One of the good things about the Anand-Gelfand World Championship match is that it generates a lot of debate on some essential points: what’s the proper format to determine the best player in the world; should chess always be spectacular; do...
What’s the best and most unique thing about chess? Of course it’s the fact that we have long lasting world championship matches. The immense tension is not restricted to one or two hours (football, tennis), or a few days at most (crick...
In Woody Allen’s recent movie Midnight in Paris (2011), a young Hollywood writer named Gil Pender (played by Owen Wilson) is brought back to Paris of the 1920’s. There, to his delight, he meets his heroes Hemmingway and Fitzgerald as w...
The Tarrasch Defence is a great opening. It is both solid and active, it has a rich history and it has been endorsed by numerous world class players, including Garry Kasparov. Dr. Siegbert Tarrasch himself gave the good example when he wrote, more...
It's a little known fact that the playing venue of the London Chess Classic is actually not that easy to reach from the City. The office where I work is on the South bank of the Thames, close to London Bridge station, from where it took me no ...
While reading a very serious op-ed about the developments on the Greek crisis in the Financial Times, I suddenly had the very non-serious realization that there seems to be no such thing as a ‘Greek Opening’ in chess. Everybody knows t...
Watching the 7th game of the Kasparov-Short blitz match last week made me realize once again how radical Fischer’s proposal to shuffle all the pieces on the first rank was and still is. If you want to avoid boring theoretical chess duels, al...
After becoming a bit depressed this week by reading such chess headlines as Billboard hero Magnus Carlsen blundering and former Soviet hero Mikhail Gorbachev having a friendly meeting with Gadaffi supporter Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, I decided to turn my...
There are dozens of chess improvement books on the market - impossible to read them all. But even if you're tired of keeping track of the good ones, or if your most recent one is Dvoretsky and Yusupov's classic Training for the Tournament ...
The chess world is in a crisis. In tournaments like Biel and Dortmund, all the public gets is games full of mistakes. Something must be done to end this situation which is scaring away sponsors, organizers and potential young talents from becoming...
The ChessVibes editors are enjoying their summer holiday in various ways. While Peter and Robert played an open in Ikaria, Greece, and Merijn participated in the annual Wine tournament in Naujac sur Mer, France, I'm on parental leave in my hom...
Because I started to play chess in the mid-eighties, when Kasparov was increasingly (if marginally) showing his superiority over Karpov in their famous World Championship matches, I never seriously studied Karpov's earlier masterpieces. Whilst...
Why do most Sicilian players dislike all the "Anti-Sicilian" variations? Is it because they can't rely on their preparation and have to think for themselves right from the start? Is it because their opponents refuse to go for the ...
My previous review, in which I discussed three recent chess puzzle books, was admittedly somewhat grumpy and pessimistic about the future of this particular genre, and some readers took offence at this. So this time round I'm going to look at thre...
This spring, there seems to be a real explosion of new chess puzzle books on the market. Cultural pessimists will hardly find this very puzzling. In these busy times where everyone has his own Twitter, Facebook, ICC and PlayChess account, who has ...
When you read an open letter like the one on cheating, signed by a number of participants of the European Championship in Aix les Bains, there are basically two ways to react. The first is to join in the public outrage and bemoan the terrible stat...
Women and chess - don't you ever get bored of the subject? I certainly do. However, I was delighted to open Jennifer Shahade's new tactics puzzle book Play Like A Girl! as it deals with this tricky combination in a delightful and mature manner.The...
Last month, two biographies of legendary chess figures were published. One is a modest booklet about a great man who just turned 100 years old, the other is a 350-page volume on the eleventh World Champion, who died at the age of 64. The differenc...
Darren Aronofsky's new movie Black Swan, featuring Natalie Portman as the increasingly tormented ballet dancer Nina who has to perform the dual role of both the white and the black swan in Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, left me both puzzled and ...
One of the less attractive features of many modern chess books is that authors tend to sound rather similar to each other. This is especially the case when the author in question is not an English native speaker and the publisher's editorial team ...
The Tata Steel Chess Tournament 2011 in Wijk aan Zee has finally kicked off! The first thing any visitor will note when entering the playing hall is that all the red has changed to a sea of blue. Clearly, Tata wanted a different atmosphere for the...
Humans, like all primates, often show behaviour largely dictated by social status and prestige. This applies to practically everything we do: the way we talk, the way we do business, the way we do politics, and the way we play chess. The photo tha...
Chess, of course, is an abstract game. Its ultimate, objective truth is probably more mathematical than intuitive. Still, the game has so many subjective sides that it's almost impossible not to have arguments about the relative aspects of che...
A reviewer's task is never done. A constant stream of new books is produced every month, but a reviewer can't possibly have something meaningful to say about each and every book that is sent to him. In this review, the last one of 2010, I want to ...
How can you tell an interesting chess book from an uninteresting one? There are many ways, but I'd say the easiest way is to open the book at a random page and look for signs of enthusiasm and passion in the author's words. Four new publications b...
