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 2, 2025
Matthew Sadler
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Since 2018, most of the games of chess I’ve analysed seriously have been engine games. I’ve therefore developed a somewhat atypical frame of reference for recognising themes and patterns. I’m more likely to say “Oh I saw that in Alliestein-Komodo” than “Carlsen played like this against Aronian” And that turned out to be the case…
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…
August 27, 2025
Matthew Sadler
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In the previous blog post, we looked through the game Conquest-Royal from the 8th round of the 2025 British Championships in Liverpool at a high level. Now it’s time to dive into the critical positions in more detail, starting as always from the end of the game and working our way backwards! Game: 20.f5…
August 23, 2025
Matthew Sadler
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English grandmaster Stuart Conquest had a wonderful finish to the 2025 British Championships in Liverpool, winning his last 2 games against grandmasters Shreyas Royal and Nikita Vitiugiov to tie for first with Michael Adams and Peter Roberson, subsequently finishing second to the evergreen Mickey after a rapid playoff. I was particularly interested in the quick…