For a western chess player stalemate is a kind of curse or blessing depending on which side one is. If he’s losing the game, clearly a blessing, if he’s winning the game a curse. In XiangQi stalemate is ruled as a win. Yet for a western chess player who’s learning XiangQi, to see the “stalemate
It’s exciting for me to see how my favorite training tool can be downloaded in less than 3 minutes!! 3 GB of intense chess training on my HD and ready to go on a Saturday morning I don’t have to go to work, and I can finsally enjoy every drop of chess wisdom given to
In my opinion (accent on “mine”) this book is not really about a child who accomplished something amazing, and of course at the same time it is, because there are 42 annotated games, and it’s about chess. In my opinion this book is about “family,” this book is about “values” which have been lost in
Understanding the endgame is fundamental to playing good chess, and at its heart lie positions where just kings and pawns remain on the board. Even when a pawn ending is not actually reached, the players must often assess ones that could arise from an exchange of pieces. And an error calculating a pawn ending is normally fatal.
Questions of pawn-structure, and thus decisions made early in the game, can be fully understood only when we appreciate how they impact the possible pawn endings.
This book takes a practical angle, so is the perfect complement to Secrets of Pawn Endings, which examines their theory in detail. Experienced trainer Bogdanov examines a wealth of pawn endings where strong players made significant errors, and draws lessons and rules of thumb from them. While we are enjoying the entertaining material in this book, we are painlessly absorbing endgame principles and improving our intuitive decision-making skills. We learn how to calculate and identify key positional elements, and appreciate the beautiful tactics and paradoxical ideas that are unique to the world of pawns.
One of the myths of the chess world is that knowing by heart a series of games, like in Ziyatdinov work, or a series of chess positions like one of Caruana’s trainers mentioned, will bring us to master level. We also have the myth that by doing over and over some positions we will reach
Chess proficiency is definitely linked to tactical understanding. Many games are won or lost because one of the two players failed to spot a tactical shot. If one wants to become stronger at chess, this book can show the way!
Playing styles in chess are an important topic. GM Mueller and Engel show us a model based on 4 type of players, which we can eventually begin to use to prepare for our tournament opponents.
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 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”