Turning European

This is just a very short entry, to tell all readers of this blog that they are required to click here and read the continuation of Bryan Smith’s travelogue in Europe. His series, “A Traveling Chess Player,” is the best writing ever on chess.com....

Master class

Last weekend I had an opportunity to attend a class for masters (and a few experts) that was led by grandmaster Varuzhan Akobian. Akobian was teaching kids at the Berkeley Chess School last week, and my friend Robin Cunningham, who also works at the Berkeley Chess...

Murder, Shirov wrote

Many of you have probably already seen the game from earlier this month where Viswanathan Anand destroyed Alexei Shirov (as Black!) in 17 moves. However, I feel as if I should say something about it because it is an ultra-rare appearance in top-level chess of an...

Don’t give up yet!

My fellow ChessLecturer, International Master Bryan Smith, just finished a very interesting series of three articles at chess.com, which you can find here, here and here. They’re very amusing and fun to read, and I don’t want to give away too much, so...

The Hardest Endgame?

What is the hardest “normal” endgame in chess?  I think the answer is probably K+Q+RP vs. K+Q. A few years ago no less an authority than Vassily Smyslov wrote a series of columns on this endgame for “64” magazine (in Russian), and you could...