Review: Winning Chess Middlegames

Ivan Sokolov’s Winning Chess Middlegames - an Essential Guide to Pawn Structures has already received so much positive feedback from reviewers that it seems difficult to say something different about the book. I had very high expectations of this recent New in Chess top selling book, but after such extraordinary praise, I must admit I was slightly disappointed. How is that possible? Read more

Review: Instructive Modern Chess Masterpieces (2nd edition)

Igor Stohl’s Instructive Modern Chess Masterpieces is written in the tradition of classic chess books such as Tarrasch’s Dreihundert Schachpartien and Nimzowitsch’s Die Praxis Meines Systems: serious game analysis put in a broader context of chess developments over time. The new enlarged edition, published by Gambit, contains over 100 pages of new material and is a treasure for chess players who didn’t know the first edition yet. Read more

What baby names can tell you about chess openings

If you have kids, you’ve probably thought hard about how to name your child. Should you choose a ’special’ kind of name, or rather a very trendy or well-known one? Popularity is an important aspect when it comes to choosing virtually anything. The same goes for chess openings: do you want to go for popular main lines or for ‘off beat’ variations? Read more

Logos and cigarettes

This week ChessBase published translations of two interesting interviews, with FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov and with UEP President Joseph Resch, about the 2008 Anand-Kramnik match, the 2010-2011 World Championship cycle and the failed negotiations between FIDE and UEP. I found myself agreeing with the FIDE President for the first time in my life…
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Eljanov dominates Bosna 2009

It’s not always easy keeping track of all the super tournaments that are going on in the world. Apart from the US Championship and the M-Tel Masters in Sofia, the Sahovski Klub Bosna, Sarajevo, is currently holding its traditional tournament; a strong double round-robin featuring attractive players such as Pavel Eljanov, Sergey Movsesian and Wang Hao. Read more

Review: Botvinnik - Smyslov 1954, 1957, 1958

I wouldn’t have expected a book on a few World Championship matches of more than 50 years ago to reach the no. 1 spot in the New in Chess bestseller’s list, but that’s what happened last month. Then I discovered it contains a lot more than that. Botvinnik-Smyslov, Three World Chess Championship Matches, is a compilation of Mikhail Botvinnik’s writings on his matches against Vassily Smyslov, and it does not only contain his game analysis, but also his ’secret’ notebooks with his opening preparations and ‘novelties’ for the matches. This is exciting stuff indeed. Read more

Review: Play 1.b3!

It doesn’t happen often that a chess author makes me laugh, but Ilya Odessky is one of them. But that’s not all. Many reviews of his new book Play 1.b3!, published by New in Chess, are also extremely funny. The point is, most reviewers assume Odessky wrote an opening book, which only reveals they haven’t even read the book. This book is not about a chess opening at all. If I had to classify it, I’d say it was perhaps a postmodern novel. Read more

Zen and the Art of Chess Opening Maintenance

In two recent reports on the Grand Prix in Nalchik, my colleague-editor Michael Schwerteck wrote about how he hates the Petroff Defence - especially the way it’s played by all these super grandmasters. All these boring draws - blegh. And Michael’s clearly not the only one. Read more

Aronian’s finest hour (UPDATE: last video added!)

In what was arguably the finest round of the Grand Prix tournament in Nalchik, Levon Aronian managed to beat his direct competitor Peter Leko for first place in convincing and ravishing style. The rest of the games were equally entertaining. Read more

Kutin vs. Yazici: not justice, but chaos prevails

We received a letter from Ali Nihat Yazici, the President of the Turkish Chess Federation, concerning a recent arbitration in the court of Lausanne about an organizing dispute between the European Chess Union and the Turkish Chess Federation. Yazici’s letter speaks of justice, but to us, it seems only chaos prevails. A down-to-earth perspective is badly needed. Read more

