Chess Lectures

Monday, November 17 IM Valeri Lilov Mastering Closed Positions
Understanding how to play closed positions has always been difficult for beginner and intermediate players. Playing these positions requires a few key principles, so that you can apply them as a part of your plan. Learn them from IM Lilov’s new video!

Tuesday, November 18 IM Bill Paschall Mamadyarov, Gelfand, and the Problem with the Benoni, Part 1
GM Mamadyarov illustrates the effectiveness of taking a player who is heavily reliant on theory out of their comfort zone. With white, by basicly losing a tempo, the tricky GM lures the well prepared Gelfand into a Benoni type of position. Gelfand seems completely out of his element. White slowly takes more and more space, while black flounders planlessly. This game goes to show that it is very important to play types of positions and structures that you feel comfortable with!

Wednesday, November 19  FM Dennis Monokroussos Attack like a Grandmaster
Alexander Kotov is best remembered nowadays for his book _Think Like a Grandmaster_ and a couple of the key concepts discussed therein: candidate moves and the tree of analysis. That’s not a bad legacy, but he was a great player in his own right, qualifying for the Candidates tournaments of 1950 and 1953 and winning the 1952 Interzonal (the qualifying event for the next year’s Candidates) by a huge margin. In this game he blows Paul Keres off the board in amazing style, and as his brilliant idea is not too far out of the opening (and has been repeated) this game has additional value as a kind of opening trap. Certainly Nimzo-Indian players who meet the Saemisch with 5…Nc6 will want to be very careful not to follow too far in Keres’ footsteps.

Thursday, November 20 GM Bryan Smith Short Strikes in the Benoni
Former world championship challenger Nigel Short recently won the Isle of Man Open. Here we look at one of his crucial games, an eighth-round win as black in the Benoni, where Short takes on one of White’s most insidious systems.

Friday, November 21 GM Eugene Perelshteyn Beating the Dutch with 1.Nf3! Part 1
This rare system against the Dutch 1.Nf3 and 2.d3! is a great surprise weapon. Watch how the World Champion Magnus Carlsen completely outplays his GM opponent using the simple strategic concept: timely d4! followed by the trade of light-square bishops to guarantee White a stable positional edge.

Concise Alekhine Crushes

by IM Bill Paschall

  Recommended for Intermediate Players   More

 Presented by International Master Bill Paschall for ChessLecture.com

 Alexander Alekhine a Russian World Chess Champion is often considered one of the   greatest chess players ever. He became the fourth World Chess Champion by defeating José Raúl Capablanca, who was widely considered invincible. Alekhine is known for his fierce and imaginative attacking style, combined with great positional and endgame skill.

Here Bill shows us four of Alekhine’s stunning games.

Content:1 hour and 56 minutes of chess theory and discussion, with example games, over a series of 4 lectures.

ECO: D28, D66, D06, D05     PGN included

Members of ChessLecture.com rated this series a 4.0 out of 5

Fans on ChessLecture.com said: Nice game! Great Lecture Bill!!

IM Bill Paschall: currently resides in Budapest, Hungary. Bill was the Boylston Chess Club Champion 2002, finished 1st at the Foxwoods Open 2002, Two-Time New England Open Champion, and has defeated more than 20 IGM’s in tournament play. Bill has extensive experience training both adults and children privately and in the schools.

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Monday, November 10 IM Valeri Lilov Positional Supremacy – Part I
Who wants to know how to play good positional chess? Many chess players are trying to learn the secrets of playing with a plan and improving their evaluation skills. The only way for us to learn the secrets of positional chess is by studying how the great masters do it and follow their ideas!

Tuesday, November 11 IM Bill Paschall A Tense Battle from Baku

Wednesday, November 12 FM Dennis Monokroussos Carlsen and the Cambridge Springs, Part 2: Carlsen Wins with White
Having pointed the way for Black in the Cambridge Springs in Part 1, now we see Magnus Carlsen put a fresh idea to work on White’s behalf in this later game. Thanks in part to the 11.Be2 finesse and to his managing to keep the c-file closed, White was able to build on the kingside without allowing his opponent any real counterplay. White kept control throughout the middlegame, and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov’s desperate bid for counterplay wasn’t enough to save the game.

