Last week I shared a win of mine from Cappelle la Grande 2010. That win against IM Jorge Cori took me to 6/8, and in the last round, I was black against GM Yuriy Kryvoruchko. For whatever reason, I failed to sense the critical moments in this game...
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...
Last week, I shared my best game from Seville. This time, I'll move on to my second tournament of the trip in Gibraltar (the GibTelecom Masters) and show my best game from there. After a win in the first round, I had drawn my next 3 games against...
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...
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 ...
In my last tournament in Navalmoral, I finished with 7.0/9 and in clear 3rd place behind Fedorchuk (who beat me in a game I annotated here last I week: http://www.chess.com/article/view/building-a-fortress). I had 5.0/7 going into the last day, an...
I recently completed a tournament in Navalmoral de la Mata (Spain) where I finished with 7.0/9. My only loss of the event was to the top seed, GM Sergey Fedorchuk, in the 3rd round (Fedorchuk coasted to first place with 7.5/9). The game featured a...
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...
One of the characteristics about modern chess is the fluidity of material values. When Morphy and Andersson were ruling the roost, sacrifices were common, but they were often with a clear tactical goal in mind - get the opponent's king stuck in th...
The USCL (http://www.uschessleague.com/) is the American version of a national chess team league. In the fall, 14 teams in 2 conferences battle it out in matches with 4 boards apiece. I've played in the USCL for the San Francisco Mechanics since t...
Going into the last round of the SPICE Cup in Texas, I was tied for 2nd place with GM Eugene Perelshteyn and IM Ray Robson with 5.0/8. IM Ben Finegold was leading with 6.0/8, and was playing Eugene in the last round. Ray had black against FM Danie...
In my last tournament, the SPICE Cup in Texas, I had 4 blacks out of 9 games. The first 3 blacks I had all saw my opponents open with 1.e4 (I wrote about the first game last week, at http://www.chess.com/article/view/pawn-power). While I've normal...
In July at the World Open, Ray Robson beat me in a very complicated Poison Pawn Winawer. I got my second crack at the new US hope at the SPICE Cup in the 3rd round. As at the World Open, I had the black pieces, and while the opening was a very dif...
After playing in Montreal, which I wrapped up with a loss to Naiditsch in the 11th round (covered at: http://www.chess.com/article/view/developing-an-opening-repertoire), I had a week off before playing another strong round-robin. This one was in ...
For better or for worse, the opening tends to be the aspect of the game that gets the most attention. More books have been written about that phase than the middlegame and endgame combined. This importance, though, is probably overstated at lower ...
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...
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...
The past two weeks, I've shared my games from rounds 4 and 6 of the Montreal International. This week, I want to share my game from the 5th round, as white against GM Sergei Tiviakov. With a draw against Bacrot in the books, I was looking to take...
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...
I recently competed in a very strong Category 15 tournament in Montreal. There were 12 players, 8 invitees and 4 qualifiers. I qualified by finishing 3rd in the Quebec Championship in June (from which I have already discussed a few games in this c...
The Art of Stealing by IM Jeremy Silman A chess professional has to do many forms of chess preparation: If he’s having trouble in endgames and technical positions, he has to do a detailed study of that phase of the game. If he finds that he ofte...
This game was from the last round of the Continental Championship in Brazil. After my loss to Vescovi (analyzed in my last article), I had 4/6. I then proceeded to struggle horribly, scoring only 1/3 against lower-rated opposition. I won my 10th r...
In my last tournament in Brazil (the Pan-American Continental Championship), I started with a solid 4.0/5 and in round 6 had the black pieces against GM Giovanni Vescovi. I was expecting 1.e4, but as he plays pretty much everything with the white ...
My last tournament in Brazil was a bit of a disaster, but I still played a few games that I think will be of use to show. In the first game I want to show you, my opponent played one of the oldest known openings, the Giuoco Piano. However, the lin...
The 2008 World Championship match between Anand and Kramnik was largely decided based on one opening - the Meran Variation of the Semi-Slav. Anand scored two victories in games 3 and 5, as black, that carried him to an insurmountable lead. In th...
