GM Alexander Kotov is one of the most underappreciated figures in chess history. Ask average club players what they know about Kotov and at best they will recall his most famous game versus GM Averbakh. Personally, I don't think that it was such...
The Chess.com member dudejan asked: I always seem to struggle to know where to develop my bishops. For knights the concepts of outposts or placement behind a pawn to double defend certain squares are quite logical for me. But for bishops I don...
There's much to learn in the analysis of your own games. Perhaps equally effective is dissecting the successes and failures of your peers. In this series, watch as GM Magesh Panchanathan and WGM Tatev Abrahamyan review a pool of games fr...
Once in a while, a game grabs my attention due to some amazing positional concept or, less often (I say “less often” since most tactics are rather repetitive), due to a really interesting tactical battle. Usually you’ll see these...
In an amateur chess game, opportunities abound. Unfortunately, these opportunities are often missed. Positional gains are snubbed, tactics are missed, a winning endgame is agreed drawn, and mutual fear leads both players into a deep, dark abyss.&n...
Just recently I have become a bit obsessed with strange and peculiar chess moves originating from knights and bishops. In my first article for Chess.com I took a look at what can be called The Nimzowitsch Knight Dance, and in t...
The second world champion in chess history, Emanuel Lasker, was a unique person. Besides being the champion for 27 years (this record will never be beaten for sure!), he was also a famous mathematician and philosopher. In his prime Lasker ...
Every chess player has a unique style, his own tendencies and preferences. But one attribute is common to all elite grandmasters: tenacity. Consider Magnus Carlsen's performance at the 2015 Gashimov Memorial. In the first round, Magnus conf...
As beginners, we are taught a litany of strategic precepts that inform our thought process and shape our general understanding. "Occupy the center," "knights before bishops," "the rook's place is behind the passed pawn" — all of thes...
Many of my friends who lost control in their calculation, once said: "I can't calculate for next eight moves forward, all i can do is only five moves forward" So, in this short article i will give some tips to improve your calculation technique. ...
I find the position above in yesterday's Mamedyarov-Nakamura game very interesting. I have started writing Everyman's Move by Move books for intermediate players (and above...hopefully) and one major component of the job is to ex...
In last week's article, A Week in Chicago, Part 1, we saw a very strange and interesting game I played against the young FM Eric Rosen in a Chicago international tournament. Now let's look at what happened later in the tournament. As I said befo...
I recently participated in an IM norm tournament in Chicago. This was an unusual kind of tournament for me - and you might find it strange that a tournament for international master norms would have grandmasters. Most of the tournaments in which I...
Recently I was fortunate enough to watch the live transmission and analyze one fantastic game from the Gibraltar Masters beetween my countryman Alexandr Fier and Top GM Michael Adams. I analyzed the game trying to guess the moves (by the way, this...
Today's article is the last in series of positional methods from Magnus Carlsen's games. Being aware of the World Champion's style it is no surprise that the topic of piece exchanges wraps up this theme. Carlsen is extremely good in this area - he...
One of the first principles that an early, intermediate-level chess player learns is that rooks on the seventh rank are powerful. In Russian we call the seventh (or second) rank “obzhornyi” (обжорный ), roughly translating into &l...
When talking about the topic of positional play we cannot omit the theme of Exchange sacrifice. This positional idea was especially popular with World Champion Tigran Petrosian. In modern practice I've seen many Exchange sacrifices in Kramnik...
Today's article is inspired by a trend in media posts - calling Carlsen's play in the World Championship match “nettlesome” - his opponents tend to make more mistakes when playing him compared to their play vs. the other opponents...
Today's article is a continuation of my series on positional play from the current World Champion's practice. Carlsen is a brilliant chess player and uses diverse positional weapons to win his games. In the first installment we saw his master...
Carlsen's ability to improve pieces is exceptional. In last week's article we explored some of the diagonal piece maneuvers from the new world champion's practice. Either a queen or a bishop moved to a more active position, so that another piece c...
This article introduces new series of articles dedicated to the magnificent play of our current world champion - Magnus Carlsen. A series of five or more articles will span different positional and tactical ideas that Carlsen effectively uses in h...
We will wrap-up this series about heritage in modern play by looking at one more position with a typical pawn structure. This position can arise from many different Queen's Gambit openings after massive pawn exchanges in the center where both side...
Last week we studied how to fight against hanging pawns. Particularly, we looked at games where White, playing against hanging pawns, tries to first undermine them with e4- or/and b4-breaks and then attack or blockade these hanging pawns. Thi...
The topic of how to play against hanging pawns have been examined in numerous books. There are plenty of classical examples from the past showing the effective methods of exploiting the weaknesses of the hanging pawns. These pawns are weak b...
In chess, like in life, there are common beliefs that are not necessarily true or based on solid evidence but nevertheless survive the passage of time and continue to be widely accepted as true. Growing up in a "chess country" like Ukraine, I hear...