Thursday, November 13 GM Leonid Kritz How to Convert a Minimal Advantage into A Full Point
A truly brilliant idea of Caruana to exchange his “good” bishop in 19. move is fascinating and may overturn the theory of this popular line in French. For a while it looks like Black is creating a dangerous attack against white king, but actually Black is almost helpless – White puts his pieces so that all threats are eliminated, and afterwards starts his own attack that he completes in few moves. One of the most interesting ideas I have seen during the last period!

Friday, November 14 GM Eugene Perelshteyn Learning Strategy and Prophylactic Thinking from the Best! Part 2: Learn from Dolmatov
Dvoretsky’s student Dolmatov shows us how to win a strategic battle in the most common e4-e5 pawn formation from the Ruy Lopez/Italian game. Dolmatov is one step ahead of his opponent due to the prophylactic thinking that he employs after every move. Pay attention to how he masterfully switches over to the Q-side and plays on the whole board!

Monday, November 3   IM Valeri Lilov Speed vs. Quality (openings, middlegame)
Which one is more important? Quick or quality development? This is a question that many people always ask themselves when it comes to preparing their attack or just completing the development. Find out the answer in IM Lilov’s new lecture!

Tuesday, November 4 IM Bill Paschall Ponomariov Gets Trendy against the Najdorf (middlegame)
In this game from the Bilbao 2014 tournament in Spain, GM Ruslan Ponomariov plays the super-trendy 6.h3 in the Najdorf.GM Paco Vallejo, perhaps trying to defend too actively, breaks with classical principles by opening on the kingside and leaving his king in the center. Black has problems with both his king and his king’s rook, which becomes active but exposed early. Ponomariov plays brilliantly to exploit the position for tactics based on the exposed positioning of the enemy king and rook. )

Wednesday, November 5   FM Dennis Monokroussos Carlsen and the Cambridge Springs, Part 1 Carlsen wins with Black (openings, tactics)
At first glance the Cambridge Springs Variation looks like it should be fantastic for White, thanks to his potential for a big center and kingside attacking play. But Black has his trumps too, less obvious though they may be, and in this game we see Magnus Carlsen show the effectiveness of Black’s queenside counterplay. Boris Gelfand’s kingside attack never got started, and in the end all he could do was try to scrap for a draw – a hope that went by the wayside on the last move of the time control.

Thursday, November 6   LM Dana Mackenzie Winning With Jedi Mind Tricks, Episode 2 (strategy)
It is very difficult for humans to defend a closed position where their opponent has all the attacking chances, even if the computer says that the position is OK. The pressure of constantly having to defend can lead to psychological mistakes, such as: getting into time trouble, getting locked into a defensive mindset, overlooking opportunities for counterplay, and impatiently opening the position just to get the torture over with. All of these “Jedi mind tricks” come into play into today’s game.

Friday, November 7   GM Eugene Perelshteyn Learning Strategy and Prophylactic Thinking from the Best! Part 1: Learn from Dvoretsky (strategy, openings)
Learn from the best! Enjoy this strategic masterpiece from Dvoretsky and pay attention on how White uses “prophylactic thinking” to execute his plan while stopping his opponent’s plan. White makes it look easy!

Monday, October 27 IM Valeri Lilov Mastering the Opened Positions  (strategy)
Understanding how to play opened positions has always been a prerogative for beginner and intermediate players. Learning these positions requires knowing a few key principles, so that you can apply them as a part of the plan. Come learn them from IM Lilov in this lecture!

Tuesday, October 28 IM Bill Paschall Sealer Sweeper a la Gelfand
Gelfand faces a rare variation of the Queen’s Indian with an early c5… for black. Instead of the standard plan with d5 and Nh4, he employs a different pawn sacrifice for which his opponent was unprepared. In the middlegame we see white with a clear superiority in the center. Gelfand illustrates the classic sealer sweeper pawn sacrifice with e4-e5 and then f5 ! Black’s kingside dark-squared weaknesses are telling and white crashes through with a mating attack.

Wednesday, October 29 FM Dennis Monokroussos When Hackers Meet  (openings, tactics)
Emil Sutovsky and Julian Hodgson are both known as creative attackers who love to sacrifice material, so one would expect their games to be battles royale. That’s certainly the case here, and on this occasion it was Sutovsky who was on song. (A little pun – Sutovsky is known to be an outstanding singer as well as a chess player!) It’s a great game, and many of you may find the opening of interest as well as a way for White to enjoy the sharpness of the Open Sicilian without having to dive into as much theory as you might find in the main lines.

