This is the case of a pawn cut off in the enemy camp, but which can cause chaos there and mess up the opponent’s position. Such pawns often die, but in return, they can destroy the coordination of the enemy pieces.

The Tarrasch Defence is one of the most principled and positionally based defences. At least one black pawn remains in the centre for the long term and Black also has no difficulties with his development. In most cases, he manages to castle quickly and effectively. One very important thing is that White generally does not obtain any sort of space advantage.

I don’t know if you already play 1.e4, or if you try to use this book to add 1.e4 to your opening repertoire. Before this book project I had not played 1.e4 seriously in tournament chess for ages. Since starting with it I have played 1.e4 quite succesfully in all time controls. I feel the ‘KIS’ approach makes it a bit easier to adopt 1.e4, compared to more complex repertoires.

In many sports, we have seen famous duels between two eternal rivals who made the achievements of all their colleague players look pale in comparison: Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal in tennis, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus in golf, Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna in the Formula 1 racing. But never was a man-to-man fight so penetrating, so thoroughly gripping, as the one between the chess champions Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov.

This book is about an exceptional chess player, a player whose published games at the time of writing total just 10, but whose name already signifies the pinnacle of chess ability. A powerful attacker, capable of defeating even the strongest handcrafted chess engines with brilliant sacrifices and original strategies; and a player that developed its creative style solely by playing games against itself. That player is AlphaZero.

What every club player desires is to reach an acceptable playing level with a reasonable expenditure of time and effort. That is the point of the present book The power of the pawns. An overview of basic pawn structures, together with a lot of practical hints, helps to improve one’s understanding of chess at a deep level.

An Attacking Repertoire for White with 1.d4 presents a selection of opening variations. These opening choices I have made are an important factor in my personal approach to chess. In this article, we review the Modern Benoni Defence.

“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them” – Aristotle. If you agree with the famous Greek philosopher, then this is the right book for you! By working through these 1001 (!) exercises you will train your tactical skills extensively, and I am sure this will make you a much stronger chess tactician.

After reviewing the 10 most famous chess games and the 10 most famous chess moves in previous articles, let's see the 10 most famous chess combinations in chess history!

What is chess strategy? Strategy includes the knowledge of themes, the development of plans, the evaluation of positions and differentiating between what has to be calculated and what is optional. By contrast, tactics involves the calculation of variations. Can you solve the following 4 strategic puzzles?