GM Alex Colovic - Author at TheChessWorld Blog
GM Alex Colovic is a professional chess player from North Macedonia, holding the Grandmaster title since 2013.
He is also a chess blogger, author, and trainer. He was elected as the General Secretary of the Association of Chess Professionals in 2016 and as its president in 2019.
He has a peak rating of 2516 and is currently ranked 6th in his country.
He grew up watching the Karpov-Kasparov matches in the 1980s and was fascinated by their stories.
He has authored numerous online courses and coaches students. He is fluent in English, Spanish, Russian, Italian, Serbian and Macedonian.
Chess Articles by GM Alex Colovic
Play King’s Indian Structures Like Bobby Fischer
King’s Indian Defense is one of the most complex openings in chess. This is so because it can lead to many different pawn structures with various underlying tactical and strategical ideas. In this article, I would like to explore how the great Bobby Fischer treated the positions in the Mar del Plata variation of the […]3 Best Openings for Beginners
Openings: A beginner may easily feel overwhelmed when facing the choice of what to play at the beginning of the game. There are so many openings, so much theory! What is he or she supposed to do? What are the best openings for beginners?Understanding Pawn Structures
Have you ever stopped and asked yourself in which positions you feel comfortable? I know that for a long time I did not. It is all too easy to get carried away with your repertoire, you choose to play the King’s Indian because you have seen a few beautiful games ending in some spectacular mating […]How to Learn Positional Play?
This is one of the most problematic aspects of learning when it comes to playing good chess. If the acquisition of tactical skills is more or less straight-forward: just solve an infinite number of tactical puzzles and you will be fine, the study of positional chess and improving your understanding is less concrete. I will […]Tactics and Calculation Training
The tactics and calculation training is the most important type of training a chess player can undertake if he or she is serious of his or her chess improvement. The reason for this is that all chess games are decided by tactics. You cannot win if the opponent does not make a mistake – hence […]How Good is My Chess: 6 Things to Check
There is no chess player who has not asked himself that question. And it is not about ratings or titles, because, let us be honest about this, we all think we are better than what those two parameters suggest. The question is a serious one because it does not only determine our current strength but […]This should NOT be played…
This should NOT be played: I have never considered myself an attacking player even though most of my games when I was young were decided by attacks on the king. I attribute it to youth and not feeling too comfortable in other areas of positional play. Still, I was good at seeing tactics and calculation, […]The Tarrasch Defence according to super-GM Dubov
Tarrasch Defence is a neglected one. It had its glory days in the late 1960s when Boris Spassky used it first in his Candidates match against Geller in 1965 and then as a very efficient weapon in his title-winning match against Petrosian in 1969 when he scored 1 win and 4 draws with it. The […]4 Best Openings for Black in ‘Must-Win’ Situations
Openings for Black: If Black wants to play for a win he has two general directions to choose from: he can try to equalize first and then outplay his opponent, or he can try to wrestle the initiative from White from the get-go. I would like to discuss the second option as it is often […]Equal Chess Positions: Playing Them
Equal Chess Positions: The engines really don’t care about us, humans, who have to play a position that they happily evaluate as equal. Feed it a symmetrical position with equal material and no apparent weaknesses and it will tell you it is “just equal,” sometimes even a “dead draw.”
