Vasily Smyslov a Chess Legend
Vasily Smyslov defeated Botvinnik to become the 7th world chess champion (1957-58). His reign was short since he lost the rematch the following year. Nonetheless, Smyslov remained a top chess player until he retired...
Tagged: Opening Theory
Game Spotlight: The Problem With Opening Books
As the world temporarily pulls away from public events, it’s a fine time to study to improve your Chess. As part of this, you may want to learn a new opening, or improve your...
Game Spotlight: The Next Step
So, you’re in the middle of learning a new opening. You started with the most fundamental variation. You’re focusing on middlegame plans for both you and your opponent. And you’ve looked at any important...
Game Spotlight: Critical Variations
As we’ve seen, there’s a way to organize to best learn a new opening. First, start off with the most fundamental variation, and get used to the middlegame ideas involved, while respecting the ideas your...
Game Spotlight: Opening Blind
While knowing a lot of opening theory isn’t helpful at the club level (you should be spending more time on tactics and endgames), it’s still important to know some. At least, if the position...
Game Spotlight: Being Inspired by the World Championship
The World Championship between Fabiano Caruana and Magnus Carlsen ended, with Carlsen keeping his title on tiebreaks. One of the unique features of this kind of match play, especially when there’s months to prepare,...
Game Spotlight: Building Your Repertoire/The Theory of Two Plans
Opening theory sits in a strange spot. On the one hand, knowing your openings well isn’t going to win you many games — that’s going to be your positional skills in the middlegame, your...
Game Spotlight: Planless Development
I mentioned in passing in a previous article that there was a fourth, less mentioned opening principle — develop with a plan. Where this normally shows up as a problem is the classic junior...
Game Spotlight: Understanding the Centre
Welcome to NCC’s Game Spotlight! In this column, we’ll be looking at a game each week of interest to club players, either because they were played at our tournaments, or they’re just good to...
