Constructing Your Opening Repertoire
At some point in their chess development, most players face and try to resolve the issue of which openings to play, and how to best learn these openings. With this blog post I’ll aim to answer this question, which has a differing answer depending on your playing strength, style, available time to study and opponents/time controls you are playing.
The Survival Guide to Queen + Rook ‘Endgames’
Positions with a queen and rook each (and no other pieces, excepting the kings and pawns) possess very different characteristics to other positions with simplified material.
Let’s start with the following position which illustrates the more dynamic nature of these positions:
Question: What is the oldest opening tabiya (theoretical position) in chess, aside from the initial position?
Answer: If you read last week’s post you will know the answer: 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.c3 Qe7, which is pretty much forgotten today but remains unrefuted – Black allows White to play d4 and achieve a slight space advantage, but in returns obtains a solid d6/e5 central pawn structure and possibilities for counterplay against White’s centre.
Learning from the Old Masters
The Rudiments of Chess Understanding
Often you hear someone make a remark along the lines of ‘That player has a good understanding of chess’ or an excuse for losing like ‘My opponent has no understanding but I missed his cheap trick’. In chess, understanding refers to how well one appreciates the value of pieces, pawns and squares in a given position.
How to Ace the South-East Easter Tour
Congratulations to Kashish Christian for coming =1st in the u/1600 divison of the Doeberl Cup and for winning the Pooja Cup!
Blog Post 6-4-2013
Games Outside the Spotlight
With the Candidates tournament having such an exciting finish (for those of you who missed it – Carlsen is Anand’s challenger for the World Championship Match) it’s easy to forget that other tournaments were being played at the same time! So for this blog post I’ve decided to write a ‘Games Column’ of sorts with three lightly annotated games from various open tournaments. You’ll notice I haven’t covered any Doeberl Cup games – that’s because I’ll be going through those next week! ;
Blog Post 25-03-2013
A Theoretical Overview of Rounds 1-8 of the Candidates
Blog Post 18-03-2013
The Big Clamp
