While living the American Dream, and making the IRS rich, my soul wanders to my true love: Chess. Luckily today, thanks to different social platforms one can read news, breath, and consume chess content 24/7. Chess has a plethora of characters, top GMs, endless titled players and other chess aficionados who are always ready to
Thanks to Daniel Vanheirzeele I had the chance to interview some of Thinkers Publishing top authors. Their kindness, professionalism, and sincerity in answering some simple questions gave as result a kaleidoscope of answers which puzzled me. They are all titled players, playing and being in the chess world for over 20 years, and yet they
October 2nd and 3rd were the dates for this great tournament which gathered a record number of players: 17! The winner was the strong Alisa Scherbakova who dominated the event with a great performance: 4.5 out of 5 points! These are the games she played: Scherbakova in 2018 won the Georgia Women’s Chess Champion title,
Listening FM Giannatos saying it’s important to read books with game collections, it made me think that today, thanks to technology, the chess improvement of an average player like me changed a lot. We can have a game collection with many annotated games every 2 months! How? Just getting the latest issue of Chessbase Magazine. A wealth of games coming from different tournaments, with different time controls, teaching us the latest ideas in terms of opening theory, as well as strategic maneuvers, or very important endgames one should know in order to convert a material advantage into a win.
Thanks to Thinkers Publishing (https://thinkerspublishing.com/) I had the chance to interview some of their authors, before the COVID plague hit the world. This interview presents GM Krasenkow who was born in Moscow in 1963 and became GM in 1989. Today such “slowness” in becoming GM would be considered a bad sign, or lack of “talent”
A long time ago, before COVID hit the world, I had the chance to talk to GM Alexander Ipatov and ask him how he became the strong player he is today. In this interview we can discover more on the genesis of a top grandmaster. How many hours a day he was studying when he
Often it is said one should learn chess first by learning the endgames. Unfortunately those who repeat such phrase like parrots don’t really understand there is another phase of the game which should be taught first, and which is as well as important: the checkmates! Learning checkmates should be fundamental, because it will introduce the
by Manuel Aaron Recently Vijay Pandit, the Indian chess historian passed away. Covid-19 claimed yet another precious life. Apart from numerous articles on chess history, Pandit authored quite a few books. They include Ahmedabad 1955, Western Chess in British India and the Indian Chess History (co-authored with Manuel Aaron). -Ed. It’s with great sorrow that
One of the best of the west, Timman belongs to that category of players who reached the final match for the world championship, but weren’t able to win it. Yet he won endless top tournaments ahead of the reigning world champions.
Remembering Vijay Pandit
by Nagesh Havanur I met Vijay Pandit at the end of 1970 or so. At that time I lived and worked in Mumbai. When I learnt about his passion for chess history I wanted to visit him as I was already an avid collector of chess books and magazines. I phoned him and he gave
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