Regardless of strength, some players make serious blunders more often than others. While obviously most mistakes in chess are due to either a miscalculation or misevaluation of the position, when a 2500-rated player simply puts a piece en prise, y...
A strong chess player calculates variations well but also knows when to stop and evaluate the resulting position, resorting to experience and knowledge of typical positions. An experienced player will know that certain positions are better for him...
Last week we were discussing the question of when to strike when you have an advantage, using some of my games from a recent tournament as examples. The question of when to attack and when to make small improvements/ prevent counterplay is a very ...
Today's article is the last one in the "Tactics" series. The positions presented today show the role of tactics in modern practice. We will start with an example that shows how in complex strategic battles grandmasters of the highest caliber can m...
Once again we return to the "Attack and Defense" series. We will be discussing the difficult question of when to strike and when to keep control. I had several instances of this occur in a recent tournament, the Eastern Open in Washington D.C. T...
Today's article features positions from the recently completed 22nd North American Open that took place in Las Vegas from December 26th-30th. It seems that the holiday atmosphere and the popularity of gambling in Vegas had its impact on the player...
Defensive methods have improved drastically in modern chess. It is really rare for one to see clean combinations, where one side finishes off the game without the other side putting up tough resistance. Top players over time have accumulated numer...
Today we will study games from the past where players used or failed to use tactics to gain a positional advantage or to achieve a draw in a worse position. It is no surprise that the games of Karpov and Petrosian show up as they were the masters ...
Today's column is about tactics and I would like to concentrate on examples from recent games. Since tactics are a key weapon of any chess player, the topic of tactics in chess is overwhelmingly important, and there are more books and material pub...
Although I am doing a new column - "My Bookshelf" - I will from time to time revisit "Attack and Defense" for some variety. And this is one of those times. I recently played in the National Chess Congress in Philadelphia. This is a tournament wh...
Similarly to classic works of literature, chess games played by World Champions should be studied for the general understanding of how chess ideas evolved over time. There are so many games played by them that sometimes one wonders where to study....
Today's article is dedicated to the technique of calculation in chess and the examples will show different aspects of this skill. I will also try to give some recommendations for how to train this invaluable skill. Let's jump right away into...
Welcome to a new column called "The Best Moves Never Played" -- this article is a short introduction of what this column will or will not cover. During any real game some of the best moves were never played because the players did not find them ov...
We have come to the end of our journey through Attack and Defense. I will be starting a new column next week, where I will be discussing chess books. The editors of Chess.com wanted to switch up the columns somewhat, and I realized that many peopl...
It’s generally considered advisable to cover your king behind a row of pawns, such as the following: Or this: How does one go about attacking such a castled position? A solid barricade of pawns prevents the pieces from coming into di...
In late summer of 2008 I played a small local tournament which had no monetary prizes. The prizes were donated, and the top one was a chess set which I figured was worth maybe two hundred dollars. I decided to play – it was not unlike many o...
The game begins, and within a few moves your opponent pitches a pawn. It’s not considered the most correct gambit, and might even fall into the category of “cheesy”. But by taking the pawn, you are playing “his” game....
Breaking down a passive fortification can be difficult, even when you have a large positional advantage. If you have seen my article “A Fatal Compulsion”, you know that one of the methods is to use Zugzwang – your opponent’...
There is a funny thing about chess: to succeed, you only need to be good at it. Up to a point, Fate can turn its back on you, but you can override it by simply playing really well. The upshot is that in the chess world, there are some great player...
Last week we learned about miniatures – short games where one player heads home early. It is much more common for the player having white to win a miniature; and we normally imagine that miniatures are sharp, attacking games with a lot of ta...
There are some times when the game is started and a long battle anticipated, but for whatever reason that doesn’t happen. I’m not talking about quick draws, but rather when one player’s position is quickly destroyed – the so-called “miniature”. A ...
The ninth world champion, Mikhail Tal wrote in his autobiography, The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal: “After an event, certain players like to indulge in an unusual form of statistics; they count up the points that stand alongside their names...
The German word “Zugzwang” means “move compulsion”. “Der Zug” is a chess move – it also means “train” – and “der Zwang” means “compulsion”. There is no equivalent English word for this concept, so chess players use the German word; and this word i...
One of my students recently sent me some interesting games in the Ruy Lopez. He wanted some help figuring out middlegame ideas from both sides of the board. VivaChe graciously gave me permission to show one of his games in an article. Play thro...
