Articles

In today’s article, we continue talking about basic ideas and sacrifices any chess player should be aware of. We have covered so far the very well-known f7 (f2) and h7 (h2) sacrifices, the double bishop sacrifice, and the sacrifice on b5 that occurs mostly in the Sicilian Defense.

English Opening is one of white’s most solid start choices. It usually leads to closed positions with very few exchanges on the board. The battle is tense from the very beginning and there aren’t many forced lines for any side. In his prime, Garry Kasparov used the English Opening quite often, achieving remarkable wins and […]

The 4th FIDE World Cup in Composing was held early this year by WFCC. The studies section received as many as 49 problems. Here is the winner of the First Prize.

Many openings, like the Alapin variation against the Sicilian, the Rubinstein (4.e3) versus the Nimzo Indian, the Panov Attack against the Caro Kan, have in common that, very often, white gets an isolated queen’s pawn in the middlegame and eventually, after exchanges, hanging pawns arise.  

Dare to Try 2.Be2!? Sicilian Defense occupies a huge percentage of the training and study time of the majority of chess players, and it is no secret. Working out the mainlines of the most popular choices for black, memorizing forced variations, or finding novelties in critical positions is all part of the day-to-day training.

Many chess players ask me the same questions over and over again. The most common questions involve the big 3: anxieties before and during the game, barriers that prevent them from improving at chess, and obstacles that disallow focusing on chess, sticking to the plan and reaching the goals. In today’s article, you will learn […]

It is a mystery for many chess players how the masters and grandmasters are able to outplay others with such an ease. Some chess players even think that those elite players have some special abilities that allow them to calculate all variations 25 moves ahead, memorize most of the known opening lines, and possess Houdini-like […]

    New in Chess Yearbook 114 Softcover: 256 pages New in Chess. 2015 “David meets Goliath!” They said when Wesley So faced Vassily Ivanchuk at Wijk-aan-Zee Tournament this year and they weren’t wrong. As Black, So came up with a TN in Ruy Lopez and trounced the Ukranian maverick.

In chess, the f7 (f2) square is well known as the “Achilles Heel” of the position. The name has been given from the fact that this is the weakest point in each player’s camp. If you take a look at every initial pawn square, you will notice that this one is the only one that’s […]

Continuing our series of typical sacrifices in the middlegame, we are going to present you in this article the double bishop sacrifice. It starts out as a classical bishop sacrifice on h7 (h2), but giving up the other bishop too on g7 (g2) can prove devastating for the king’s security.