February 19, 2018
Valeri Lilov Key to Pawn Structure | strategy, middlegame
Creating a better pawn structure is a tough job. In many games, the pawn structure for both players is generally equal. It takes a strong discipline and precise evaluation to engage a more beneficial pawn structure to make your development and tactics successful in the middlegame.
February 20, 2018
Bill Paschall Creating Imbalances to Win! Part 1 | opening, strategy
In this series, IM Paschall investigates the best ways to create imbalance in a chess game in order to play for a win. At the highest levels many chess games are drawn, and the decision to take calculated risks must be undertaken to beat an equal or stronger player. In part one we look at the idea of the minor exchange: the exchange of bishop for knight to imbalance the game and damage the opponents’ pawn structure.
February 21, 2018
Dennis Monokroussos An Overrated Beauty | strategy, tactics
A recent online poll of the best games of 2017 put this game at #3, narrowly missing second place. (The runaway winner was Jinshi Bai vs. Ding Liren – rightly! – which I’m happy to have covered in a recent show.) It is a nice game, but the poll overrates the game because Nikolic’s play and preparation were terrible. Nikolic is a great player who has been rated over 2600 since before dirt got invented, but in this game everything went wrong. It was a bad day at the office for him, but it’s to our benefit: we get to see a pretty game – actually two, because Wagner beat another GM with the same line and attacking idea the year before – and learn some valuable lessons about the opening.
February 22, 2018
Eugene Perelshteyn How to Play an English vs KID Setup | opening, strategy
How do you face a King’s Indian player and sidestep the theory? Watch and learn the easy line for White using all the ideas from Reversed Closed Sicilian. Black didn’t know how to stop White’s plan on the Q-side and got totally rolled over. The endgame technique is instructive as well! A must watch!
February 23, 2018
Bryan Smith Winning the National Chess Congress, Part 1 | openings, strategy, tactics
Bryan Smith won the U.S. National Chess Congress for the third time in 2018. In this two-part series he shows the critical games. In round 4, he faces one of his early heroes, whom he had never defeated previous to this event – GM Alexander Shabalov, a 3-time US champions and famed tactical player from Latvia, who had studied with Mikhail Tal.