One of the main questions on tonight's show involved "How much does X help my chess?" where X was Chess960, Correspondence Chess, or something else. My first reaction is that everything that is "chess work" helps your chess, but the real question...
At the end of today's show, one of my steady viewers asked if I should create a FAQ file at Chess.com so, if I kept getting the same questions, I could just refer the questioner to the file. My reply was "No, but I do get a lot of 'I am 1400. What...
"Never bring a queen out too soon" But what is too soon? What is too anything, for that matter? How does it help someone to tell them not to bring out their queen too soon? If it is bad, it's too soon, and if it's good it's not too soon! Let's ...
In today's show there were many open-ended questions similar to "Hi! I'm 1600 and want to get to 1800. What books should I read?" or the more answerable "Hi! I'm 1600 and I want a good book on positional play. What do you recommend?" There's a to...
When I coined the term "Counting", many thought I was simply referring to knowing the value of the pieces, but that's just a minor aspect. By Counting I meant determining whether any sequence of exchanges led to gain or loss of material on any squ...
Every year we hold the charity Holly Heisman Memorial Tournament to raise money for women in need. Thanks to our organizers, the Ramachandras, our TD Joshua Anderson, and Howard Stern, who donates a trip to his studio which we auction off on EBay ...
Last week, one of my students showed me a position and asked what I would do. I thought it was fairly instructive (it turned out to be!), so I will ask you the same question. In the following position, assume you are playing a long time control ga...
This week's show, as always, featured an eclectic set of questions on all topics. One viewer asked what was the most beautiful game in literature and I responded "Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. There's many games I find quite beautiful, bu...
Hi! Glad to be able to communicate with the chess.com members! Tonight was our first show, and after each I will be providing a quick summary, including the best question or two and the most pertinent answers. Since this our first summary, it mig...
In the recent TCEC computer chess tournament, defending champion Houdini was eliminated in the semi-finals; the engines playing the final match were Stockfish and Komodo. After the finals, the loser Stockfish (an open source program) graciously ma...
