Game Spotlight: Training Games
To stay fresh while there aren’t any Chess tournaments, two of our league players organized a training match on Chess.com. Roberto (robvilarr) and Peter (Greenruth) agreed to play two live games at 30 minutes/game...
Tagged: strategy
Game Spotlight: Steinitz’s Rules
There is a tendency, as players get better as Chess, to follow history. This is especially true when it comes to early Chess history. So we get good at tactics first, and play like...
Game Spotlight: Four Decades of Simple Chess
For those of us trying to improve our Chess while at home, it might be better overall to look at general theory books rather than opening books. Previously, I’ve looked at the most influential...
Game Spotlight: Know Your Middlegame Plans
While I’ve written before about how to learn an opening, it’s worth pointing out exactly why the focus should be on learning how to handle everything after the opening moves stop. As an example,...
Game Spotlight: Your Worst Piece
A significant number of openings (notably the French Defence and the Queen’s Gambit Declined) feature a “bad” piece. Because of the way a player chooses to develop, it becomes difficult for one of their...
Game Spotlight: Positional Blunders
While I was inputting the games for the 61st Nairobi Chess Club Open Championship, I noticed one of the games had a well-known play mistake. Unlike the blunders seen here, though, this one was...
Game Spotlight: Know Your Enemy
When learning an opening, it’s easy to get excited about all the possibilities. You get to see all the ways your side can win. But you can’t focus on that alone. Take some time...
Game Spotlight: Nine Decades of My System
The most influential of chess strategy books, Aron Nimzowitsch’s My System, was published in 1925. By codifying his own theories arising from games he played as well as contemporary masters like Steinitz, Tarrasch, Lasker,...
Game Spotlight: The Minority Attack
A significant part of opening a game deals with the pawns. Where the pawns end up determines what strategies are possible. So let’s look at a common strategy that can show up in the...
Game Spotlight: Your Chess Hero
One of the more popular pieces of advice for improving players is to pick a chess “hero”, a professional player you play like, and study their games. While this is good advice in general...
