Every chess player knows about two inevitable opening catastrophes: scholar's mate and the Fried Liver Attack. I still remember my shock when in one of my first tournaments I played what looked like reasonable moves and yet the resulting position ...
When we analyzed "An Opening Line For Masters" last week, I chose GM Igor Zaitsev as our opening guide for a reason. It is difficult to name another chess player who introduced that many absolutely paradoxical opening novelties. Today ...
Last week we analyzed a line that could be a decent opening weapon for club players. As you remember, unlike the openings played by super-grandmasters, it didn't require any special opening knowledge and could be learned in one minute. The obvio...
There are certain opening variations in chess which can be labeled "for top players only." The most obvious example would be the Berlin Variation of the Ruy Lopez. But club players shouldn't be jealous since there are also opening variations "fo...
Some time ago we discussed in this article the identical positions that can happen in endgames. I concluded the article with the statement "Deja vu is good for your chess!" Which of course means that the knowledge of certain positions, tec...
The last year was tough for the world champion, Magnus Carlsen. Not only did he lose a lot of rating points, but also some people questioned the gap between Carlsen and the other chess players from the world's top 10. I saw a chess article where...
When we were learning how to play chess, most of us dreamed about becoming next Capablanca, Fischer or Kasparov one day. Alas, the sad reality is that 99.999 percent of us will never become one of the chess gods. Should we be disappointed and up...
Do you ever see a chess position and have a strong feeling that you've seen it before? No, I am not talking about opening positions, that you see again and again and again in every single tournament (damn you, the Berlin variation!). And I am no...
About a quarter of a century ago, I started playing in international tournaments on a regular basis. Just like thousands of other folks from the former Soviet Union I enjoyed the fall of the Iron Curtain and ability to freely travel abroad. Pret...
My childhood happened at the time when kung fu was all the rage. All the kids were discussing the latest martial arts movies and the "Kung Fu Fighting" song was at the top of the charts. The legends about the Shaolin monks were fascinating. Some...
The European Team Chess Championship that took place last month in Iceland is already a part of chess history. There were many remarkable games and memorable moments over there. Some people will remember the double win by the Russian men...
In last week's article, we saw that breaking the classical rules of play in the openings is one of the cardinal sins of less experienced players. Another common problem that you can find in their games is missing basic tactical ideas. ...
The World Youth Championship that took place in Greece last month was a great showcase of the best young chess players from all around the world. It also demonstrated the typical mistakes many young players make. While today we are going to...
This is the last installment of my tribute to IM Emory Tate. The first two parts can be found here and here. There are definitely people out there who knew Emory much better than me, so they could disagree, but I always had an impression that hi...
In last week's article we paid tribute to a creative chess player and a nice person, IM Emory Tate. As a man who played Emory many times, I can tell you that a game with him was always just like our life according to Forrest Gump. Remember his f...
The recent departure of IM Emory Tate is a severe blow to American chess. While we have many chess players who are stronger than him and a huge number of chess players who are weaker than him, we'll never have another Emory Tate. In this article...
I run a chess club in a local school, and whenever I ask my students if a king can check another king, I hear a loud "No! Kings cannot kiss each other!" Of course, I know what they mean. Even beginners are well aware that this is the closest a k...
In the first part of this article I demonstrated by my own example that the biggest secret of the Soviet school of chess was the utmost motivation of the Soviet players. We simply had no right to do wrong since the consequence could be ...
The famed Soviet school of chess has produced hundreds of grandmasters and dozens of world champions. Thousands of chess coaches teach their students using "the Soviet training method." But who can really describe what exactly was/is the So...
If you follow my weekly column, then you probably noticed that I am a big fan of Magnus Carlsen. I like his chess style, his general attitude to play till the very end and his notorious disregard of the opening theory. I grew up at the height...
"Thank you, GM Serper for this profound statement. I would have never guessed it on my own!" Admit this was your first thought when you read the title of this article. Yes, chess is obviously not checkers and yet, when I was a kid, I heard this ...
Sometimes we can observe a peculiar situation in chess: one of the pieces on the board practically doesn't exist. Yes, it is there: we can see it, we can feel it, but we cannot move it. Therefore, in most of the cases, for a practical purpose su...
I am not going to reveal a big secret if I say that the vast majority of chess players love tactical play and hate slow maneuvering. Indeed, tactics are beautiful and exciting and positional chess is weird and boring. That is, if you don't under...
These days you can find anything on the Internet. For example, if you like hard rock and chess, then this video is for you! You can notice that they set up the board correctly (the a1 square is black!) and the position from their ga...
