It was the fifth game of the 1963 world championship match between Tigran Petrosian and Mikhail Botvinnik. Petrosian, the challenger, had not yet won a game against Botvinnik, neither in the match nor at any time before. Botvinnik was at +1 in the...
The Alapin Sicilian (1.e4 c5 2.c3) is an opening which particularly often leads to the transposition to a queenless middlegame. There are quite a few theoretical lines which lead to an early queen exchange, while keeping a tough, fighting game. In...
As we ring in 2014, I will show some beautiful endgame studies. Maybe you are recovering from your New Year's celebrations, perhaps getting ready to go back to work. But regardless, please enjoy these "etudes" which show the sublime and mystical e...
The great Swedish player Ulf Andersson is well known as a master of the endgame, and created quite a few masterpieces in this area of chess. Naturally, he was happy to go straight from the opening to the endgame whenever possible. One of his spec...
For this week's edition of "From Opening to Endgame", we will be examining the endgame which results from the 4.Qc2 Nimzo-Indian, after Oleg Romanishin's unusual (but brilliant) innovation 6...Qf5: 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.Qc2 d5 5.cxd5 Qxd5...
The ability to play without queens is crucial for all aspects of your chess. First of all, it gives you the confidence you need to go straight from the opening into the endgame, knowing that you can outplay your opponent. Many players avoid going ...
Good players don't see the chess pieces as just bits of wood or plastic. They see them as bundles of energy. A piece gathers more energy from its surroundings, from the structure of the position. In the past few weeks I have shown some examples ...
You knew it was coming - Magnus Carlsen just won the title of World Champion by defeating Viswanathan Anand in Chennai, so it is time for an examination of the modern-day-Capablanca's play in complex endings. There is a huge amount of material o...
The eleventh world champion, Bobby Fischer, has to his credit a great number of very artistic endings in which he exploited the advantages of one minor piece over the other. One of his great strengths (of the many that he possessed) was a subtle u...
I left you last week in Dearborn, Michigan, where I was playing in the Third Fall Festival, a strong international tournament. After five rounds I had 3.5 points, having faced three grandmasters. I had won in the second round as Black against the ...
For the past few years, since the fall of 2011, I had a really bad period in chess. I was really having trouble concentrating, not enjoying playing chess, and making many blunders. My nerves were shot and I couldn't calculate variations. In a shor...
One of the classical players who influenced me the most was Akiba Rubinstein, born in 1882. Rubinstein was, along with Paul Keres, the best player never to play a match for the world championship. Rubinstein is known for his very objective and c...
What is an endgame? We have discussed this before. In chess we might define the endgame as a position without queens, or with only queens, or something like that. But in popular culture the word "endgame" is also used. For example, "the endgame of...
It's not an unusual event for a stronger player — or, let's say, a better endgame player — to outplay a weaker one from an equal endgame. But what does this "outplay" really mean? To simply play stronger? I don't think this quite ill...
This week I will show a very complicated endgame I played many years ago, in the 2001 World Open. My opponent was GM Pavel Blatny. This ending contains many exciting characteristics - passed pawns on both sides, mating threats, Zugzwangs. Through ...
For those of you who are expecting the seventh part of "Endgames of Tromsø", unfortunately there wasn't much material from the finals of the World Cup which would fit into the topic of my column. By this I mean that there was no interesting endgam...
The sixth round of the World Cup was crucial for the remaining players, since it determined who would compete in the final match for the World Cup. Both the winner and the runner up would qualify for the candidates matches — thus, getting through ...
By the fifth round of the World Cup in Tromsø, Norway, the field had been whittled down to eight players. Former world champion Vladimir Kramnik faced Anton Korobov of Ukraine, Gata Kamsky played Evgeny Tomashevsky, Dmitry Andreikin played Peter S...
At this point we know who won the World Cup - former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik showed that he was of a higher class and won the tournament very professionally. But we will continue to look at the endgames played throughout the tournament, no...
This week I will continue with the third installment of my series on the endgames played in the World Cup, currently taking place in Tromsø, Norway. One of the biggest surprises of the third round was top seed Levon Aronian's elimination ...
In this article we continue to examine the endgames and queenless middlegames played in the World Cup, currently being held in Tromsø, Norway. We will now be looking at the games played in the second round of the knockout. First, we have a very i...
For the next few weeks, the FIDE World Cup will be taking place in the arctic town of Tromsø, in the very north of Norway. Many of the best players in the world are competing, beginning with the top seed, Levon Aronian (2813). The winner and runne...
You probably know about the drawing tendency of opposite-colored bishops in the endgame - particularly pure bishop endgames. For example, it is hard to believe that the following position, in which Black has three extra pawns, is a draw. But it is...
A slight advantage doesn't mean you're necessarily going to win the game. It just means that your opponent has the more difficult problems to solve, and his mistakes will probably hurt his position more than yours will. In a queenless middlegame, ...
