I would like to start today's installment of my column with a basic position somebody posted in the comments, which surprisingly was difficult for some of you. You should remember this simple rule: once the King gets to the sixth rank (th...
If you read the first part of this article, then you already know that, despite popular belief to the contrary, King and pawn endgames can be very tricky. Even the most basic position, with just one pawn on the board, is impossible to play well if...
Many chess players consider a king and pawn ending the simplest form of an endgame. It explains why one of the most popular ways to convert a material or positional advantage is to go straight to the king and pawn endgame. Here is a classical exam...
A Queen is by far the most powerful chess piece and whenever we attack we are usually trying to bring our Queen to the action ASAP. But what if a chess player moves his Queen in the opposite direction? Is he insane? As the saying goes, there is a ...
"Knowledge is power" famously pronounced Francis Bacon in 16th century. I doubt many people would argue with this statement since the more knowledge you have, the better for you, right? Well, almost. Today we'll discuss a very unusual situation wh...
It is time to summarize our discussion about all the positive and negative aspects that computers brought to our game and see which side outweighs. One of the biggest positive sides I see is that computers really enhanced our chess knowledge. So...
In the last week's article I touched the subject of cheaters who use computer engines during their games. To my great surprise, judging by reader's messages, many of you are not aware of this problem. I was asked how can cheaters possibly us...
There is no doubt that providing that you know how to use a chess engine and well aware of its shortcomings (like for example the Capablanca's position that we discussed in the previous part of this article), then you have an amazing learning tool...
The first two parts of this article generated many comments from our readers so let me address a couple of popular misconceptions. First of all, the goal of this article is not to find out who plays chess better, computers or human players. This...
In last week's article, we looked at a very interesting phenomenon of computer chess - the "horizon effect." Basically it is a computer's inability in certain situations to see the future no matter how fast its processor is or how many plys it can...
Computers are an essential part of the modern world and it is impossible even to imagine our everyday life without them. As a matter of fact, you wouldn't be able to read this article if there were no computers and the miracle called "Internet". B...
The subject of today's discussion might sound bizarre for most of you. Indeed, all the chess coaches as well as books, magazines and Web sites teach you how to win your games and here we talk about when to resign? And yet, I think any e...
In my column "Pros and Cons" I discuss the subjects that have no clear answer. Are doubled pawns good or bad, is an isolated pawn an asset or a liability, what's better a Bishop or a Knight? The answer is the same to all these questions: "It...
Probably all chess players ask themselves at some point of their chess career: "Am I a positional chess player or a tactician?" Based on the answer to this question they choose openings and the general strategy of their games. But if you say...
One of the major strategic rules of chess is "Keep your King safe!". It is precisely due to this rule that a very common pin from many openings which start with 1. e4 e5 is especially dangerous. For example this one: We've all had a similar ex...
The Torre Attack is not a particularly popular opening these days. Wikipedia says that " The Torre Attack is rarely met in modern top-flight play, and statistical analysis shows that it is not particularly advantageous for White." Maybe so, b...
In last week's column we discussed a hustler's trick where he would offer you a position where you could choose White or Black and the hustler would take the opposite side and beat you. Sometimes top chess players borrow this trick from the hust...
In my new weekly column "Pros and Cons" I am aiming to show that a well known strategical concept can be both an advantage and a disadvantage for you, depending on the position. Today is the special Holiday edition of the column and for your ...
Before I explain the strange title of today's article, let me show you what kind of position we are going to discuss: This kind of position can happen in many different openings (we can assume that there ar...
Concluding our discussion about the positives and negatives of doubled pawns we cannot miss the numerous games played by Botvinnik. He was probably the first world class chess player who loved to have doubled pawns. I could show you literally doze...
In the previous part of our discussion about doubled pawns we could see that in the majority of cases such pawns are a clear disadvantage in the endgame. But what about openings and middle games? As we could see the major drawback of...
Last week we analyzed games where doubled pawns were a liability in the endgame and unless they were compensated by something else (like a pair of Bishops for example), the game was doomed. The next basic endgame is another example that in m...
Last week we started our investigation of the so-called 'weakness' of doubled pawns and I asked my readers to find a position where the mere existence of doubled pawns ruins the position. Many of you guessed correctly that the main drawback ...
If I had to choose the most popular misconception in chess, I wouldn't hesitate for a second. It is the so-called 'weakness' of doubled pawns. I cannot tell you my dear readers how many times I have encountered the same situation during anal...
