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
Olympic Secrets For Club Players
Olympic Secrets For Club Players: I have been a member of my country’s Olympic team for more than a decade. In the last year, my job also included “the other side” as a coach of the women’s national team. These two roles gave me a unique perspective on the preparation a national team does before […]2 Lesser-Known Patterns In The Sicilian Defense
Sicilian Defense: Good chess players have a lot of patterns as an integral part of their chess knowledge. These patterns are accumulated over the years as one’s knowledge of the game expands. Most of these patterns can be found in the games of the classical players, though bear in mind that in modern times players […]5 Must Know Defensive Strategies in The Carlsbad Structure
The Carlsbad structure, arising after the exchange of White’s c-pawn for Black’s e-pawn, most commonly from the Exchange Variation in the Queen’s Gambit Declined – 1 d4 d5 2 c4 e6 3 Nc3 Nf6 (or 3…Be7) 4 cd ed – is one of the most characteristic structures in modern chess. The Queen’s Gambit Declined is […]How to Beat a Club Player
I’ve beaten a few, so I should know, right? It used to be so easy. I would go on an open tournament and breeze through the first several rounds, without preparation or anything. Those days were only a bit busier than the rest days. In the 1990s club players didn’t know anything. They didn’t know […]Improving Calculation for Club Players
Chess is tactics. More than one strong player has said some variation of this truth. What does that mean? In simple words, it means that if you are not careful you will lose a pawn or a piece. How do you become careful then? It all starts with board awareness. At all times you should […]Black’s Top Options Against 1. e4
Against 1. e4: Here in Part III, we will take a look at Black’s options against 1 e4. As we noted in Part I of our analysis, White generally manages to steer the game towards his preferred lines after most of Black’s defenses against 1 e4. Our task here is to see which of those […]Opening Preparation For Club Players – Part II
Opening Preparation: In Part I, we saw what White has at his disposal on move 1. Here we will take a look at what Black can do when faced with each of White’s main moves (except for 1.e4, which will be dealt with in Part III). White’s 1.b3 was deemed impractical in our analysis in […]Practical Openings for White – For Club Players
Practical Openings for White: I already touched upon this subject in my previous article How To Train, where I addressed the technical aspects of how to choose an opening, how to study it afterward, and how to use the database and the engine. If you haven’t done so already, I strongly recommend you read it […]Chess Training According to GM Alex Colovic
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 […]Capablanca’s Endgame Technique
Capablanca’s Endgame Technique has always been one of my idols and the first conscious raise of my level happened after every day, 3-month study of his games. It was the winter of 2004-2005 and for three months, December, January, and February all I did was study and analyze Capablanca’s games every single day all day […]
