For around half the New Years Day of my life, I wake up in the morning in the same place. My new year of 2020 began as so many have in previous years: playing my first tournament of the year, The Hastings Chess Congress! More ch...
Charlie playing chess Born: Sometime in 2004, I think. My unofficial birthday is in June, though I make sure my owner treats every day like it's my birthday! Place of residence: GingerGM Studio, Surrey, United Kingdom. ...
We're half-way through my series on moments in the history of computer chess! So far, we've chartered the course of computers and chess from the automata of the 18th century to the early computing developments by chess-fan teams at IBM and Los ...
Chess? Beer? Pub? What can be better! Around about a month ago I treated myself to a weekend trip to Oslo, with one destination in mind. The Good Knight pub. A pub dedicated to two things, chess and beer. Oh yes, heaven is a place on earth...
In time, Bernstein's chess computer programme on the IBM 704 proved too large for the machine's memory capability; he had just four thousand words of memory to work with, and although in this time the computer's memory theoretically doubled, Ber...
In the last post of my computer chess series, we explored the development of early computing and chess under Alan Turing and colleagues in the late 40s and early 1950s. Here, the timeline of computing hits a period of exponential growth; by the ...
In the second instalment of my series on the pivotal moments in computer chess history, we move on from the Automata of the Enlightenment era to the first chess computers of the early 20th century, a comparatively different world in which modern s...
Welcome to the first installment of my new series on the history of computer chess. I'll be looking at pivotal moments or figures in the history of chess and computers across ten posts; ten videos with analysis of important or interesting ga...
“Chess holds its master in its own bonds, shackling the mind and brain so that the inner freedom of the very strongest must suffer” - Einstein Modern chess has an image problem. The hype of the 1972 World Championship was ...
Since the age of eight I have traveled from place to place over weekends in the search of a game of chess. Things were different thirty years ago, the internet was in its infancy and online chess was a rather unheard of affair. How things have cha...
With the emergence of AlphaZero, humanity must be in serious danger. It is only a matter of time until such a program solves chess and eventually takes over the world, leaving us humans as there feeble pets or play things. Feeling a bit like Joh...
The 18th of November was a special day for GingerGM, after years of saving and building up our business, we decided to spend all of our hard earned profits on a party. In the words of one of England's finest footballers, George Best, " I spent a l...
Just the other day I was fortunate enough to stumble across the following message on twitter: At first glance this puzzle seems rather bland, but the more we venture down the rabbit hole, the greater and more beautiful it becomes. For a...
Puzzles; don't you just love them? My biggest leap in terms of chess development happened in the bath... Yes, that's right, the bath! Let me explain. I used to love chilling in the bath for about 30 minutes a day. What could possible be a b...
I am often asked what chess books really helped me become a much better player. In this blog I am going to share my five most memorable books. Chess books that have helped me on my way to becoming a Grandmaster. Every chess player ...
In this Blog post, I thought that I would would give you a personal run down of the highs and lows that I encountered in my last chess tournament, The London Chess Classic. The London Chess Classic takes place every December and is a explosion o...
In this short but hopefully sweet article, I am going to show you some of my favourite chess moves of all time. To add a bit of flavour to this piece I am will take a look at each piece in turn, and see what wonders they can achieve. The R...
'Creativity takes courage.' - Henri Matisse Whether chess is an art form, science, sport or something completely different. The chess games that I most enjoy watching/playing, are the ones which are unique in some shape or form. When...
Each and every one of us wants to improve as a player. What are the best ways of doing this? - Learning Openings Deeply!? - Practicing Tactics!? - Improving your endgame skills!? Of course the list goes on and on. There is one area of ches...
Let me play devil's advocate for a moment and throw this next statement straight at you - Elite chess is becoming boring. Is there not more room for creativity, unique ideas and exciting games at the lower end of the chess spectrum!?&n...
My last competitive game of chess was a completely bonkers affair; during the course of the game six different Queens made an appearance on the board!! This got me thinking about certain chess records and bizarre chess facts: Some of which we wil...
This coming Wednesday, the 16th of September, chess.com are holding an exciting new and interesting competition. - The 1st ever streamers challenge! You must hand it to chess.com who keep coming up with new and exciting ideas that take our belove...
What springs to mind when I ask you to picture a Grandmaster? Maybe an image of a rather elderly gentleman sporting a large beard? Or do you conjure up an image of a 'geeky' individual resting some nice 'old school' glasses upon his eyes? What ab...
