Grakovsky's Blog
Hi, welcome to my Chess.com blog. I am an avid chess player and writer. Here you will find varied chess write-ups including stories, opening theory, my annotated games, history of chess, endgame studies, and much more.
When writing on more complicated subjects such as opening theory or the history of chess, I do thorough research in valid books and online encyclopedias - and of course I cite my sources!
If you like what I do, please feel free to check out my chess articles which I write regularly just as these blogs.
Submitted by
on Sat Mar 28, 2009 6:15pm.
Lev Tolstoy was a Russian novelist, essayist, dramatist, and educational reformer who was from the aristocratic Tolstoy family. Lev was most famous for his literature masterpieces such as War and Peace and Anna Karenina, in which he represented th... Read more »
Submitted by
on Fri Mar 27, 2009 6:16pm.
The Alapin's Opening is another intriguing unorthodox opening that White could comfortably play out to his advantage considering he knows how to avoid some traps that will be shown below. This opening was named after the Lithuanian chess player an... Read more »
Submitted by
on Thu Mar 26, 2009 7:04pm.
The Ponziani Opening was first shown in chess literature by 1497. It was later more deeply examined by the Italian chess theorist Domenico Lorenzo Ponziani in the eighteenth century. The point of playing this opening is to create a strong center f... Read more »
Submitted by
on Sun Mar 22, 2009 2:56pm.
When I was looking at old chess games this morning, particularly from the 16th century when the first ideas of modern chess were being seen, I stumbled upon an opening which I had never seen before. The unusual but intriguing Saragossa Opening in ... Read more »
Submitted by
on Sat Mar 21, 2009 6:55am.
Last night I was playing a couple of over-the-board games with my father and one really stood out of all the others. Despite the fact that I lost, I think it was one of our best chess games so far because of its complexity. Up to the middle of the... Read more »
Submitted by
on Fri Mar 20, 2009 6:12pm.
It's been nearly four months since I began to see sharp improvements in my positional and tactical play. Before, I had the right ideas in my head but somehow wasn't able to show them off on the board in front of me - which constantly led to lost g... Read more »
Submitted by
on Thu Mar 19, 2009 1:58pm.
The King's Gambit is one of my least favorite openings in chess because of the uncertain variations that may run in, which are much too complicated making each move sensitive to a new barrage of tactics. The understanding of this historic gambit f... Read more »
Submitted by
on Wed Mar 11, 2009 7:23pm.
This blog consists of chess poems written by the modern Russian poet Alexander Baltin who currently writes for the Moscow magazine "Literature Review". Alexander was born in Moscow in 1967. He has been publishing poems since 1996 and is also the a... Read more »
Submitted by
on Sun Mar 8, 2009 12:37pm.
This is the sixth and final installment of a chronological series of blogs which have focused on Soviet women chess champions - their history, who they were, and their contributions to the chess world.
The last Soviet woman to reign the World Cha... Read more »
Submitted by
on Sat Mar 7, 2009 11:53am.
This is the fifth installment of a chronological series of blogs which will focus on Soviet women chess champions - their history, who they were, and their contributions to the chess world.The woman to take the women's world chess title from Olga ... Read more »