Chess is a game of patterns. Over time, players learn patterns for every aspect of chess: opening traps, checkmates, tactics, endgames, and strategies. It is very pleasing and satisfying as a player when we recognize one of these patterns in our g...
I started playing correspondence chess years ago through the now defunct Internet Email Chess Group (IECG). I admittedly wasn't diligent about finishing my games and thus didn't do so well. I picked it up again a few years ago as I wanted a way to...
Today, I'm going to be taking a break from analyzing one of my games and discuss something I've been studying for the last few years - how to practice and get better at chess. I think we all have a few opinions on what the best way to go about it ...
I have to admit, most of my exchange sacrifices are unintentional. I'm going to guess a bunch of yours are too - unless you are one of my Titled readers, in which case perhaps not. Sometimes they can lead to interesting games. Today I'll discuss s...
Years ago, I was part of a "teaching ladder" where players of different ratings classes would analyze games of players who were lower rated than them. I think I was rated around 1600 USCF when I was a member of this and so I would get games to ana...
Early in 2020, I changed from my trusty 1.d4 to start playing 1.e4. In my youth, I used to play 1.e4 but mainly played gambits and off-beat openings. This year, I wanted to play 1.e4 "properly" and learn the Ruy Lopez as White and play the Open Si...
Positional and strategic play is often not a strong suit for amateur chess players. I know it is not for me - at least comparing myself to the masters whose games I study. Often amateur games are decided by a big blunder that could have been avoid...
One of my first chess books was Irving Chernev's Logical Chess: Move by Move. Some of the games in this book were less then 25 moves long. Sometimes, I wondered why one would include these short games in an instructive book. However, now...
There are many elements or imbalances in chess. Although many different masters over the years have used different terms to identify these such as pawn structure, king safety, development, material, and several others I like Garry Kasparov's syste...
This weekend, I had the opportunity to play in the Progress with Chess Mustard Seed Cloud tournament after my friend and fellow chess improver Stacia Pugh invited me. I am a little curious as to why the tournament was named "Mustard Seed Clou...
Last night, I had the privilege of having my game commented on by IM Kostya Kavutskiy on Chess Dojo's twitch stream as part of Chess Dojo's Ladder Tournament (if you watch the video, you'll notice he is commenting on a couple games along with mine...
I have not been playing so well lately. I think we all get into slumps sometimes. This can happen for many reasons. I can pinpoint two main reasons for my recent struggles. First, I've been allowing myself to play distracted. As all of my play is...
Sometimes in a game the story changes many times. What do I mean by this? When you study the classic games of the masters such as Capablanca or Botvinnik, you often see how one theme such as a weak pawn or advantage in development was the cause fo...
For amateur players, studying tactics is one of the most productive activities we can engage in. Most of the games we play are won and lost because of a blunder. As we improve, this ratio decreases, but like brushing our teeth or sword fights, we ...
This is the first in a series of articles where I analyze my games and share my analysis and thoughts with you. Although it is highly personal in terms of my analysis and how I see the game, I hope that you will find it instructive and perhaps ent...
Having a process can be helpful when trying to improve at something. I created a video discussing what I do when I run into a tactics problem here on Chess.com that I don't fully understand. Maybe it might give you some ideas that you can use in ...
In preparing for one of my games, I came upon this older game by the great Paul Keres. There were a lot of lessons learned during this game which I would like to share with you in this annotated game. Here are some of the lessons in this game: T...
Greetings, Things have been busy and I have not had much time to analyze some games to share with you. However I have been writing for my site Better Chess Training and I wanted to share my most recent article, which was an interview with GM Mesg...
I recently conducted an interview with national master Jim West. Jim was very generous in sharing some advice. Here are some of the highlights from the interview: Focus on studying the middlegame and endgame. Don't spend too much time studying t...
I decided that if I'm going to play blitz (which I do occasionally) I want to learn from them. I had an interesting game this morning, but after analyzing it I realized I missed a lot of things - fortunately, my opponent missed more. I have some...
I have recently posted a game where the knight dominated the bishop in the endgame. This was a game I played for a chess9030 tournament on the Internet Chess Club. I didn't feel that I played very well in the opening, but I was able to use my lea...
This was an interesting game I played today where I try out the White side of the Nimzo-Indian for the first time in a long time. Although I left theory pretty early with a dubious move, I found a few interesting moves as well as an admittedly not...
I have just gotten back into adding articles and content on my chess website: betterchesstraining.com. I wanted to add a regular "Instructive Game" column where I create an instructive article based on a reader's game. So I would love for you to...
So I took about a year away from chess to focus on other things in my life. However, the call of Caissa was Irresistible. I didn't know where to start, so I decided to just "have fun." Don't worry about training or getting better - just enjoy ches...
Players who want to improve should not play too many blitz games. By too many I mean to the exclusion of playing more longer time control games or chess study. This advice is fairly universal by many chess teachers and masters. However, "sprinklin...
