Pure opposite colored bishop endings are tricky things. They are rightly considered to have strong drawing tendencies, for a variety of reasons. The noted authority… Read More »An Instructive Opposite Colored Bishop Ending
I was impressed by a short game I saw recently by Grandmaster Peter Wells, played against International Master William Paschall in Koszeg, 1998. In addition… Read More »Attacking the Hyper-Accelerated Dragon
The following game started out like the Tiviakov-Almasi game analyzed earlier, but it shows another attacking plan for White involving the attack on the pinned… Read More »Attacking The Pinned Piece
After doing a chessbase search for Tiviakov’s wins in the Ruy Lopez, I came across this instructive positional game. We will see how he chose… Read More »Positional Play in the Ruy Lopez
This game illustrates another classical positional idea: The kingside attack when White plays Be3, Black takes it, and White recaptures fxe3. It was played in… Read More »Attacking after fxe3
Today we are going to continue exploring White’s attacking ideas in the Ruy Lopez and Quiet Italian, through the prism of Grandmaster Sergei Tiviakov’s games.… Read More »Bg5 Against Kingside Castling
This example, also featuring two FIDE 1900+ players, shows critical positional moments occurring very early in the game. It also shows a standard pattern to… Read More »Standard Pattern or Positional Trap?
We are beginning a series focusing on interesting middlegame decisions in games between tournament players. Today I want to analyze an excerpt from a game… Read More »Exchanging and Attacking
In this next example, Grandmaster Dusan Popovic uses forcing play to create major tactical problems for his opponent directly out of the opening. 1.e4 d5… Read More »Forcing Play, Tactical Problems
Today I wanted to start a new series on crime and punishment in the opening. Tournament players all know that they should be quickly developing… Read More »Crime and Punishment in the Opening: Lead in Development
