Trial by Tactics is our member-only Daily Chess Puzzle. Members enjoy access to all archived content, including thousands of PDFs and hundreds of Ebooks - all free! To join: make a $25 (or more) tax deductible donation to ChessEdu.org and we will send your log in details for one-year access. (It may take up to 72 hours to receive your log in.) In Trial by Tactics you are shown the position just before the tactic occurs and then asked to visualize the winning sequence. Thereby emulating a real game scenario. We intersperse these puzzles with endgame studies and chess problems to explore the broad spectrum of chess creativity. We recommend using Trial by Tactics in conjunction with the … [Read more...]
Annotations by GM Yasser Seirawan
Inside Chess, 1995/25-26 Annotations by GM Yasser Seirawan GM Vladimir Kramnik had a nice start at the Investbank tournament at the expense of GM Jan Timman. I've noted that Kramnik's style of play has a wonderful simplicity. His games often flow smoothly from one advantage to another. In this one, Timman doesn't do anything wrong, but is taken apart nonetheless. Kramnik, Vladimir (2730) – Timman, Jan (2590) Investbank Belgrade (1), 1995 QGD Exchange [D35] 1.Nf3 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 d5 4.d4 Nbd7 5.cxd5 exd5 6.Bg5 c6 7.e3 Be7 I, too, have dabbled in this freeing move. Black forces the exchange of a minor piece in order to relieve his slightly cramped position. The question that … [Read more...]
A String of Associations
A String of Associations by Mark Dvoretsky Looking at a recent issue of New In Chess magazine (No. 6, 2013), my attention was drawn to the final section of an article by grandmaster Jan Timman. Kunin – Edouard Helsingfors, 2013 Kunin is a grandmaster with roughly 2500 Elo-points. In this position he seems to be worried that Black has doubled rooks on the a-file, because he went in for 22.b5? An utterly unbelievable move. Black’s positional problem has been solved at a stroke: the black knight, with no prospects on b7, has been gifted a magnificent square in c5. Before that, Black didn’t have a single threat. Remarkably enough, the computer isn’t even overly critical here, … [Read more...]