Openings

My friend, Max has fallen in love. No, not with a rosy-cheeked damsel that you may have imagined. But with Modern Benoni, a brilliant system for Black against d4. This morning he could not help gushing over his newfound love.

Openings: Having a well-prepared opening repertoire is one of the main goals that a chess player should work for. From a very early age we are told that studying openings is not as important as studying endgames for example, or like strengthening our middle-game skills by doing a different type of training.

Picking an Opening: Knowing your openings well is one of the main goals for every chess player. It is an issue that will probably go along with you during your whole career. No matter if you are an amateur or a professional player, openings will always be a matter of concern. The theory grows with […]

Every chess player wants to learn opening traps not only to safeguard themselves from unexpected trouble but also to use them as weapons to win games. There are many basic and well-known traps like Fools and Scholar mate that everyone knows about. Here we will discuss far more sophisticated and advanced traps that happened in […]

Hedgehog is one of the most popular set-ups for black nowadays and it can arise from several openings. However, it is one that’s not to everyone’s taste. Black willingly gives white a space advantage right from the start and chooses a compact position where his pieces are placed behind the wall of pawns. After the […]

Torre attack against the Fianchetto Defenses has been already studied once. It is time to have a look inside the equally popular Nimzo / Queen’s Indian tandem.

Torre Attack Against the Indian Defenses: There are many solid ways to play 1.d4, nowadays the most popular being the London System (2.Bf4) partially thanks to the efforts of Gata Kamsky and his excellent results in this line. However, there is another sideline that is an excellent weapon to fight against the tactical King’s Indian […]

Chess Master and You: What are the differences? A lot of players wonder, what are the main differences between an ordinary player and a chess master? Is that the fact that masters can calculate many more moves ahead and instantly find 5 move tactics? Or does it have to do with experience, intuition, and luck? […]

Fort Knox Variation in The French Defense: The French defense is a very popular choice nowadays among chess players of all levels. It’s quite flexible and it offers black unbalanced positions almost in any line. In this article, we will have an inside look at the so-called Fort Knox variation of the French and we […]

Ragozin Defense has become very popular nowadays against the move 1.d4. Given its flexibility in the move order, black can employ it in different move orders, depending on white’s starting move.