Thursday, October 30 GM Leonid Kritz Sicilian Paulsen e6-a6-Bc5-Be7  (openings)
This is another very popular opening for black. One of its advantages is that there are many different move orders black can choose to get white go in the wrong direction. The best way to play against it is certainly to provoke g6 by playing Qg4! Afterwards, white goes back with the queen and plays standard hedgehog position with the additional weakness of square h6. The position offers both players great chances to play for win.

Friday, October 31 GM Bryan Smith A Fascinating Endgame from the Match of the Century  (endgame, tactics)
GM Bryan Smith examines the dramatic thirteenth game of the 1972 World Championship match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky. Here we see how both players navigate a treacherous and unusual ending, full of twists and turns.”

                    Studies on The Middlegame

by GM Kraai and GM Perelshteyn 

Recommended for Intermediate – Advanced Players  More

Content: 1.5 of instruction and analysis in a series of 4 lectures.

Large material gains can end a game while it is still in the Middlegame. Here GM Kraai and GM Perelshteyn explore middle game decision making and planning to shape the end game with their own games as example.

Members of ChessLecture.com rated this series a 4.48 out of 5

ECO E32, A48, D31, D30    PGN included

Fans on Chesslecture.com said: This was a fantastic positional lecture. I appreciate how Eugene brought us inside his thought process at several points, it really is educational to see how organized and focused his planning is.

ChessLecture.com opened in 2005, ChessLecture is the worlds largest video archive of Chess Instructional videos. With more then 2300 videos, our members can research topics on chess to their hearts content. 5 new videos added weekly by our top not proven masters and educators.

Monday, October 20 IM Valeri Lilov Dynamic Factors by Morozevich (middlegame)
While we can certainly say that positional chess and planning is critical, many games are lost when the game becomes more tactical or complex. Check out IM Lilov’s latest video to learn how to handle these positions successfully!

Tuesday, October 21 IM Bill Paschall Moro Imitates Steinitz (middlegame, strategy)
Best known perhaps as the modern Chigorin, Alexander Morozevich this time imitates one of the greatest masters of all time, the former World Champion, Wilhelm Steinitz. We see the similarity here on two levels. Firstly, Moro’s choice of the Cozio Defense, which is distinctly early 19th century, and would no doubt appeal to Steinitz, who made a living playing solid but rather stodgy defenses to the Ruy Lopez. Secondly, we see Morozevich display his understanding of the value of the bishop pair in a position when it opens up. Steinitz also had a strong predilection for the bishop pair. This game sees the black bishops show incredible power in the middlegame and ending. All this somewhat ironic , as Morozevich initially burst on the scene with a great love for closed positions and the pair of knights! The modern Morozevich is very in tune with the spirit of Steinitz!

Wednesday, October 22 FM Dennis Monokroussos The Furious Attacking Reti?! (opening, tactics)
The Reti Opening isn’t exactly synonymous with ferocious attacking play, but chess is a complicated game! Just one little spark can be enough to set the board on fire, especially when a brilliant tactician and attacker like Alexander Grischuk is involved. In this recent game from the European Club Cup Grischuk seizes the initiative early, and with 12.f3 and 13.Rxf3 commits himself fully to the attack. His opponent, Maxim Rodshtein, is a great player – almost 2700 – but he is quickly consumed by the flames. If you ever wondered what was meant by the metaphor “he played with great energy”, Grischuk’s play in this game will give you the answer.

Thursday, October 23 GM Leonid Kritz Rare Opening Lines Lead to Success (opening, strategy)
Kramnik versus Topalov is one of the most interesting rivalries in today’s chess. These opponents don’t shake hands and their games are always of special character. In this game Kramnik plays a system that seems to be not ambitious, but he gets into a position in which he feels more comfortable than his opponent and penalizes Topalov for his miscalculations.

Friday, October 24 IM David Vigorito Veteran vs Prodigy (middlegame, tactics)
The experienced IM Jim Rizzitano faces off against a very young IM, Samuel Sevian. The veteran manages to steer the game into a middlegame where his vast experience proves to be too much for the higher rated prodigy and it is the older player who dazzles with a tactical display leading to a decisive material advantage.

Middlegame Positions and Problem Solving

by IM David Vigorito

             Recommended for Advanced Players

Review middlegame decision making with David Vigorito.

Middlegame play sets the scene for the endgame. What material you have, where it is on the board and your options are considerations. Here David takes us through numerous middlegame problems, shows us the thought process for analyzing what to do, and solutions.

Content: 82 minutes of instruction and analysis in a series of 2 lectures.