Review: Chess Explained - The Grünfeld

It usually takes a while before beginning chess players realize there are also great chess openings for Black. For me, this moment came when I discovered the Grünfeld Defence. Here, finally, was a chess opening in which it was possible to create some of the rich dynamics usually reserved for playing with White. I remember xeroxing whole books on this great opening in the Max Euwe Centre in Amsterdam. This also made me discover another property of the Grünfeld: it’s a highly professional opening. An opening for grown-ups. Read more

Nalchik R9: Alekseev rises to the occasion

In another excellent round fight in Nalchik, Evgeny Alekseev climbed to shared first place after a fine win over Sergey Karjakin. Gata Kamsky finally won again, beating Grischuk with Black, and Etienne Bacrot scored his first win of the tournament after drawing eight. The rest of the games were very interesting draws. Video added. Read more

Chigorin’s queen move

Everybody has a favourite chess move. Many just love 23…Qg3. Tim Krabbé’s favourite is 16…Nc6. According to British Chess Magazine, it’s 47…Bh3. And a member of my local chess club is obsessed by the move 7.Ke3! in the Traxler Counter-Attack. These are all highly spectacular moves. My own favourite is the very modest queen-shuffle 2.Qe2. Read more

Nalchik R5: Solid preparation and human drama

Chess is a difficult game. Not only because you have to make good moves, but also because you have to stay alert for many hours. However hard you’ve worked before, one tiny lapse of concentration can destroy hours of labour. This sadly happened to Gata Kamsky in the fifth round of the Nalchik Grand Prix against Vladimir Akopian. Of course, all over the internet people immediately reacted as if they didn’t understand what had happened. Read more

Charles Hertan wins ChessCafe Book of the Year Award

Since the year 2000, ChessCafe, famous for its book reviews, holds a voters competition for the award of ‘ChessCafe.com Book of the Year’. In the past, big chess authors such as John Nunn and John Watson have won the award. Now, little-known FM Charles Hertan has won it for the year 2008, ahead of Lars Bo Hansen and… Garry Kasparov. Read more

Team chess for fun and team chess for blood

I’ve always found it difficult to take the concept of chess as a team sport very seriously. The U.S.A., arguably the country most obsessed with team sports, didn’t have a national chess team competition until 2005. Makes you wonder, doesn’t? Then there’s the fact that a team sport seems to require by definition, cooperation - which is pretty much the only thing strictly forbidden during a chess game. And without cooperation, what is a team but a random collection of individuals pursuing their own individual goals?
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Review: The Black Swan in Chess

This is not a review of an actual chess book that was recently published. However, the article was inspired by a book, and I really wish someone would write this book with a view to chess. I’m talking about The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, which is about ’the impact of the highly improbable’. Read more

Copyright on chess moves - shadows on the wall?

Last week, ChessBase was apparently ‘forced to cease Internet broadcasting of the Topalov-Kamsky match’. As we noted in our report on the first match game, live broadcasting of the chess moves in this match without permission was prohibited by the Bulgarian Chess Federation (although they didn’t seem to have a problem with Chessdom’s, Crestbook’s, ICC’s and TWIC’s live coverage). This has led to heated discussions on this site. The key question here is: can you copyright a chess move at all? Read more

Review: Kasparov - How his predecessors misled him about chess

Every chess player grows up learning combinations that work. As a kid, you learn to ’spot the combo’ quickly and you’re told that you will profit from this knowledge ever after. There’s hundreds of books that are written according to this method. But in real life, sadly, combinations often do not work at all. Where are the books written about this phenomenon? Now, we have one. Read more

FIDE’s odds

One of the strangest news items concerning the upcoming World Chess Challenge match Topalov-Kamsky was published not on some obscure chess blog, but on the main page of the FIDE.com site. Its headline runs ‘The chances of Topalov and Kamsky are fifty fifty‘. I was instantly curious, since it seemed clear to me that Topalov was the absolute favorite. Read more

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