botvinnik - tag
Positions with the isolated pawn are often misunderstood, which many times leads to the fear of playing this type of position. The common concept is that the isolated pawn is a weakness (and it is!) and we know that we should avoid creating weaknesses in our position. This general idea is correct, but there are […]
It is not easy to achieve positional mastery. The reason is that in order to do so one must follow the path of the development of chess since Morphy up until today. To give you a better idea here is a very brief description of what you would learn. Here is an (in)complete list of […]
A game of chess is a complex affair. It starts long before the first move has been played. It starts at home. For chess, the wise words of Benjamin Franklin, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail” are applicable to the fullest. But how do you prepare? For now we will leave the […]
Stonewall: The Dutch Defense is a popular choice against 1.d4 among club players, although not that often seen at the top level. Nevertheless, it has been used by many strong players, such as ex-World Champions Alexandr Alekhine and Mikhail Botvinnik, Bent Larsen, Miguel Najdorf, Artur Yussupov, Nigel Short. It has also been employed from time […]
Nowadays there are many chess players who focus a lot on theory and trying to get an advantage, even the slightest one, in the resulting middlegame. With the advance of technology and all the strong engines available, the search for novelties is constant. Many players invest a lot of time in learning long complicated lines […]
Another important figure of classical chess is former World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik. He was born in the Soviet Union, in a region of what is now Saint Petersburg. He learned chess at the age of twelve, from a school friend of his older brother’s and fell in love with the game immediately. His first success […]
Mikhail Botvinnik is considered to be one of the greatest chess players in the world, and 3 time World Champion. He was also a prominent chess coach, with students including Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik. Today we will take a look at 10 of Botvinnik’s best chess games.
In his reviews of the first two volumes (Botvinnik Review I and Botvinnik Review II) of the trilogy chessbibliophile examined Botvinnik’s road to world championship and the immediate aftermath. Here he deals with the final phase of his career and don’t miss the videos (1,2,3,4). -Ed.
