Like the Kan/Paulsen, the so-called "Modern Defense" is an opening with many names. When I first met it, as a beginning chess player, I knew it as the "Robatsch Defense." It has also been called the Ufimtsev Defense, the Kotov Defense, the Pi...
Last week, we looked at the history of the Paulsen Sicilian until the late 1950s. Around this time, it was accepted that the c2-c4 plan was not terribly dangerous for Black, whose dark-squared bishop was still unimpeded by the pawn. The li...
The Open Sicilian can be broken down into four basic systems. In one, the Dragon, the black bishop is fianchettoed on g7. In the Scheveningen, it is developed on e7 while Black adopts a "little center" of pawns on d6 and e6. In a third, t...
In the first installment of my series on the development of various opening variations, we learned about the history of the King's Gambit. This week we will be moving on to a more modern and frequently seen opening: the Winawer French. In th...
With last week's column, we reached the end of my series on endgames, "Without the Lady." It has been an interesting journey through one of chess's most mysterious and underappreciated domains -- but the end has come. I now begin a new column co...
After winning the Mexico City tournament in 2007, Viswanathan Anand had become the world champion. Anand defended his title for a first time by defeating Vladimir Kramnik in the 2008 match held in Bonn, Germany, He again defende...
After defeating Veselin Topalov in their 2006 match, Vladimir Kramnik was officially the undisputed world champion -- although he had been largely regarded as such since his 2000 match victory over Garry Kasparov. In 2007, a round robin tourname...
So far, I have only been covering the world championship matches where the title actually changed hands. However, since this series has turned into not just a look at the instructive and beautiful endgames played at the highest level of chess, b...
By 1990, Garry Kasparov had done what nobody had done before since the creation of the world championship: defended his title multiple times against the clearly best challenger. All in all, he and Anatoly Karpov played five quite grueling matches ...
With Anatoly Karpov having "inherited" the world title, he was eager to win as many tournaments as possible to prove that he was worthy of the title. And this he did. Besides winning such tournaments as Milan 1975, Las Palmas 1977, Bugojno 1978...
After Bobby Fischer won the world championship in 1972, he was a hero -- not just in the U.S., but for chess players everywhere. But being a hero is not for everyone. Always hard-working and ambitious, Fischer had fought more against himself tha...
In our exploration of the endgames from the world title matches, we have now reached the most famous of all matches -- the so-called "Match of the Century." Besides the unusual and brilliant character of Bobby Fischer, this match is so well reme...
For the first time since Alekhine, there was a world champion not named "Botvinnik" who was also not merely renting the title for a year. The Armenian named Tigran Petrosian held the title of world champion, with his unusual, "left-handed" style o...
Mikhail Tal had come and gone; the older Mikhail (Botvinnik) was still on the throne of chess. But in 1963, another archetypal chess player which had heretofore not been seen made his appearance. Tigran Petrosian was born in 1929 in Tbilisi, Geo...
Throughout the second half of 1960 and the first few months of 1961, the world had an unusual sort of champion. Throughout most of the history of chess, its world champions have been -- at least to a large extent -- pragmatic and balanced players....
Mikhail Botvinnik had regained the world championship in 1958, but soon after the chess world's attention was captured by the rapid ascent of a young player with an unusually sharp and creative style: the Latvian Mikhail Tal. Frequently ma...
At the time that Vasily Smyslov became world champion, a rule was in effect giving the previous champion an automatic rematch in the event that he lost the title. Mikhail Botvinnik benefited from this rule twice -- the first instance was with Smys...
After Alekhine's death and the subsequent 1948 world championship tournament (covered in my article last week), the chess world began the three-year world championship cycle, which would continue in relatively orderly fashion until Kasparov and Sh...
Shortly after the end of World War II, Alexander Alekhine died, allegedly by choking, in a mostly empty hotel on the windswept coast of Portugal. He left the world championship crown vacant, for the first time since Steinitz became the first wor...
After winning the world championship title from Alexander Alekhine in 1935, Max Euwe did something rare -- he voluntarily gave his opponent a rematch, without putting obstacles in the way or seeking a weaker opponent to play first. The rematch t...
After taking the world championship title from Jose Raul Capablanca in their 1927 match (covered last week), Alexander Alekhine defended his title twice against Efim Bogoljubow: in 1929 and again in 1934. Like Emanuel Lasker, Alekhine has also b...
As we move further from the misty past and closer to modernity in our exploration of the endgames of world championship matches, we come to the battle between the incumbent champion, Jose Raul Capablanca, and the challenger, Alexander Alekhine. ...
After taking the title from Wilhelm Steinitz in 1894, Emanuel Lasker won a rematch against Steinitz in 1897. His reign as world champion lasted until 1921, and the 27 years he spent on the throne were the longest anyone has remained world champion...
As we move along in our exploration of the endgames that defined the battles for the world championship, we come to the 1894 match between Emanuel Lasker and Wilhelm Steinitz, which took place in New York, Philadelphia, and Montreal. In the year...
