Chess Tutoring, Chess Coaching, Chess Classes with NM Will Stewart

Hi everyone. I uploaded this video quite a while ago but somehow I forgot to post it to the site and syndicate it to to the other blogs. This was a great game between the 2 young heavy weights of the chess world and I’m sure you all will enjoy the analysis. I know my voice is a little bit off in the video because I was a bit sick so my apologies for that. [...]

Israel super-GM Boris Gelfand wins the tournament Congratulations to Boris Gelfand on winning the 2011 Candidates Match Tournament. He wasn’t most people’s top pick but we shall wait and see if he proves to be a formidable opponent against Vishy Anand for the title of world champion. A recent poll on Susan Polgar’s Blog shows 86% of respondents think that Anand will be able to defend his title while 14% think Gelfand will win (I [...]

As many of you know a large portion of the recent candidates matches ended up with nothing draw-after-draw-after-draw as I lamented on twitter. The Super-GMs themselves cannot fully be blamed themselves, as much of the reason why they play for a draw is because of the way the tournaments are setup. But really, we are all getting tired of GM’s agreeing for a draw time after time again, sometimes only 20 moves into the game. [...]

Blitz Chess: Helps or Hurts? The timeless question … Does Blitz Chess do more harm than good for your serious chess game? This question has puzzled chess players since the beginning of the game itself. What our other contributors have said about the matter I’m not surprised that in the short 5 months we’ve been running this website the topic has been already been brought up 3 times. Our contributing editor Martin wrote a popular [...]

Do not violate the Opening Principles of Chess Susan Polgar Avalanche Journal Here are my power principles of chess, something which all beginners and novice players should follow: 1. Control the Center! The center of the board includes the squares e4, d4, e5, and d5. When you start a game, place your pawns in the center to occupy and control as many of these squares as you can. Location, location, location! 2. Develop Your Pieces [...]

This year’s 2011 St. Louis International Match features the world’s #5 player Hikaru Nakamura (USA, 2774) versus the world’s #8 Ruslan Ponomariov (UKR, 2754) as well as 16 year-old GM Ray Robson (USA, 2522) Vs GM Ben Finegold (USA 2494). It’s an interesting exhibition match system, with a total of 10 games (6 classical time control, followed by 4 rapid time control games). As the classical portion of the match ended on May 22nd, Nakamura [...]

I‘ve heard your requests by e-mail and YouTube to cover one of my own games and I apologize for taking so long to do so. After working on this site for 4 months I now finally present to you coverage of one of my most interesting games. I regard it as interesting for 2 reasons. Firstly because I prepared extensively for this game by studying Della Morte’s own games so I knew his playing style. [...]