Essentially, if a player thinks they're underrated by x points, the fastest correction will come from playing people x/2 points above their current rating, and this is true of all the most common Elo rating systems. There's some math to back this ...
All the puzzles come from this position. Black is dominating with a passed a-pawn and more active pieces, but White is going to play Ng1 and Nf3, so it is best not to fool around too much. Thus, I played 35...a4 36. Re1 Qd4 37. Ng1 a3 38. Nf3 Rx...
This is from a tournament game I played yesterday. I, playing White, am currently a pawn up but the activity of Black's pieces and the weaknesses on a2, c3, and e5 will make it impossible to hold everything. Nevertheless, I found a hidden resource...
c3 on move 2 against the Sicilian has the idea of playing d4 next move, when Black's playing ...cxd4 will not result in their having an "extra central pawn". 1...c5 prepares to eliminate White's pawn on d4 by using the c-pawn rather than the e-paw...
Easy: After 1. Rh7+ Kg8 2. Rfg7+ Kf8 3. Rxd7, can Black get away with ...a1=Q? Medium: The game went 50...Rf8 51. Rxb4 f6 52. Bc5 Rc8 53. exf6 Rxc5 54. f7 Rc8 55. Rb7 and now Black played ...Bd3, but what if Black had played ...Bg6 intending...
In the previous post, I said that I read "books". What I neglected to mention, though this may be obvious to you, is that not all books are good for the kind of exercise I propose doing. For example, Understanding Chess, which I used for the last ...
One of the most important things I did in my childhood without being aware of it was that I would read books, read the variations without a board, and constantly ask myself "why that move?" especially if it seemed to me like a blunder, an illegal ...
If you can't visualize a changing position, you will never be a good player, no matter what you consider a "good player" to be. Easy: If 7. d5 Na5 8. Qa4 c5, does 9. Qxa5 work? Medium: After 12...Nfxe4 13. Nxe4 Bxd4 14. Bg5 f6 find the win...
