my latest books
"Re-Engineering the Chess Classics"
Nominated for the 2023 Chess.com Book of the Year
"The Silicon Road to Chess Improvement"
"Game Changer" won the ECF Book of the Year 2019 and the FIDE Book of the Year 2019
The Swedish variation of the Tarrasch Defence
As promised, I will dedicate an article to a deep-dive on the main lines of the Swedish variation of The Tarrasch Defence which we saw in the game Carlsson-Stoltz, Stockholm 1938. The variation starts as follows: 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 c5 4.cxd5 exd5 5.Nf3 Nc6 6.g3 c4 7.Bg2 is the main line by far, read more…
The Swedish Defence…by the master!
Our game this time was played in November 1938 in a tournament organised to celebrate the 60th birthday of one of Sweden’s great chess benefactors. The game was not annotated in Tidskrift för Schack, only the brief description above but a commemorative booklet of the tournament was published through it is unclear whether the games read more…
The Swedish Musketeer vs Typhoonovic!
Stoltz played a good tournament in Prague 1946, placing equal second in a strong field The game we will study today is a very cool Accelerated Dragon in which Stoltz demonstrates concepts that would only become commonplace 30-40 years later, most notably in the games of the great Danish player Bent Larsen. It was played read more…
Fuelled by the grape! Stoltz-Evans Helsinki Olympiad 1952
I was inspired to analyse this game after coming across this passage in the excellent 4-part biography of Kortchnoi by Tibor Karolyi and Hans Renette (Elk and Ruby) Stoltz didn’t make a great score in this Olympiad But he was instrumental in Sweden’s victory over a very strong American team. The game was annotated here read more…
"The secret of my success: with every move I force the opponent to think for themselves!"
- Alexander Alekhine
about
I am a Chess Grandmaster and writer, and one of England's top players. When I am not doing my job as an IT Consultant, I fill my free time with as much chess as possible
my work
Writing and discussing chess has always been one of my passions. I review chess books in a regular column for New in Chess magazine and have written 8 books myself. I also contribute to chess videos regularly.
contact me
I hope that you enjoy the site. I will enrich its content over time and would love to hear what you think. Let me know whether there are any topics you would like me to cover in my blog.
"How many moves do I consider when analysing? Only one, but it's always the best one!"
- Emanuel Lasker
