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...
I left you last week in Dearborn, Michigan, where I was playing in the Third Fall Festival, a strong international tournament. After five rounds I had 3.5 points, having faced three grandmasters. I had won in the second round as Black against the ...
World Champion Tigran Petrosian is well known for his positional exchange sacrifices. A less known strategic idea that appeared in several of his games is the bishop exchange for the c3 knight in the King's Indian Defense (KID). In the KID, the da...
For the past few years, since the fall of 2011, I had a really bad period in chess. I was really having trouble concentrating, not enjoying playing chess, and making many blunders. My nerves were shot and I couldn't calculate variations. In a shor...
Today we continue our topic of classic heritage in modern play and we'll study one of Capablanca's favorite positional methods - restricting the opponent's bishop. We will analyze only one particular instance of this method, when the bishop is loc...
Last week we looked at a topic of how modern players learn from classics in endgames where there are rooks present with opposite-colored bishops. We analyzed two classic games where the ideas of 1) a passed pawn and 2) domination showed up. We com...
Last week was the first installment of the series Heritage in Modern Play. Just to remind you, since the topic is still fresh this series aim at systematically studying some of the methods of play and ideas that were invented long ago but still ar...
We are starting new series of articles that will cover the theme of classical chess heritage in the modern play. Most good chess players had to study the games of classics and former world champions to learn the tactical and strategic ideas. These...
Today's article features four endgames from the 14th Karpov Tournament in Poikovsky, which was recently won by the Ukrainian GM Pavel Eljanov. His spectacular wins are outlined by FM Mike Klein in a recent post, so here I will concentrate on endga...
Several weeks ago I played in an excellent tournament organized by Dr. Walter High in North Carolina. The US Masters tournament attracted an extremely strong field with many GMs including Mamedov, Ramirez, Shabalov, & Jankovic - just to name f...
Accepting a piece sacrifice can lead to complicated positions that require a sequence of accurate moves from the defending side, which sometimes is even challenging for the top players. We will look at two games from the recent FIDE World Cup that...
Today we will continue with the topic of blunders in modern, top level chess. Last week we saw a fireworks display of mistakes in the game Shimanov-Kamsky from the recent FIDE World Cup in Tromso. Today's examples are very mild compared to what we...
With this article I would like to start a new series that will span over 5-6 articles on Blunders in Modern Chess. The articles will feature games from the World Cup that's currently under way in Tromsø, Norway and concentrate on the positions whe...
Before diving into the next series of articles I would like to take this one week off to look at few examples from the recent U.S. Open chess tournament. I followed it live online and found many games to be very interesting. There were three pla...
Today we will wrap up the series on how to convert an advantage according to Kramnik. This article is the seventh installment on this topic. Last week I showed you several of my games from the recent World Open, where I had a chance to practice wh...
This article is the one before the last on how to convert an advantage according to Vladimir Kramnik. In the last five articles we explored the methods which Kramnik uses that lead to effective advantage conversion in better positions. Most of the...
Today we start wrapping up our series on converting an advantage according to Vladimir Kramnik. Over the last four articles we explored methods and techniques that Kramnik uses to efficiently convert the advantage in slightly better or winning pos...
Today we will continue with the topic of converting an advantage according to Vladimir Kramnik. Over the past few weeks we have covered different methods that Kramnik uses to bring home points from better positions. Today's article does not have a...
Today we will continue with the topic started a few articles ago on how Vladimir Kramnik converts an advantage. No doubt Kramnik is one of the best technical players out there, and therefore it is of interest to observe what kind of methods he use...
This article continues the series on Kramnik's conversion of advantage. Last week we talked about a method where Kramnik first maximally improves his pieces and only then proceeds to more direct ways of converting the advantage. This article featu...
Last week we started the series of articles 'Convert an Advantage According to Kramnik' with an introduction. Today we will continue with the topic and explore some of Kramnik's games where he used Method 1: Maximally improve pieces, and then go f...
We have come to the last part of my series on the positional exchange sacrifice (see also part 1 and part 2). By no means have we covered all possible reasons to sacrifice the exchange - were I to try to do that, the series would go on for many ar...
Today we continue our series on positional exchange sacrifices. Last week we saw some examples of exchange sacrifices to create a general situation which benefits the minor pieces. This week we will be focusing on examples of exchange sacrifices w...
In the last three articles I told you about my games at the US Women's Championship. Today we will wrap-up the topic by looking at some of the interesting moments from the US Championship. With 24 players and 9 rounds, there were a lot of fighting...
