As we all know, Hamlet's famous question "to be or not to be?" essentially meant "to live or not to live?" In chess, when you're deciding whether to castle or not to castle your king, in many cases you are choosing between the life and death of yo...
Some questions are too complex and beyond our understanding as human beings for us to answer. Why are we here? Where have we come from? Where are we going? Another great question that no one can truly answer is: "Who will win the 2021 World ...
It is not a secret that most inexperienced chess players love checks. I guess it makes them feel empowered. This is why GM Bobby Fischer famously said: "Patzer sees a check, gives a check." I am not going to discuss here the obvious point that jus...
For many generations of chess players, Aron Nimzowitsch's famous book My System was sort of a chess bible. World Champion GM Tigran Petrosian admitted that as a kid, he kept this book under his pillow. Another world champion, GM Mikhail Tal, regre...
For many readers, the title of this article might look weird. The possibility of stalemating your opponent usually means that you are in charge of the game. If you are in the driver's seat, why would you settle for a draw? Moreover, just earlier t...
The FIDE World Cup 2021 is like a breath of fresh air after the series of tournaments where we see the same players playing the same openings achieving mostly the same results. The match between GMs Michal Krasenkow and Praggnanandhaa R, in partic...
The whole chess community was stunned by GM Garry Kasparov's disastrous result in the first half of the blitz section in the Croatia Grand Chess Tour Rapid & Blitz. While 0.5 out of 9 games is indeed an utter catastrophe, I completely disagree...
Competitive chess is a very demanding activity. It requires players to constantly keep the highest level of concentration, stay calm under the pressure and be creative throughout the whole fight. Unsurprisingly, each game has its own story. I have...
Yes, this is the exact question I hear a lot from my less experienced students: "What is better: castling kingside (0-0) or queenside (0-0-0)?" Just like in the case with most of the general chess questions, the answer is "it depends." Castling ...
The saying, "No good deed goes unpunished" is as old as time. In the early 14th century, Dante Alighieri used a very similar phrase in "The Divine Comedy." I don't know about you, but I totally hate it! In our early childhood, we learn from variou...
These days, aspiring chess players have an access to a ginormous amount of information. Databases, online training tools, books, magazines, software, YouTube videos... you name it. Sounds great, right? Well, the other side of the coin is that it i...
One of the most famous quotes of Kozma Prutkov states: "Throwing pebbles into the water, look at the ripples they form on the surface. Otherwise this activity will be an empty amusement." While it is obviously a humorous phrase, similar to Yogi Be...
"The Song Of A Stormy Petrel" is probably the most famous work of the Russian writer Maxim Gorky. It was required reading in the Soviet schools, so we had to memorize it and know it by heart. I still remember the line: "So he dashes, like a demon,...
Whenever I see our readers' comments, I cannot help but think: we have the best chess community on Earth! It is such a striking contrast to the majority of Internet forums, where a typical conversation would be like this: Original Poster: "Are a...
The dispute about the strongest player in chess history will never be settled. Indeed, how can anyone say what the result would be of a match between Paul Morphy and GM Bobby Fischer if you could bring both of them to our time and give three years...
For most of true chess aficionados, Mikhail Tal is not just a legendary world champion but a true symbol of attacking in chess. He got his name "The Magician" for his inimitable ability to start a king hunt in almost any position. How did ...
At first glance, chess and ice hockey have nothing in common—unless we are talking about this bouncing chess hockey game. Unfortunately, this entertaining game has nothing to do with either chess or hockey. And yet we can learn some use...
The recent Tata Steel tournament was a huge success. The organizers did an outstanding job creating a mixed field of players who are known for sharp, "take no prisoners" kind of chess. Yet, in my opinion, the main reason for the success of this to...
In the introduction to his famous book "Grandmaster Preparation," GM Lev Polugaevsky tells a story that happened on December 17, 1969, when he and ex-world champion GM Mikhail Botvinnik were walking on the streets of Belgrade. Mikhail Botvinnik ...
Stalemate is the biggest miracle in chess—there, I said it. You might disagree and give me dozens of different examples of chess magic and you might be correct too. We all have different definitions of beauty and magic. Yes, when you see o...
Any experienced player knows that chess is all about pattern recognition. At least this is true of chess played by humans. In this article, I argued that one of the biggest competitive advantages World Champion Magnus Carlsen has is his unique mem...
The first Capablanca book that I read was "My Chess Career." In the very first pages, I could see that it was completely different from any chess book that I read before. It was almost like an advertisement where every single sentence was screamin...
For an average beginner, the road to a rating in the range of 1400-1600 is pretty straightforward. Learn as many tactical patterns as possible, get yourself familiar with some basic opening principles, and you are there! Notice, I said that the ro...
Ask a dozen chess players what their favorite square is, and quite likely you'll get a dozen of different answers. I suspect all four central squares (d4, d5, e4, and e5) will be on the list. While it is difficult to dispute the importance of...
