For the next few weeks, the FIDE World Cup will be taking place in the arctic town of Tromsø, in the very north of Norway. Many of the best players in the world are competing, beginning with the top seed, Levon Aronian (2813). The winner and runne...
You probably know about the drawing tendency of opposite-colored bishops in the endgame - particularly pure bishop endgames. For example, it is hard to believe that the following position, in which Black has three extra pawns, is a draw. But it is...
How to win a won game? This is probably one of the most difficult skills that a chess player has to master in order to be able to collect points confidently. The answer to the question asked in the title lays in the player's ability to convert an...
A slight advantage doesn't mean you're necessarily going to win the game. It just means that your opponent has the more difficult problems to solve, and his mistakes will probably hurt his position more than yours will. In a queenless middlegame, ...
In this week's edition of my "Without the Lady" column, I will be showing an interesting game I played last year against the young Filipino GM Wesley So. Despite the early exchange of queens, the game was razor-sharp - imbalanced in terms of struc...
In the first part of this short series we saw some examples of the advantage that extra space confers on its owner. Now we will see the dark side of the space advantage - the weaknesses left behind as your forces advance further across the board. ...
There is a well-known advice that when you have less space you should trade pieces. In many positions this is true, but quite often trades simply remove your source of counterplay and allow the opponent to consolidate his space advantage. In queen...
One of the things I mentioned when I introduced my new column last week was the paradox of the column itself. It deals specifically with positions without the queen, but is not necessarily about endgames. There tends to be differing methods of pla...
I am starting a new column now, as I promised before. The subject of the column will be positions in which the queens have been traded. I don't say "endgames", because I don't think all positions without queens can be called as such - there are "q...
With this and last week's article I am wrapping up the Endgame articles that I have been writing for the last two years. Last week we learned how to use references for analysis of one's endgames that happen to be of a theoretical nature. Today we ...
I have been writing this column about endgames for more than two years - a genuine surprise for me because it feels like I just started. It is time to move on to a different topic but before going forward we need to look back and have a wrap up of...
With this article we finish the series on Initiative in the Endgame. The following selection of endgame positions is from the recent European Club Cup. The first position is a good example of when to give up extra material to achieve a draw. Bla...
This article and the next article will wrap up the series on Initiative in Endgames. Here, I offer you a series of endgame positions from the recent 28th European Club Cup. The first two positions are unique, and the themes include zugzwang and ...
As I checked out the news items that chess.com offers, one game from the Spice Cup caught my attention. The opening featured a Maroczy-bind type of structure, which I play and therefore was interesting to me but what really was interesting was the...
"Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."- Mark Twain I feel like this saying fits perfectly as the theme of many chess games. How many chess players are romantics at heart and go after a dr...
Today's endgame is from Sao Paulo and features a fight between Caruana and Carlsen. Carlsen playing black captured the initiative in the late middlegame and tried many resources to capitalize on it. In the end with two consecutive mistakes he let ...
A blunder at the end of the game... is it an accident or something one can predict? Wang Hao had to defend against Gelfand for a large chunk of the game and at last equalized only to lose a move later. We will not try to do neuroscience here and e...
Today we continue with the topic of initiative in endgames. Today's game once again shows the transition moment when one sides loses the initiative, and the other side seizes it. Placing the rook on a passive position cost McShane his advantage, a...
This article starts the series that will cover the topic of initiative in endgames. There are many definitions of what initiative is. In my own terms a player who has initiative usually dictates the play. He can create direct threats and puts the ...
With the last two articles we explored the importance of the long diagonal in queen and bishop (Q+B) endgames. Today we will look at endgames where the attack takes place on the shorter adjacent diagonals, while playing white these would be a2-g8 ...
Endgames can be convoluted. Many ideas are interwoven, which makes it hard to isolate pure endgame ideas or technical plans. However, if one looks for a specific idea and searches through the games, one can be surprised at finding it under differe...
Today we continue with the endgame examples from the recent Washington International chess tournament. There were quite a few games where queen and bishop were well-coordinated and participated or could have participated in a mating attack against...
Today we will look at two endgames from the recent and very strong Washington International chess tournament that took place in Maryland. The two endgames that I chose are similar. Both feature a position where one side has an extra pawn but the o...
Today we will look at my endgame against GM Joel Benjamin from the recent Washington International chess tournament. The endgame was worse for me and usually such a small advantage is enough for a GM of Joel's class to win. However, this time I de...
