WGM Raluca Sgîrcea - tag

Building an Attack: You look at great attacking games in the history of chess and everything looks so easy and logical. Then you go to the game, inspired and ready to create a deadly attack, but somehow that’s not as easy to achieve as you thought in the first place. So, how do they do […]

Catalan is one of the most common opening choices for white. In earlier times, you could mostly see it at the top level. Today, it has slowly become very popular everywhere. Also, nowadays, it is one of the top choices at every level and is a usual guest at almost every tournament. The bishop on […]

Opening: Which one is the best for me? Having a well-developed, solid repertoire is an important step in improving your level as a chess player. Middlegame knowledge, endgame knowledge, tactics, and strategy are all very important too, but they all fail if you don’t manage to get a good, playable position out of the opening, […]

The French defense (1..e6) is one the most popular responses to 1.e4 in contemporary chess tournaments. It gives black possibilities to create unbalanced positions in a very early stage of the game. Unlike the Sicilian, the positions arising are considerably more closed, with pawns chains in the center.