My favorite writer Hemingway, in his excellent "Moveable Feast," wrote about starting a day of writing: "All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know." This advice came to my mind as I neared the time to...
Today's article is the last in series of positional methods from Magnus Carlsen's games. Being aware of the World Champion's style it is no surprise that the topic of piece exchanges wraps up this theme. Carlsen is extremely good in this area - he...
One of the first principles that an early, intermediate-level chess player learns is that rooks on the seventh rank are powerful. In Russian we call the seventh (or second) rank “obzhornyi” (обжорный ), roughly translating into &l...
When talking about the topic of positional play we cannot omit the theme of Exchange sacrifice. This positional idea was especially popular with World Champion Tigran Petrosian. In modern practice I've seen many Exchange sacrifices in Kramnik...
Today's article is inspired by a trend in media posts - calling Carlsen's play in the World Championship match “nettlesome” - his opponents tend to make more mistakes when playing him compared to their play vs. the other opponents...
Today's article is a continuation of my series on positional play from the current World Champion's practice. Carlsen is a brilliant chess player and uses diverse positional weapons to win his games. In the first installment we saw his master...
Carlsen's ability to improve pieces is exceptional. In last week's article we explored some of the diagonal piece maneuvers from the new world champion's practice. Either a queen or a bishop moved to a more active position, so that another piece c...
This article introduces new series of articles dedicated to the magnificent play of our current world champion - Magnus Carlsen. A series of five or more articles will span different positional and tactical ideas that Carlsen effectively uses in h...
We will wrap-up this series about heritage in modern play by looking at one more position with a typical pawn structure. This position can arise from many different Queen's Gambit openings after massive pawn exchanges in the center where both side...
Last week we studied how to fight against hanging pawns. Particularly, we looked at games where White, playing against hanging pawns, tries to first undermine them with e4- or/and b4-breaks and then attack or blockade these hanging pawns. Thi...
The topic of how to play against hanging pawns have been examined in numerous books. There are plenty of classical examples from the past showing the effective methods of exploiting the weaknesses of the hanging pawns. These pawns are weak b...
In chess, like in life, there are common beliefs that are not necessarily true or based on solid evidence but nevertheless survive the passage of time and continue to be widely accepted as true. Growing up in a "chess country" like Ukraine, I hear...
World Champion Tigran Petrosian is well known for his positional exchange sacrifices. A less known strategic idea that appeared in several of his games is the bishop exchange for the c3 knight in the King's Indian Defense (KID). In the KID, the da...
Today we continue our topic of classic heritage in modern play and we'll study one of Capablanca's favorite positional methods - restricting the opponent's bishop. We will analyze only one particular instance of this method, when the bishop is loc...
Last week we looked at a topic of how modern players learn from classics in endgames where there are rooks present with opposite-colored bishops. We analyzed two classic games where the ideas of 1) a passed pawn and 2) domination showed up. We com...
Last week was the first installment of the series Heritage in Modern Play. Just to remind you, since the topic is still fresh this series aim at systematically studying some of the methods of play and ideas that were invented long ago but still ar...
We are starting new series of articles that will cover the theme of classical chess heritage in the modern play. Most good chess players had to study the games of classics and former world champions to learn the tactical and strategic ideas. These...
Today we will wrap-up the topic of blunders in modern play with three endgame examples from the recent Topalov vs. Laznicka match. The traditional Sachova Corrida Novoborska match, which took place in Prague, featured six games between these two t...
We continue with the topic of blunders in modern play and today's article features games from the World Junior Chess Championship 2013, which was held in Turkey and has just finished. (GM Yu Yangyi won!) The three examples featured today are about...
Today's article features four endgames from the 14th Karpov Tournament in Poikovsky, which was recently won by the Ukrainian GM Pavel Eljanov. His spectacular wins are outlined by FM Mike Klein in a recent post, so here I will concentrate on endga...
Several weeks ago I played in an excellent tournament organized by Dr. Walter High in North Carolina. The US Masters tournament attracted an extremely strong field with many GMs including Mamedov, Ramirez, Shabalov, & Jankovic - just to name f...
Today we will continue with the topic of blunders in modern, top level chess. Last week we saw a fireworks display of mistakes in the game Shimanov-Kamsky from the recent FIDE World Cup in Tromso. Today's examples are very mild compared to what we...
Today's article is the continuation of the topic of Blunders in Modern Play. Last week we went over the examples of opening blunders from the World Cup tournament. Today I would like to concentrate on one example that features the position from a ...
Today's article features a fun topic of opening blunders! It feels great to catch an opponent in an opening trap, but not so great when we end up being caught by some tricky line. There's a variety of opening blunders and most of them have occurre...
With this article I would like to start a new series that will span over 5-6 articles on Blunders in Modern Chess. The articles will feature games from the World Cup that's currently under way in Tromsø, Norway and concentrate on the positions whe...
