In the late 1860s, the legendary Paul Morphy had almost entirely retired from chess. He was not the same young genius that he once was. But he still managed to introduce an important opening idea which hadn't been seen in chess before. After the...
One of the first things everyone learns playing chess is that the queen is the strongest piece on the board. Her power is amazing! She's worth nine pawns; she's majestic, extremely agile and has seemingly unlimited powers. Then, however, comes t...
One of the most promising Dutch junior players of the early 1970s was Roy Dieks from Amsterdam. In the final of the 1972 European Youth Championship, held in Groningen, The Netherlands, Dieks played a crucial game against Tony Miles (who would lat...
The Austrian chess master Heinrich Wolf (1875-1943) is not exactly a household name for most chess players these days. Yet he is father to one of the most profound concepts in modern opening theory. If people have heard of Wolf at all, it is usu...
In the "King of the Hill" chess variant, the goal of the game is to get your king to the fourth rank in the center as quickly as possible. But have you ever seen a white king on g3 after just eight moves in normal chess? Well, that's exactly what ...
I recently read an interesting article in Time, written in 2008 by then-world champion Viswanathan Anand, in which he argues that chess originated in India, and then traveled westward to Persia and ultimately to Spain. In the elegant f...
One of the most interesting aspects of the recent chess960 matches (featuring Garry Kasparov) in St. Louis, was their potential to develop some kind of rudimentary opening theory. It appears that the players enjoyed this opportunity as well. As ...
What's the weakest spot on the chessboard? Surely it must be the f7 square. Only protected by the black king, the poor pawn on f7 has been a classic victim of tricks and attacks. It's fair to say chess players have been obsessed with f7 sin...
Nowadays, it is normal for chess players of all levels to make a quick draw once in a while. The so-called "Sofia Rules" and other measures that attempt to prohibit draws by mutual agreement are typically applied in elite tournaments and even worl...
A classic movie and literary ploy is when the hero must stay out of sight behind enemy lines, and decides to disguise himself as one of his foes. Students of classical literature might recall the ancient story about Achilles, the Greek hero of the...
A former team member of mine has a favourite phrase which he likes to sing during blitz sessions with a big grin on his face: "gute Läufer, schlechte Läufer!" Referring to the legendary German grandmaster Wolfgang Uhlmann's similarly titled 1980's...
One of the first chess books I bought myself was a red little volume in German called Garrik Kasparow - Idol der Jugend by T.Lais. Published in 1983 - when Kasparov was just 20 years old - it contained 60 lightly annotated games played by the late...
There is much debate these days about whether Magnus Carlsen has already surpassed Garry Kasparov as the best player of all time - have these people forgotten that Carlsen has only been World Champion for less than a year now? Kasparov reigned for...
Mikhail Tal was one of the first world class players I saw in real life: as a kid, during my first visit to the Hoogovens chess tournament in Wijk aan Zee, I almost ran into him when I entered the playing hall. Even this extremely brief en...
For the second time in two years I decided to visit the Reykjavik Open tournament in Iceland – not to play chess, but to watch it, and enjoy the country’s hospitality and natural wonders. Last year, I didn’t have enough time to see any glaciers o...
I sometimes wonder if the lengthy, in-depth type of book review has any kind of future. Wouldn't it be better to just get it over with, hear the reviewer's superficial opinion, yadda yadda yadda, and move on? What's the point elaborating on argume...
When, in 1995, Garry Kasparov employed the ancient Evans Gambit, I was thrilled - in part because I was a live witness to it, in his game against Jeroen Piket, at the Euwe Memorial tournament. But I was also a tiny bit annoyed, because I realized ...
Playing the French is the second opening repertoire book by the Quality Chess authors Jacob Aagaard and Nikolaos Ntirlis. I was very enthusiastic about their first book, The Tarrasch Defence (2011), not because I am a great fan of this opening mys...
It’s not easy to find time to read chess books when there’s a World Championship match going on at the same time. Still, chess publishers around the globe managed to reach me over the last few months, and I felt compelled to read some ...
Magnus Carlsen is a phenomenon. He could recently be seen on enormous billboards all over the world posing next to supermodel and Lord of the Rings actress Liv Tyler; he’s been a guest to The Colbert Report; and he has featured on the cover ...