Members of ChessLecture.com rated this series a 4.39 out of 5

Members of ChessLecture.com said: I love the ideas of multiple different types of problems and their solutions rather than the usual game analysis with a couple of slowly developing tide turning positions. Great bang for the buck!

IM David Vigorito is the 2007 Massachusetts Champion and has been the state champion of New Hampshire and Nevada. USCF rated at 2479, David was the Champion of the Boylston (Boston) Chess Club. He played in the 2006 U.S. Championship after finishing in a tie for 3rd place at the U.S. Open in Phoenix. David is a successful chess author – his Challenging the Nimzo-Indian is very well received by critics and players alike.

Monday, October 13 LM Dana Mackenzie Rip Van Winkle Returns Thirty years after his last rated game, GM James Tarjan returned to play in the 2014 U.S. Open and finished only 1/2 point behind the winner. In this game against National Master Constantine Xanthos, he proves that 30 years have done nothing to dull his chess instincts. An intuitive exchange sac opens the board for Black’s pieces. After Xanthos misses a possible chance to return the material for a decent game, Tarjan clamps down with an airtight bind. A fine example of what distinguishes grandmasters from lower-rated players.

Tuesday, October 14 IM Bill Paschall Self Analysis-A Rusty Nimzo
IM Paschall reviews a recent game he played in a classical Nimzo-Indian position. An imbalanced position arises where white has more space and two bishops, but black has the better structure and 2 knights in a closed position. The game is particularly interesting from a strategic point, because we see the classic doubled c-pawns for white, as well the relataively rare plan for black to castle queenside ! This game is interesting theoretically in the opening, because of black’s novelty 13…Qf6 , which may well be an improvement over the more standard 13…Qe7.

Wednesday, October 15  FM Dennis Monokroussos There’s a big difference between bound and almost bound From the time of Nimzowitsch and earlier, chess players knew that if White could blockade Black’s French pawns on e6 and d5 with pieces on e5 and d4, they would often obtain and enjoy a serious bind. Paul van der Sterren may have been licking his chops in anticipation of such a bind, but he never quite had the time to establish this bind. Viktor Korchnoi blew the game open and won in crushing style – ironically by pushing both the e- and d-pawns. So much for the blockade!

Thursday, October 16 GM Leonid Kritz Brilliant Strategic Understanding Another brilliant game from the, probably, strongest player in the world. White does not get a real opening advantage, but he maintains a symbolical +/= that he slow by slow converts into a full point. Of course, Ponomariov could have played better and get the draw, but the way Caruana always increases pressure and creates new ideas make the defense of every position pretty difficult.

Friday, October 17 GM Bryan Smith Decisive First Round Matchups from the Tromso Olympiad, Part 3 In the third and final part of GM Bryan Smith’s series on the first round in Tromso, we see a thematic game in the Carlsbad Variation of the Queen’s Gambit Declined, where GM Varuzhan Akobian is able to carry out White’s typical plans.

The Best of Reshevsky

By IM Bill Paschall

   Recommended for Intermediate – Advanced Players    MORE

   Presented by International Master Bill Paschall for ChessLecture.com

   For those of you that are D4 players Bill says studying Reshevsky is a must!

       Samuel “Sammy” Herman Reshevsky (born Szmul Rzeszewski; November 26, 1911 –     April 4, 1992) a chess prodigy that grew into a leading American Grandmaster.  

Rshevsky was a strong contender for the World Chess Championship from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s: he came equal third in the 1948 World Chess Championship tournament and equal second in the 1953 Candidates Tournament. He was an eight-time winner of the U.S. Chess Championship. An outstanding match player throughout his career, Reshevsky excelled at positional play, and could be a brilliant tactician when required. He took a long time over his opening moves, and often found himself under time pressure – but this sometimes unsettled his opponent more than it did Reshevsky. Reshevsky was an accountant, and a well-regarded chess writer.

Content: 2.5 hours of instruction and analysis in a series of 4 lectures.

Members of ChessLecture.com rated this series a 4.25 out of 5

Fans on Chesslecture.com said: The explanations of the positional issues are fantastic. Thanks for the great lecture.

IM Bill Paschall currently resides in Budapest, Hungary. Bill was the Boylston Chess Club Champion 2002, finished 1st at the Foxwoods Open 2002, Three-Time New England Open Champion, and has defeated more than 20 IGM’s in tournament play. Bill has extensive experience training both adults and children privately and in the schools.