Latest Posts - Page 111
Many chess players know about two different types of games: positional and tactical. Tactical positions are the ones where tactics predominates the decision making. But what if there is no tactics present on the board? How do you proceed in your game? That is where many players get stuck and don’t know what to do. The answer lies in positional chess. Let’s learn that “what” and “how”.
Another important element of the chess strategy is the presence of opposite color bishops on the board. Inexperienced players tend to think that every position with opposite color bishops is drawish. This common stereotype very often leads them to make small positional mistakes.
For example, simplifying the game to enter into an opposite color bishops middlegame/endgame without taking in consideration other important factors. In this article, we are going to show the main ideas to keep in mind when playing this type of positions.
King and pawn endgames and their 3 very important positions will be explored in today’s article by WGM Meenakshi Subbaraman.
In order to win or draw these positions you need to have a high level of chess creativity and out-of-the-box thinking.
You will learn that often in pawn endgames the most logical move is, in fact, a losing one.
In modern chess, the bishop pair has been established as a positional advantage in the majority of cases. It’s very common nowadays to hear teachers tell their students ‘keep your bishops’ or ‘capture that bishop’. In today’s chess, the importance given to this element has increased to the point that in some of the most popular opening variations, the main goal has become gaining the bishop pair.
How many hours per day you do you need to spend on training chess? That’s a pretty common question that chess players are asking day and night. Is there a magic number of hours you need to invest on daily basis to become a FIDE master or a Grandmaster?
Is it the same for all chess players? You can get an answer on these questions straight from the GM Sergey Shipov (2662 peak elo).
In today’s article WGM Raluca Sgîrcea and IM Renier Castellanos conclude the detailed discussion of Sicilian Najdorf. We will focus on the most common middlegame structures that arise in the Sicilian Defense. In order to be proficient in this opening and be able to play it on a high level, you need to be familiar with these structures.
2014 is drawing to a close. Arguably, the year belonged to Fabiano Caruana. The Italian talent quietly stole a march over others and presented the most credible challenge to Magnus Carlsen, the reigning world champion.
As is known, he scored a phenomenal 8.5/10 points in the 2nd Sinquefield Cup Tournament far ahead of Carlsen who registered only 5.5 /10. Magnus was bogged down by some tough draws and his only loss was to Fabiano. Here we present the encounter, a battle royal.
Later Carlsen wrote in his blog, “With white against Caruana I made several mistakes in the opening, and by the time I understood I was worse I was already in trouble. When he allowed the interesting bishop sacrifice on f7 I felt the game could go either way. Despite the ensuing complications, he played the rest of the game very accurately.”
That is for now. Magnus is bound to even the score when they meet next time.
Watch this space!
Protected passed pawn is one of the strongest structures in the pawn endgame. Not only does it threaten promotion but also it cannot be captured by the opponent’s king since it is protected by another pawn.
Protected passer gives a huge positional advantage in the king and pawn endgame, because it restricts the opponent king’s movement, and allows your own king to gain space and activity.
ChessBase Magazine is the flagship of ChessBase and released every two months.
Our columnist offers review of a recent issue-Ed.
Previously we have talked about the most common problems that adult chess players are facing when they are trying to improve their game. Today we will explore this topic a little deeper. We will talk about the most common flaws that chess players of different strength levels have.
