Chess.com - Nine Years
A quick little post today. Here's a game I recently saw with a pretty cool final sequence from Fabiano Caruana. See if you can spot it!
Chess.com - Eight Years
In honor of today being my 21st birthday, I thought I would share with you guys a wild game filled with all sorts of tactical ideas. Enjoy!
Chess.com - Seven Years
To celebrate my seventh year on chess.com, enjoy this classic Géza Maróczy game. Maróczy was, at his peak, among the world's top grandmasters. His defensive style spurred him to winning records against the leading attacking players of his day, su...
Chess.com - Six Years
Better late than never, right? To celebrate my return to posting, here's a great game between Mikhail Tal and Svetozar Gligoric. Gligoric was a Serbian grandmaster and one of the top players in the world in the mid-20th century. Although his rec...
The Scandinavian
I'm heading off to college tomorrow. Before I go, I would like to share this game with everyone. It's a pretty wild game, featuring the great Wilhelm Steinitz. He opts to attack his opponent right out of the middlegame, and a rook sacrifice on hi...
Late Castling: Part 2
My last blog post was centered around a game in which a top-class grandmaster violated the oft-mentioned advice to castle as early as possible and still won. The loser happened to be the great Garry Kasparov. Here is another game featuring late c...
Late Castling: Part 1
So, it has been a whole week since I graduated from high school! It is still hard for me to believe that a whole four years have passed since I changed my chess.com occupation from "middle school student" to "high school student". I guess that I w...
Baldur Dash
Here's yet another miniature for everyone to enjoy, this one featuring a neat series of sacrifices by Rudolf Spielmann. Note the way he sets up the final attack, especially his eighteenth and twenty-third moves. In other news, I am graduating fr...
Testa Nerves
So, I celebrated my 18th birthday yesterday. That officially makes me an adult. Quite hard to believe, isn't it? In just a few months, I will be graduating from high school! To celebrate, here is a neat miniature won by Dr. Carl Hartlaub. It feat...
Triangle Mate
Nakamura launches an attack out of nothing in this game. He gives up the exchange to break up a drawish middlegame, but his sacrifice does not appear to garner him any advantage at all. However, he shocks his opponent with a queen sacrifice that e...
Chess.com-Five Years
Simply put, I am speechless. Today marks the end of five years of my life spent on chess.com. I have truly come a long way. When I first created my account and began sharing my thoughts with the world through my posts, I was a young whippersnapper...
Twas the Knight Before Christmas
This is a rather interesting miniature. Clemenz opts for the Evans Gambit and immediately opens lines to his opponent's king. With several of his pieces hanging, he then pulls off some neat sacrifices, a one-two punch that leads to a picturesque m...
Don't Worry Beharry
Here is a miniature that I doubt you guys have seen before. Black makes a crucial mistake on his eleventh move, when he weakens the dark squares around his kingside. White quickly takes advantage by castling queenside and offering up one of his ro...
Bayer the Brunt of It
Check out this great miniature, which is filled with sacrifices! A Scotch Gambit quickly turns interesting when Bayer tries to save his material advantage, at the cost of his right to castle. Soon, he comes under the pressure of an attack by Mulle...
A Bad Day At The Office
Here is a game in which the great Alekhine goes down in a mere twelve moves. It is yet another example of how you should never let your guard down, even if you are the reigning world champion. As far as I can tell, no other champion has lost this ...
Vlad the Impaled
This is a very interesting game. Kasparov and Kramnik square off in a battle of wits. Kasparov sacrifices his queen in order to launch a daring attack, only to win it back (in a sense) a few moves later. He manages to equalize, but Kramnik, under ...
8-Ball in the Corner Pocket
Here's a great Morphy game that everyone should check out. It's very short, but filled with tactics. Morphy, playing without his queenside rook, sacrifices a few pawns to set up an attack. His opponent, feeling the pressure, decides to trade queen...
Another King March
Here's a game featuring a king march that you may not have seen before. In it, Konings, playing white, decides to take a huge risk by moving his uncastled king to the kingside after he has already advanced his kingside pawns! Luckily for him, his ...
French Drawings
Here is an interesting draw between two chess powerhouses, Fischer and Tal. The game see-saws back and forth, with both players making a carefully calculated series of captures. The end result is a forced draw by perpetual check.
Foxy Fight
Happy Pi Day! I just recently celebrated my 17th birthday...boy, do I feel old. Anyway, to celebrate, here's a matchup between Alekhine and the little-known Maurice Fox. On the 17th move, Alekhine decides to sacrifice the exchange to get an atta...
Throw the Rook at Him
This is a rather curious game. It shows the great Morphy at work again; naturally, he plays the game with rook odds. However, this time, something strange happens. Take a look and see if you can come up with an explanation for what occurred over t...
Saved by the Bell
Happy Boxing Day! I hope that everyone has had a great year, and I hope that next year will be just as good. Anyway, here's a nice game to analyze. In the opening, Ivanchuk decides to sacrifice his queen. It is not clear whether or not he did t...
Stockholm Syndrome
This is a rather interesting game between Tarrasch and the Stockholm chess club. The grandmaster is surprised by a series of Morphy-like sacrifices in the opening and never fully recovers. The club gains a large advantage and eventually converts i...
Chess.com-Four Years
My fourth anniversary on chess.com has come and gone. I still can't believe how quickly this site has changed. Last year, chess.com had a "mere" 2.5 million members. Today, it has over 4 million! It's simply astonishing. In additon, we've seen the...
Piquant Piece Sacrifice
Some of you might remember my post a while ago about Shirov's neat game-winning opposite-color-bishops endgame sacrifice. Well, here is another nice game that showcases another of these sacrifices. In the opening, Hindle makes a few errors, and en...
