On Saturday, 29th November 2025, the final blitz competition dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the birth of the famous Odessa (Odesa) Grandmaster EFIM GELLER, who in the past was officially recognized the best athlete of Odessa of the 20th cen...
The GrossMeister Morshyn Cup was a Swiss system rapid tournament which took place on the 15th of November in the well known resort town in the Lviv oblast. GrossMeister is the name of a sponsor firm, located nearby in the city of Stryi, which prod...
What a good occasion for updating my chess blog! While celebrating the Ukrainian success in the European Team Championship in Batumi (a rather unexpected I would say, but convincingly strong performance) I decided to analyse a victory of our promi...
Yes, somehow I played literally all the Titled Tuesday tournaments in 2024 and all the games in them. Thanks to @Chesscom for mentioning it in the summarised year statistics, and to Hikaru Nakamura, who commented on that here and here.I thought th...
Yes, I have a habit of looking back at most of my blitz games after playing them. The main focus is on openings, but not exclusively. So, below is a selection of tactical positions from my games over the last two years. The positions vary consid...
There was quite a surprise for me in the June 18th Late Titled Tuesday blitz. The current World No 5, Abdusattorov, played the Sicilian Dragon against me using the move, 15...h5, which I introduced myself long before he was born (and even before I...
The GM Vadim Malakhatko Chess Memorial took place in Kyiv on the second weekend of June. It was a highly notable event by the standards of these days' chess life in Ukraine. The tournament's main sponsor, TOV Artedium (Dmytro Zagorovskyi), is al...
Igors Rausis aka Igor Kondylev, Isa Kasimi has died. Probably (and deservedly) the most known chess cheater since Wolfgang von Kempelen, he was, at the same time, a real chess player.In the 1990s I placed a position in which he found his [EXCELLEN...
One of the good things about Blitz is that you can try virtually anything in the openings. You don't have to be particularly afraid of your opponent playing the absolutely precise lines (although there are no guarantees of course). In my ca...
How many players have completed more than 2,500 games in Titled Tuesdays? Most likely, rather a few. In recent years, these events have somehow become the absolutely dominant form of tournament chess for me. If I still want to participate in com...
On 5th March 2023, on behalf of the Odessa Region Chess Federation, I organised the MOVE TO VICTORY (in Ukrainian: "HID DO PEREMOHY") international online blitz with 318 participants. In was 9-round Swiss system tournament with 5 GMs and no less t...
For quite a while I have not been able to find the time to update my blog here.Despite the realities of war, chess life in Ukraine is far from being completely frozen and hopefully later I will be able to write about events in my area (the Odessa ...
On Sunday, July 3rd 2022 the first Mikhail Belakovskiy Memorial blitz tournament took place in the Jewish Cultural Centre Beit Grand in Odessa (Odesa). The event was organised by the 3-time US women's champion WGM Anjelina Belakovskaia @Anjelina...
I wasn’t updating my chess blog for a while, as it’s hardly a time now for my most usual topics. Re-publication of the more or less curious old Chess Today stuff is something that I hope to continue doing after the Ukrainian victory in...
"The end of the Putin era" ("Konets epokhi Putina") is a chess problem, virtually the only chess problem ever composed by me (in different years I also composed several chess studies), first published on 27th September 2007. MATE IN TWO ...
To National Chess Federations - members of European Chess Union: In blatant violation of international law, the Russian Federation began a full-fledged military aggression against Ukraine on February 24, 2022. This unprovoked war is being target...
#Ukraine #chess #war #fide #ecu #NoResponseEarlier today I received from the Ukrainian Chess Federation the following text for publication. (MG) March, 2, 12:18rating@ukr.netTO:European Chess Union ecu.secretary.general*** Appeal...
I worked for the Internet-only daily chess newspaper, now unfortunately defunct, Chess Today, for many years: 2001-2014. Typically, in our daily issues we annotated the most interesting new games. But sometimes there were no ongoing major tourname...
Iuri Shkuro and Ihor Kobylianskyi can get back their, currently frozen, ≈2800 FIDE ratings in blitz and rapid chess, respectively. Background: en.chessbase.com/post/dark-times-for-ukrainian-chess A few days ago I posted a scandalous lett...
The fictitious/constructed decisive chess game for the Soviet 1972 movie "Grossmeyster" (imdb.com/title/tt0382724) was based on the analysis of this, real, encounter. In the movie, the main character, Grandmaster Sergei Khlebnikov (actor Andrey My...
After looking closely at the most critical victory of Ukraine from the European Team Championship final round against Armenia, I can only confess that not much can be understood in this game with engines' assessments, available to mere mortals the...
The chess master Tatiana Morosova (1943-2021) has passed away in Odessa. In the last decades of her life she was known as a passionate chess coach, and author of two chess books and non-chess online works. She was a strong player and became Uk...
In the past, the speculative and tricky 5...Nd7? variation in the Alekhine's Defence has been used by Bent Larsen and other grandmasters, and remained unrefuted for many years until the active involvement of engines in chess preparation. Now, the ...
This time I have one more little known Ivanchuk game - with my annоtations as they appeared in Chess Today in 2011 (yes, computers are getting very strong, and analysis can be improved pretty easily, if one takes a closer look). But, the puzzle fi...
After a bit of a hiatus, I continue with my Old Tricks blogs. I'm planning to post games here, which, as a rule, are not included in the large databases or are included in incomplete form. Sometimes I will use my contributions to the electronic ne...
June 2017: very glad with the news that my new chess book, Understanding the Sicilian, is released! http://www.gambitbooks.com/books/Understanding_the_Sicilian.html
