Ours is a game of silent psychological warfare. And checkmate, the ultimate moment in chess, isn’t just the final position—it’s a moment of human drama. Artists amplify this by using body language to show who’s claimed the ...
Checkmate is the ultimate moment of triumph, where one player corners the opponent's king with no escape, ending the game decisively. Its appeal, mystery, and fascination come from a blend of intellectual, emotional, and even philosophical element...
The legendary Frank James Marshall (1877-1944), the U.S. Chess Champion from 1909 to 1936, was renowned for his tactical brilliance and ability to set cunning traps, often referred to as "Marshall swindles" (swindle n., an instance of the use of d...
Chess History, Literature, and Visual Arts of Argentina La Albiceleste ("The White and Sky Blue") used to be a chess powerhouse, particularly from the 1930s to the 1950s, when it consistently ranked among the top nations at the Olympiads. The co...
Chess has long been a rich source of inspiration for poets, serving as a metaphor for life, love, war, and the human mind. Its structured complexity mirrors the interplay of order and chaos that poets often seek to capture. Here is how chess weave...
Relations are the very fabric of reality. Chess game is also a rich tapestry of relationships, embodying relationalism par excellence, including the static structure of pieces, the antagonism of competing plans, and strategic dialogue, where every...
Melody, Tones and Patterns of Music and Chess "Hey Momir, just found a video that I thought you'd like, since it presents ways that relationism (among other chess improvement philosophies) applies to piano practice," Ian Cunningham @einWWe, a ch...
The "Iron Tigran" had reputation as the hardest player to beat in the entire history of chess. Fischer and Kasparov acknowledged Petrosian's near-invincibility. Fischer, who defeated Petrosian in their 1971 Candidates Match, noted that Petrosian's...
Andreas Paul Weber (1893–1980) was a German artist, illustrator, and lithographer known for his satirical and often politically charged works (we met him already in Part 1, Chess as A. Paul Weber's Mirror of Society). His style frequently in...
Andreas Paul Weber (1893 – 1980) was a German artist renowned for his satirical and politically charged art. He created a vast body of work that sharply critiqued society, politics, and human behavior, particularly in the context of 20th-cen...
Mastering pawn play is indeed a cornerstone of chess development/improvement. Pawn structure, pawn break, pawn tension, pawn mobility, pawn sacrifices, passed pawns, etc. are all critical elements of pawn play, the command of which is shaping a pl...
Sterile Silicon or Grandmaster Gold? The Battle for Your Chess Soul! For an average player—someone who’s likely beyond the beginner stage but not yet at an advanced level—a Grandmaster’s commentary is generally far mor...
...unless you’re aiming to grow a jungle of regrets! For some time I've been waging a “crusade war” as I challenge the heavy emphasis on opening "theory" (actually the practice of the Masters) in early chess education and the r...
German Chess Art Adam Lude Döring (Dresden 1925 - 2018 Besigheim) is an artist, a Denkspieler, a thinker-player with the drawing pencil (German noun Denkspiele translates as brain game, puzzle game, intellectual game, mental exercise). He i...
Counterpunkt (or counterpoint), refers to the art of combining two or more independent melodic lines in a musical composition. These lines are harmonically interdependent yet maintain their own rhythm and melodic contour. Kontrapunkt is a foundati...
Our idealism many times clashes with reality. Much like "castles in the air," these "ideal" scenarios can be beautiful and aspirational but might not always align with reality, leading to sort of escapism from daily life. We saw on my blog befor...
Chess players suffer from many diseases. One of the most common and serious is a poor exploiting advantage technique. Almost all players, including strong ones, and sometimes even champions, struggle with this technique ("...in many games, I was n...
There are no direct references to chess in Albert Camus' (1913-1960) major philosophical essays or his famous novels (The Stranger, The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Rebel). The focus of one of the most influential writers of the 20th century ...
Constructing air castles in a dream world We saw how Don Quixote's strategies were often misaligned with reality, leading to comedic or tragic outcomes. We don't want these tragic and self-shattering things happen during chess games we play, yet...
IT IS CALLED SPATIAL AWARENESS, or VISUAL-SPATIAL INTELLIGENCE Two ethnic Serbs are dominating the NBA. Nikola Jokić and Luka Dončić (Luka's father was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia, but his ethnic background is from Serbia). Here we are going to ...
Chess study: White to move and win (wait, who is White?) Hint: The square the King is sitting on is definitely h8 (suggested by the position of the pawns on the back rank promoting — Pawns never start in the game from rank 1) Hint 2:&n...
The above witty commentary by GM Savielly Tartakower perfectly encapsulates a true perspective on inevitability of blunders. Mistakes are built-in part of the game. No matter how skilled a player might be, the potential for making mistakes is al...
Like life, chess is a game of concessions that we grant to our adversaries, but we are also winning some from them in every game we play. In the words of @erad1288, a member on this site, "it's like when you put your pieces on good squares, your...
After seeing, in the recent post by @Vrooming_Rook, how damaging the practice of the neophyte playing a full game right after showing them the moves is, let's talk chess mini-games that promise making the critical early period of learning more eff...
Both chess and the ingenious gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha involve strategic thinking. The would-be knight errant often plans his "adventures" with a kind of chivalric strategy, like we would plan moves in chess. However, his strategies ar...
Thanks for reading! Here are some of my most viewed posts:
An Open Letter to GM Yasser Seirawan
Roaring Pawn Debates with Yaz on Nimzo, Part 1
Reply to Seirawan's Challenge to me re Nimzovich's Folly 2.d3 and 3.d4
Joe Learns Chess the Outlaw Way
The Roaring Pawn's Relational Learning Method for Complete Beginners Trial
Poor Board Vision as a Common Early Symptom in Chess
Why Chess Teachers Should Convert to Relationists
How To Build a Better Chess Teacher
Key to Improvement: Upgrading Your Thinking Skills
The Legendary American Photographer Ansel Adams Explains Chess Player's Thought Process
Best American Chess Photography
Magnus Carlsen: A Genius or Automaton?
With AlphaZero and its Inventor Demis Hassabis, Chess is Celebrating its Own Final Demise
Stalin, Kotov and Najdorf's Plot Against Gligoric
My Chess Sucks, Here are Options for Improvement
PRINCIPIA SCACCHORUM: How Come There Are 99.5% Patzers in Chess?
You can follow me on Twitter
