Usually an article discusses a particular player, or tactics, or some positional concept. When I teach tactical motifs, you know that all the puzzles are going to be about tactics. If I am discussing a particular idea concerning a pawn structure, ...
Last week we looked at a structure that featured a central space advantage for White (two center pawns vs. Black's one) and a queenside pawn majority for Black. I discussed White’s most aggressive plan (a pawn sacrifice that creates a mobile...
A Chess.com reader recently recommended a game where White (a 2700 grandmaster) made use of an interesting maneuver he (the reader) had never seen before. After seeing the sequence below, many questions may arise, and one might be left wonderin...
People get excited by many different things. Some swoon over a good beer, others are into cars, and many live for sports. As a chess nerd, I and most experienced players go crazy over advanced holes (central holes are the most prized. From White’s...
(I want to thank chess.com’s finest chess historian, batgirl, for articles shared, the photos you see in this article, and her very useful feedback when I asked her about Kolisch. If you don’t follow her blogs and articles you are foolishly depriv...
Today we’ll look at three games and one comment. Each entry has important instructive points that are well worth pondering. We’ll start with the comment, alluding to my article, You Have It He Doesn’t! Part 1, which was all about...
Quite a few amateurs become a bit confused when game annotations talk about the enormous importance of the dark squares in one position or another. Yes, everyone knows what the dark squares are, but in most cases, one is left wondering why they ar...
In Part Six of this seven-part series, we saw Alekhine lose the World Championship to Max Euwe in 1935, only to win it back in 1937. After shocking the world (and Euwe, who was sure he would finish Alekhine off once and for all) with that ep...
In Part One of Riding The Winds Of Fashion, I talked about the Hübner Variation of the Nimzo-Indian and how, at one time, it was one of the most fashionable openings in the world. In the main example (Bruce Leverett – Silman, National O...
When choosing an opening system, it’s important to pick something that is within your skill set, suits your style, and makes you feel excited whenever it appears on the board. You can pick an all-gambit repertoire (it might not be completely...
As we saw, Alekhine reached his ultimate prime in 1930 and 1931. For a few years after that, he was still clearly the world’s best player, but the march of time and the wrath of alcohol took more and more out of him - though everyone still v...
Before we leap into Part 5 of this 7-part series, I’m going to make one last effort to help the “Alekhine was afraid of Capablanca” people grasp a handful of reality. After you read this, feel free to misquote me (and other sourc...
WHY I WRITE ABOUT THE CHESS GREATS In my view, it’s important for chess fans to embrace a chess hero, and after studying his life and games, moving onto another chess hero. It’s fun, you learn a lot, and it makes the whole chess expe...
I left Part 3 of this 7-part series with Alekhine beating Capablanca in their World Championship. Here’s how that article ended: The match itself was a long, extremely tiring affair that covered 34 games before Alekhine achieved the necess...
Every chess player dreams of improving his game. He might simply want to smash his friends. He might want that 1200 rating to turn into a 1600 rating. Or he might be sick and tired of not knowing why he lost games X, Y, and Z. Study certainly help...
Curse of the Hasty Pawn Advance EvgeniyZh (1192) – raj475 (1324)ICC Live Game (30-0), 2014 1.e4 b6 2.e4 e6 3.e5 I’ve seen many sub-1500 rated players make this kind of hasty pawn advance, and I will take this opportunity to make a comment abou...
I was a bit surprised at the comments about the study of master games made under my last Q & A (Snarky Silman, blah, blah, blah). As is always the case, everyone of every rating had an opinion. I’ve already written about this several tim...
One The Conflict That Never Was Jeffrey Baffo wrote (on Facebook): “Move First, Think Later. That book creates a major conflict between Jeremy Silman/traditional methods and what Hendriks is saying.” Answer: I’m answering this question for all...
The following game (played in an over-the-board tournament) by Chess.com member pogorelich is remarkable. It not only offers us incredible tactics (most of which were missed by both sides) and amazing structures, but also lessons on how to study a...
My relationship with International Master John Grefe was complex, with many ups and downs. I met him two days after I arrived in San Francisco. At that time I was a penniless 18-year-old chess professional who was sleeping on a friend’s floo...
When I was doing readers’ games (and I’ll return to that at some point next year) I would heap praise on good moves or even interesting moves, and I wouldn’t hesitate to call a horrible move what it was... horrible. Some readers ...
My last article didn’t have any chess puzzles, which I know Chess.com readers enjoy. To make up for that, we’ll have a simple article this week composed entirely of puzzles. And, as I did in Part 2 of this series, all examples will be ...
Due to the crash of my website email address (which has finally been fixed), I didn’t look at my business letters for a month and a half. There were about 60 waiting for me. One was from a guy that wanted me to give him a study program that featur...
In last week’s article about insane, surprising, or beautiful finishes, I showed a horror story of a game by Irina Krush where she overlooked a mate in one (while three pawns ahead in an endgame), which cost her the World Championship for girls un...
