Da-da-da-dancing
For many years I used this blog for expounding upon my many explorations into the culture and history of chess. For just as many years I abandonned this blog in favor of publishing those explorations in the more popular article s...
Public Accusations Of Cheating Are Bad
The story about a Russian trainer accusing a 13-year-old girl of cheating led to a huge debate on our site. Currently, the report is close to reaching 700 comments. The case is another example of how dangerous it can be to accuse someone...
Breakfast: When It Matters
Good morning, chess players! Check out the following position from a 15|10 game I played yesterday. I had Black: In the above position, clearly 51. Re3 was best. White will get the pawn no matter what. The computer, in ...
Rising Stars #2: @FangBo
Welcome back, comment section! When I say this is your series, I really and truly mean it: for just one series, my platform is your platform. With just one comment, you can get your blog or one of your friends' blogs reviewed on...
Winning in Walbrzych
For today's post, I will give you a series of puzzles to solve, and questions to answer! Question 1: Where in the world is Walbrzych? Answer: Walbrzych is a city in south-western Poland. It's also the venue for the European Senior Team C...
London System: 2. Nf3 versus 2. Bf4 (Part 1: Barry Atta...
This is the second post in my London System series (see the first post consisting of an overview of London books here ). Today we will talk more about the pros and cons of starting with 2. Nf3 vs 2. Bf4. One of the main reasons for start...
Na7!! Three games and some thoughts on the players who ...
A very quick( for me ) post today ( yep, I put too many 'War and Peace' scale articles on here ) with an original idea linking some games and some thoughts on the players who played them. It kind of compliments two of my earlier posts, my Barcza K...
Mar del Plata Master - Bobby Fischer
As you've probably noticed by now, I like to investigate the games of the leading experts of particular chess themes. Be it Rubinstein's rook endings, Nakamura's Nimzo-Larsen, or, in the case of this post, Bobby Fischer's expert handling of the KI...
Learn From The Masters: Caruana's Conversion
What's up, guys and gals? Fabiano Caruana has been playing some very inspiring chess... you can't really doubt that after winning the grueling Candidates tournament, followed by an epic Grenke chess victory! I decided to use this p...
Jobava's Four Pawns Attack
In this post, I'll share a nice game from last decade by Jobava, where he defeats a strong GM with energetic play in the Four Pawns Attack of the King's Indian (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.e4 d6 5.f4 0-0 6.Nf3). Because of the variation's...
Priorities On The Chess Board - Online Day Camp
ChessUniversity.com's next day camp titled: "Priorities On The Chess Board" is scheduled for Tuesday, April 17th, 2018 at 4:00 pm Pacific Time (PDT). This includes two hours of live instruction with lifetime on-demand access to the video recordi...
US Chess Championships Sweepstakes: Win Chess.com Diamo...
Join Chess^Summit and compete in our US Championships Sweepstakes with chess.com! Who will win this year’s US Championships and US Women’s Championships in St Louis? This year boasts one of the strongest editions of the tournament in...
Caruana Marches On
A round-up of Caruana's triumph in Karlsruhe. Amazing that 3 of his 4 wins were with Black, with the Petroff again snatching a last-round win! Analysis of his win against Vachier (a difficult to understand game from Vachier's perspective!) ...
Join Us For The Biggest-Ever Titled Tuesday!
Dear chess community, As many of you know, we hosted a Titled Tuesday Crash Party on April 3 to test our new server updates. Our developer team really came through for us (and you!) and it had no issues to report. As such, we're pleased ...
Member Analysis: Najdorf Knockouts 2.0
Hello to all, and thanks to @MiddleGamerUmesh for submitting this game for analysis. Before I begin, I wanted to point out that when Mr. Umesh requested this game be analyzed, my initial reaction (in my head... I did not say this to him&nb...
Caruana vs Carlsen - Grenke Chess Classic
Hi everyone, I'm very happy to share with you my comments about this game very interesting, it's the game between Fabiano Caruana against Magnus Carlsen ended in a draw. It's the first game between the two players after that Caruana won the ca...
New Online Day Camp: Improving Piece Placement
We're excited to announce the launch of ChessUniversity.com's online day camps. An online day camp features two hours of instruction on the same day that's separated by a 30-minute break. Our first such camp is scheduled for Tuesday, April 10th,...
Planning Puzzle
White (to move) is obviously pressing in the above position, due to Black's multiple pawn islands, but what should his plan be? White to play. I'll share my analysis of this position 24 hours after the initial posting. In the meantime...
UPDATE: Armenia Eagles Win: PRO Chess League FINALS Liv...
THE FINALS HAVE GONE TO TIEBREAKS! Watch live on twitch.tv/chess and chess.com/tv! The PRO Chess League finals are happening NOW between the Chengdu Pandas (GM Wang Yue, GM Ni Hua, GM Xu Xiangyu, and Chu Ruotong) and the Armenia Eagles...
Learn From The Masters: Simagin... One Of The Most Unde...
That question could be up for debate... as I probably have many more "hidden treasures" out there to study! Oh... I forgot... welcome to my blog! Again. That's right, you're back here! So... what's this blog about? Who on earth ...
Converting a Material Advantage
This post will be for players relatively new to chess, showing how to convert a material advantage into victory. I hope you enjoyed this blog post and learned something useful to apply in your games! Keep in mind that, when you are starting ...
PRO Chess Third-Place Match: Saint Louis Arch Bishops V...
The PRO Chess League finals weekend is happening NOW in San Francisco with the Armenia Eagles, Ljubljana Turtles, Saint Louis Arch Bishops, and Chengdu Pandas! Yesterday, the Chengdu Pandas defeated the Ljubljana Turtles, while the Arm...
Book Review - The Complete Ragozin by Matthieu Cornette...
My apologies for the delay - I've been really busy at work and when I'm not working, I was busy with chess! I in fact just finished playing a tournament in Iran and I am typing this out in a PAUL cafe in Dubai, awaiting my next flight back home.&n...
The Canary Islands
As I wrote during the Candidates, I was also scheduled to play during that period. I think that with all due respect to Berlin, the place where I played was better. The tourament was excellent, my score and result not bad either. The most impo...
Opposite-Coloured Bishops and Rooks
In this blog post, I annotated a game from the Croatian Junior Team Championship, which featured an interesting opposite-coloured bishop endgame with rooks on the board. Such positions can be quite difficult for humans to play and for engines to u...