November 23, 2025
Matthew Sadler
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In the previous blog, we made some general observations about the Adams-Royal game from round 6 of the 2025 English Championships. In this blog entry, I’d like to examine some of Black’s better defensive opportunities and to reflect on the lessons we can draw about the correct method of defence in such situations. We identified…
November 20, 2025
Matthew Sadler
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A little while back, Natasha and I commentated on the 6th round of the English Chess Championships. One game that round made a huge impression both on us, and on many of the other professionals we talked to afterwards: Michael Adams’ victory against Shreyas Royal on the white side of a Petroff with a symmetrical…
September 20, 2025
Matthew Sadler
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IIn previous blog entries, we discovered that Stuart’s 16.Nd4 Game: 16.Nd4 – while obviously a perfect practical choice in his crucial 8th round game at the British Championships – gave Black a number of opportunities to flatten out the play and drain the attacking life from White’s position by capturing on d4 at various moments….
September 9, 2025
Matthew Sadler
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We saw in previous blog entries that Black’s best line on move 20 was to capture the knight on d4 with 20…Bxd4. Line: 20…Bxd4 In fact, an exchange on d4 could have been played at multiple occasions between move 16 (when White played 16.Nd4) and move 20: at what moments would this have been a…
September 1, 2025
Matthew Sadler
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In previous blog posts we noted how important the idea of …f6 – driving away the white knight from e5 – was for Black, and how White tried to prevent it with moves such as 16.Nd4 Game: 16.Nd4 19.Qh3 Game: 19.Qh3 and 20.f5 Game: 20.f5 We saw of course that when 20…f6 finally arrived on…