While the Isolated Queen Pawn (IQP) structure is probably the best-known general structure, the closely related structure of Hanging Pawns is also quite important. For the serious player, I think it's quite useful to study typical middlegame patt...
I recently played a series of 4 events in Europe, and the first of those was in Seville, Spain. I tied for first in this tournament, and my best game of the tournament was my win against the young Argentine GM Damian Lemos. Here's how that game st...
The most difficult thing in chess it is to win a winning position--Emmanuel Lasker, 2nd World Chess Champion All of us have faced a situation when we had a totally winning position and didn't win it for one reason or the other. This can be quite ...
Continuing last week's story about the '09 Russian Superfinal, I would like to share with you my game from round 3 against the experienced 2-time vice-World Champion IM Alisa Galliamova, who also happens to be the ex-wife of GM Vassilii Ivanchuk....
{ed note: GM Vinay Bhat is on a lengthy tour of foreign tournaments, and will be replaced for two months by WGM Pogonina, who I believe requires no further introduction to the chess.com audience. She will continue with the column's theme of sharin...
Happy new year to all! After my win against IM Alonso Rosell (http://www.chess.com/article/view/calling-an-audible) in round 8, I faced the young Bulgarin IM, Kiprian Berbatov, in the last round. In the morning round, I didn't play particularly ...
There were some comments inquiring why b4 is better than the normal Ne1 or Nd2. I am not saying it is better or worse, it is an alternative and time will show how good it is. Positionally, it makes perfect sense: white gets space w...
I don't work on my openings as much as I'm sure the very top GMs do (mostly because I have so many other areas of my game to work on), but I do try to spend some time every week looking at some opening line in depth. Back in August, in preparatio...
I would like to apologize for the error in the last column, which prevented the viewers from seeing the analyzed games. It is corrected now and you can go over the games. It has been almost a year since I started writing the weekly column and ab...
The World Cup is still continuing in Siberia. There are only eight players left. There are no Americans left as Gata Kamsky was eliminated in Round 3 by the young Filipino superstar Wesley So, whose exploits include a Round 2 victo...
Exchanges play an important role in modern chess. Even though the chess that we see today is marked by heavy pre-analysis by computers and superb opening preparation, it has not lost its positional elements. When one decides which pieces to exchan...
Once again, I will deviate from the topic of my chess column – exchanges. In this column I will present some thoughts on practical tournament strategies based on my own experience. There is much advice of what to do when one does not do well in th...
This article will address the question of queen exchanges. Particularly, we will look into positions where one side forced the queen exchange to get some advantage in return. The opponent’s doubled pawns can be considered an advantage for us, for ...
More than a half of a century has passed since David Bronstein wrote probably one of the best chess books that have ever been written: “ Zurich International Chess Tournament, 1953.” The book is about the tournament that gathered fifteen of the...
The last article was about how to collect a library of positions and use it to improve your chess. This would improve your technique, increase the quantity of familiar positions, and make you overall a better player, but chess is a game too and on...
Hi again everyone, This time we will try to take a look at how black can answer a variation which a lot of sources consider to be critical to the whole survival of the Dragon. I’ve tried to include a lot of possible deviations for black that c...
Two years ago I spent the summer in Ukraine, a chess Mecca, took chess lessons, played a couple of tournaments. In theory I know many methods that are designed to improve your chess, but in practice I hardly ever put any of them to...
Hi guys, you know the rules to predicting these games, stop when you hit the highlighted portions and answer before moving on. Take all the time you want and good luck! Almasi,Zoltan - Watson,William N German Bundesliga, 1995 1.e4 c...
Before playing in the Montreal International this fall, I spent a good amount of time studying strong GM games (usually Kasparov games) and middlegames, but I also spent some time reviewing some technical endgames and my openings. For such a stro...
I just came back from the US Women’s Championship and want to share with you my impressions as well as chess game fragments. First of all, I would like to thank all the chess.com fans who were rooting for me during the Championship; it is amazing ...
One of the main ways to combat the Stonewall Defense is to break down Black's strong central pawn chain with f2-f3 and then e2-e4. Assuming there are pawns on c4 and d4, the pressure on d5 will likely force some action, leaving the e6-pawn weak in...
Hi everyone, this is my first article after a long time and like the previus ones this is written for guys with rating around 1800-1900. This article have a purpose to familiar you with some basic structure which arise from Budapest gambit. I play...
In this article I would like to give my thoughts on an important subject matter, but I warn you in advance there are no chess positions; I took a so- called chess break. I hope the reader will forgive me… Today, I woke up in the middle of the n...
After the Bacrot game from the 4th round that I went over last week, I had the white pieces against Tiviakov. This was maybe my best game of the event, but in light of my upcoming event in Texas (the SPICE Cup, group B), I didn't quite have enough...
