Openings

WGM Raluca Sgircea, IM Renier Castellanos
01.29.2018

King’s Indian Defense has a well-deserved reputation for spectacular battles often terminated with a massacre on White’s kingside castle. What’s most popular than the King’s Indian Defense against 1.d4? Probably nothing. The philosophy behind this defense has always been the same, black plays a kingside fianchetto regardless of what white plays and then he attacks […]

WGM Raluca Sgircea, IM Renier Castellanos
01.07.2018

Opening Traps and Tricks: How many times do we lose a game or get a clearly worse position right out of the opening because we don’t know the secrets and hidden traps in it? As a beginner, it happens many times over the board and it seems like this is the only way we had […]

WGM Raluca Sgircea, IM Renier Castellanos
01.05.2018

Slav Defense begins after the moves 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 and is one of the most popular choices against the Queen’s Gambit. This defense bears its name due to the number of masters from Slavic countries that started developing it and introduced it into tournament practice. Some of them were Alekhine, Bogoljubow, and Vidmar. The […]

WGM Raluca Sgircea, IM Renier Castellanos
01.03.2018

Grunfeld, one of the most popular defenses for black today against 1.d4, is employed by both top players and amateurs who like to play active and look for complications with the black pieces. Some of the strong players who have successfully used it are Vasily Smyslov, Viktor Korchnoi, Bobby Fischer, Garry Kasparov (in the match […]

WGM Raluca Sgircea, IM Renier Castellanos
11.10.2017

1.d4 Opening and why not to play it: From the very first moment we get into competitive chess we understand the importance of having a solid opening repertoire. However, once we set the goal of creating one, we realize it is not as easy as it seemed. Before getting to the complicated theoretical lines, you […]

WGM Raluca Sgircea, IM Renier Castellanos
11.07.2017

1.e4 Opening and why not play it. Since we get started in chess we are hit by the ever-lasting decision of choosing our first move. I can’t speak for every chess player, but most of my generation started like that. Those with a positional inclination chose to play 1.d4 or 1.c4 while those with a […]

WGM Raluca Sgircea, IM Renier Castellanos
10.23.2017

Openings and preparing them. Nowadays it is common knowledge that good game preparation plays a major role in achieving success in over-the-board tournaments. Opening preparation has become a habit for any active player and many spend an impressive amount of hours before the game trying to find the right opening idea in order to get […]

Yury Markushin
08.19.2017
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Yury Markushin
08.19.2017

Opening preparation is a very important step in any player’s career. It is next to impossible to play high-level chess without proper opening preparation. Almost all players realize that, but nevertheless they miss some very important yet extremely powerful ideas when it comes to the openings.  The good news is you won’t need to spend […]

WGM Raluca Sgircea, IM Renier Castellanos
07.22.2017

Aggressive Openings for Club Players as Black: Following our previous article about aggressive opening suggestions for white, we will present now a few options to choose from when playing with the black pieces. Of course, it can be more difficult to reach the type of position you want. Also, you can struggle with starting an […]

WGM Raluca Sgircea, IM Renier Castellanos
07.19.2017

Aggressive Openings for Club Players as White: In our previous articles, we have given a selection of systems [for white and for black] that could be played without having to learn much theory in order to focus on understanding the middlegame and endgames and raise your rating. In today’s article, we will list a few […]