Chess Skills

Beginning Chess Beginning students--children and adults--do better if their learning process begins with few pieces.

Endless online play can affect one's mental health.

Three Thompson -- Morphy Games Following the First American Chess Congress, which Paul Morphy won, Morphy played a number of casual games against the other participants.

I had White in this position with the move in a three minute online blitz game yesterday.

On Saturday I played the first three rounds of the Eastern Washington Open in Spokane with no intention of playing on Sunday as I had told my wife we could watch football together while I smoked some ribs.

White sees an opportunity to force an exchange of Black’s queen.

I had Black and the sense that I was winning.

White played an excellent game to reach a simple win and then made two consecutive moves that made it appear that everything prior to that was a fluke.

An unexpected win this morning motivated some study of rook and pawns vs. knight, bishop, and pawns.

At what level of play can someone be considered good at chess?

Late Thursday night during a thunderstorm, I played a few three minute games online.

I have been trying to hold a draw against Stockfish from a position that Jan Timman failed to hold against Anatoly Karpov (Belfort 1988).

The best game of Chess Informant 166 republished in CI 167 offers this diagram, where White won with an instructive final assault.

Yesterday afternoon, I threw away an easy draw against a player rated 400 lower.

My young students this week are seeing this position from an online game played a couple of days ago.

Black is busted, as only pawns can move.

Many of the young students in my after school club have only begun playing chess when they joined the club.

This position, which arose in my tactics training session this morning reminded me of a position that I had in a tournament game 25 years ago.

Sometimes you must test your opponent's ability to demonstrate what should be elementary skills, especially when time is running short.

I had Black and the move in this position, found my way to a sacrificial breakthrough that led to a win, and ended feeling good about my skill.

From this morning’s tactics session while I drank my coffee.

The relationship between two puzzles on chess.com surprised me Wednesday morning and I made it that afternoon's lesson for my beginning students.

Early this month, I wrote about the term "blind swine" as it is used in chess literature with links to Edward Winter's historical inquiries.

After dropping a couple of pieces in a ten-minute game, my position was near hopeless.

The pattern that I call Two Pigs is usually referred to as the “Blind Swine Mate”.

It is one thing to solve tactical exercises, but quite another to seize such opportunities when they arise in our games.

This morning during a momentary lapse of reason, I threw away a game.

I had this position this morning.

A national youth event is coming to my city in December.