. And the World Champion passed it without problems. It is worth noting that Caruana again s...
Hello everyone! I invite you to see my video about the Najdorf! Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBuKF65xqK4
In the wake of Carlsen-Caruana match Chess.com ran a series of articles on The Most Exciting World Chess Championships Ever, with the "winners" selected by the Editorial Board of Chess,com. That series generated a lively debate, with the readers...
Hello, my dear chess friends!One of my first blogs on chess.com was a Top 5 Italian attacks! This stuff was positively received by my readers. And today I present a sequel - a collection of those games that are not included in the fir...
I am launching a series of articles about 10 Evergreen World Chess Championships, and I am going to open it with one of the most stunning upsets in the history of World Championship matches, 1935 Alekhine-Euwe. One of the reasons why I picked it...
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...