People who know me know also that I have a soft spot for chess sets from the Philippines. I have commented on Staunton chess sets from the Philippines before. Today, I will show you something more exotic, the so called Moro chessmen. To start with an example, here is a specimen from my collection. The
Gerard Welling reached the IM title in 1992, he has won few international Open tournaments, and recently authored a book based on the creative genius of IM Michael Basman who has authored many books on creative openings, risky openings… openings which clearly bring the opponents out of their comfort zone (Nepo should have bought the
DN: Spider Man was bitten by a radioactive spider, Captain America was a secret army experiment in creating a super soldier, what is your super hero story which brought you to the chess world? ST: A really interesting question! My story is a bit particular. When I was very young I suffered an infection that
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