positional

Game four of the World Chess Championship match in London was drawn after only 34  moves. Magnus Carlsen was angry with allowing his challenger Fabiano Caruana such an easy draw with black. Carlsen switched to the English with white but seemed to be thinking even in a position that Caruana had previously had over the board and never seemed to seriously trouble his opponent.

Fabiano Caruana looking very solid today and neutralized the champ without much trouble. Magnus looking slightly fed up. Once again the home preparation of Caruana with black was better, despite that English opening came as a surprise from Carlsen.

Game 3 of the match ends in a draw, with Caruana getting a promising position out of the opening but then ending up worse by the end!

The opening was looking a bit boring even after Carlsen surprised everybody with Qc7. Looks like the strategy of Caruana is just to have a solid position with white without pushing for advantage. I think this shows the respect he has for Carlsen and maybe he is not confident enough to try to play sharper. Carlsen is a better positional player and even today he managed easily to move from clearly worse to slightly better just in a few moves.

Game 2 of the World Chess Championship Match is over. Everyone expected Carlsen to win after he missed a win in game 1 with Black. However, that’s not what happened. In fact, Fabiano Caruana was able to get an extra pawn in the rook endgame, which still ended in a draw after only 49 moves.

The Hollywood actor Woody Harrelson has made the first move of the match and he played 1.d4…

Caruana was amazed and asked can he take back the move!

It turned out later that this was a joke from the actor. Who would have predicted that the first game in this Match will be in Sicilian defense!?

The World Chess Championship 2018 is an upcoming chess match between the reigning world champion since 2013 Magnus Carlsen and challenger Fabiano Caruana to determine the World Chess Champion. The 12-game match, organized by FIDE and its commercial partner Agon, will be played in London, at The College in Holborn, between 9 and 28 November 2018.

What are some of the most common mistakes and regrets that the average chess player makes in his career? Every player has something that he regrets doing or better yet, not doing!

The lack of achievement usually has a cause. This is an interesting subject, especially to those with an unfulfilled goal or lack of improvement over the years.

In this article, we have elaborated a list of important things that chess players could have used earlier to obtain a higher level and improve his results faster.

Everybody wants to attack. Sac, sac, mate, the ideal game for many club players. But what about the poor player on the receiving end? I can assure you that he does not derive the same pleasure!

As much as we would want to, it simply is not possible for every game to turn out into an attacking masterpiece. Sometimes we end up in trouble and then we definitely do not want to become the co-authors of a brilliancy. How to avoid that fate?

Tactics are one of the most important aspects of the chess game, no doubt. A good tactical vision, an eye for tricks, imagination together with the ability to calculate are qualities desired by every chess player. The general thought among club players is that this ability (the sense for tactics) is more or less natural and you either have it or you don’t. There is some truth in this; however, natural born tacticians are few and most of us mere mortal players can learn, then train and become better at it. In this article we will give you 10 (!) training tips to help you improve your tactical vision regardless of your level.

How many of you have tried to get better at chess without fully achieving your ideal goal? This is not uncommon at the aficionado level. Even at more advanced level signs of being stuck in the same place appear often. What’s wrong then? It’s hard to give an answer to this question; after all, in chess, as in every other sport, each person is unique. However, here is a list of what we think are the most common reasons club players do not improve over the years, although they are trying to. The same reasons could be used for intermediate players who don’t take that leap onto the next higher level. The list is not done by the level of relevance, every aspect matters.

In this article, we are going to present another player who is perhaps less known to the wide public, but was one of the best players of his time. Henrique Mecking was born in Brazil in 1952 and was considered a prodigy child, is often compared to the famous Bobby Fischer. He won his first national title at the age of 13 and achieved the title of International Master at 15. This made him the first youngest International Master in history.

Mecking achieved the Grandmaster title in 1972 and qualified for the Candidates Tournament twice – in 1973, after winning the Petropilos Interzonal, and in 1976, after winning the Manila Interzonal. However, he never became World Championship, being eliminated both times in the quarterfinals, by Kortchnoj and Polugaevsky respectively. In 1977 he was ranked third in the World, behind Anatoly Karpov and Viktor Kortchnoj.