Chess is so many things......different things to different people....to the chess professional, chess is work. To club tournament players, chess may be mostly a sport. To me, chess is Art. And thus it was with some of the greatest players of the...
The Latvian Gambit – a dangerous weapon for Black, or one of the worst chess openings ever? In the last few centuries, this question was fiercely debated by the chess community. Today, the debate still continues, but only at ...
Hello everyone, and welcome to my blog - Karpov's Chess Legacy! First of all, I want to thank chess.com for giving me the title of Top Blogger! I am happy to share with you, dear readers, my passion for chess history and chess strategy. In tod...
About 50% of your opponents play 1.e4. For a response, I recommend the Caro-Kann. What do you play against 1.d4 or some rarer moves (1.c4, 1.Nf3, etc.)? Here's an introduction to a complete repertoire against anything that isn't 1.e4! You can st...
In the 2nd day of the Next Level Training course I studied about the structure of the course and how to study the course to get the best result. Most of us chess players do not know what to do, and our chess studies are unstructured and random. ...
I began these blog posts with a series on FIDE, not because I am particularly FIDE-obsessed and spend every spare moment of my life fulminating against the current world chess organization (I recently made a 4-hour documentary series on the socioc...
Yesterday I woke up at 7.00 AM. Took my skis, the smile in my soul, and my great mood, and by 9 AM I was at the “Myler” ski resort. A beautiful place. Beautiful weather. Beautiful people. Everything was so cool, I didn’t...
OK, you caught us. We've been employing a person who has been doing some really terrible stuff. But in our defense- he's really good at chess. Like, REALLY good at chess.Just so we're all clear, we've known about this stuff for years. And rather t...
Yesterday, I had the incredible fortune to be invited to a luncheon with the former world champion, chess legend, and Russian dissident, Garry Kasparov. I intentionally chose a seat right across from Garry to see what it felt like to look into the...
Round 3 of the February Swiss 60+30 over-the-board event featured a Caro-Kann Advance variation. I consistently missed the main idea of playing f6 in that pawn structure. Something to learn from! I was afraid of the kingside attack, and hopef...
Nobody is perfect, not even in the game of chess. We all have our weaknesses. Usually, we can still win games and increase our rating, but when we hit a plateau, something needs to be changed. Your weakness needs to be addressed. In this blog, I'l...
In Winner's POV, we take a look at tournaments from the 19th century and see the games that allowed the top player to prevail. Some tournaments will be known and famous, others will be more obscure - in a time period where competition is scarce, I...
As we say, chess players live by chess books! Chess literature is plentiful and deep and wide...! We are all beneficiaries of the wisdom of writers who want to convey their insights about chess. We gravitate toward our favorite dimensions of che...
Afternoon Everyone. Last time the subject of me having some Russian language books reminded me of one that I haven't looked at for a while. Alexandr Zaitsev. A player who was a late developer, and died too young in sad circumstances. Before...
What a week for FM Brewington Hardaway! The 13-year-old chess prodigy earned his second International Master norm at the Marshall Chess Club NYC Winter IM Invitational on Sunday, February 26, 2023. At the start of the tournament, Hardaway t...
To become one of the best or simply good at chess, you must think for yourself. Yes, you have to learn a myriad of opening variations, middle game tactics / themes and endgame techniques. But, if you blindly follow the recommended path without thi...
Dear Chess Friends! Are you looking to take your chess endgame skills to the next level? If so, then I have great news for you! I'm excited to introduce you to "Tactics in Endgames," a mastermind that I’m conducting this weekend. When th...
Today's elite players are indeed great. They also play openings that our ancestors played more than 100 years ago! One of my favorite chess streams is Chessbase India, with Sagar Shah. He is really entertaining, and at the same time very profess...
This probably is the greatest single tournament ever held. It’s really amazing how often it comes up - in virtually all of the classical intro to chess books I've read; and then in places as far-flung as Twin Peaks’s second season, whe...
In the end of 2020 I started my journey to the Grandmaster (GM) title. Part of the journey in the beginning of 2021 I joined the Prochess training elite group where we had several strong players. One of them was the top Swiss Grandmaster Noël...
As we scramble out of the politicized morass of the last post, it’s worth pausing for a moment to retrace our steps before moving towards the conclusion of our somewhat intense journey. I began, you may recall, with the recognition that, b...
Monday night, 2/27/2023 our documentary film, King Chess, premiered in the heart of Hollywood on Hollywood Blvd. at the famous TLC Chinese Theatre. As a part of the Golden State Film Festival, a dream of a lifetime was accomplished to have th...
The year is 1997, Garry Kasparov is playing a six-game match against Deep Blue, Viswanathan Anand has won FIDE's new World Championship Qualifier, Karpov is on top of the chess world, and a murderer named Claude Bloodgood is ranked 2nd in the Unit...
The Stafford Gambit has experienced a surge in popularity, thanks to some chess streamers who have covered it on their channels and even created courses about it.It begins with the moves – 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nxe5 Nc6. Black sacrifices ...
