Hello chess friends! This month’s column was inspired by a reader! Matthew Brodhead sent in his game against John Cissik, and analyzing his game gave me the idea for this month’s column. GM Savielly Tartakower (whom I love to quote!) once said that any opening is good enough to play if its reputation is bad enough. What he meant was that once a line gets a reputation as a loser, it becomes fodder for those who are willing to work to find improvements and use them to gain points in competition.
China's GM Ding Liren may have won the world championship this spring, but it's hard to think of another player who has had a better 2023 than America's own GM Fabiano Caruana.
“In ‘miniature’ games, errors are soon magnified” - Dylan Loeb McClain, New York Times Hello chess friends! Welcome to the annual miniatures column, where we limit the entries to games of 25 moves or less in length. For this year’s selection, all of the games were won by the players of the black pieces. The games are presented here in order of ECO Code.
Hello chess friends! This month’s column is the second in a series about the elements of chess analysis, using the email and correspondence games played by US Chess members as examples. The first column, looking at king safety, motivated a number of you to share your games, which is why last month’s column was something of a continuation of the first part of the series. This month we introduce the next element: time. Strap in folks, it’s another long one!
Russian GM Mikhail Antipov and rising Ohio junior IM Jason Wang shared top honors at the 10th Washington International held earlier this month in Rockville, Maryland. The event reliably boasts among the strongest and most competitive fields on the DMV summer chess calendar.