My 2021 Year In Review

NM CoachJKane

Updated: Dec 11, 2021, 5:55 PM | 2

Hey Chess Friends,

2021 was an exciting year for chess as a whole. We continued with the Queen's Gambit boom from last year and witnessed exciting candidates and title matches. For me personally, the chess highlight of the year was releasing my book on resistance in chess, The Next To Last Mistake. I had a few nice defensive moments this year that could make a future edition of the book. See if you can solve them.

How can Black survive?

White to play and draw.

White to play and win:

One more funny moment: my opponent drew with Kxa4 here. Afterward, the computer pointed out the following incredibly long forced mate.

Attacking play:

Maybe my most memorable game of the year was against GM Simon William. It was nominated for the Chess.com Immortal Game contest and I made a video about it.

This game was even more sacrificial. The engines think that some of them aren't necessary, but they have no sense of beauty.

I was proud of this short game, which featured a rare gambit and then an attack that persisted even after the queen trade.

This quick game scored a 99.5 accuracy from the analysis engines. It was satisfying to punish Black's dubious opening.

I enjoyed this one against a strong German GM.

And some similar attacking ideas against another GM...

And we can't get enough sacrifices...

This one went viral on Twitter, which was a fun experience.

And this one was played on the same day!

I was sadly on the wrong end of this one, but I was impressed by the Hungarian IM's play.

One of my favorite opening traps...

Another tactical shot against a GM...

Some odds and ends...

I remembered how to turn off autoqueen fast enough in this game.

Here I played one of my best games of the year with a nice double sacrifice.

Then he was nice enough to let me do it again the next day.

Finally, here's maybe my greatest team of marching pawns to date.

It's been quite a year! Please feel free to share your personal highlights or ask any questions about the book in the comments.

Thanks for reading!

NM Jeremy Kane

Jeremy Kane is a National Master and three-time Wisconsin state champion. He is the Director of Training Content for Chess.com. He has been teaching chess in person and online for over 15 years and has designed hundreds of lessons, available on chess.com/lessons. He is the author of Starting Out The Trompowsky on Chessable and The Next To Last Mistake, a book on defensive ideas in chess.

He is the developer of the Caro-Kane Variation of the Caro-Kann Defense.

email: [email protected]

Twitter/X: @chessmensch

My 2021 Year In Review

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