November and December have been crazy months, primarily from a work point of view but also from a chess point of view. On the 4th December I took part in the first Rapid Chess Tournament organised by the British Bangla Chess Association (http://britishbanglachess.com/4th-december-2016/)     It was a fun day though the chess ended in …

While researching a previous blog article on the plan of …c5-c4 in Queen’s Gambit Declined positions, I came across the game Botvinnik-Capablanca AVRO 1938. None other than Garry Kasparov dedicates great attention to this wonderful game both in Chessbase and in his book “My Great Predecessors Volume II”. His comment to Capablanca’s 14th move (14…c4) …

My second game of the 4NCL weekend was a tough battle against Andrew Lewis. As Black, I won a pawn in the opening but never quite managed to neutralise the compensation White enjoyed due to his 2 bishops and my awkwardly-placed queen.   As always a playable version of this article is available at http://cloudserver.chessbase.com/MTIyMTYx/replay.html …

Thanks to a tip from Allan Beardsworth (allanbeardsworth.com) , it is now possible to play through (some of) the material on this blog online. Just go to my Chessbase Cloud site at http://cloudserver.chessbase.com/MTIyMTYx/replay.html and you’ll find the .pgn files for my latest article presented via the Chessbase Viewer. Time permitting, I’ll gradually add some older articles …

December is a hectic time at work, but I always make time for a visit to the wonderful London Chess Classic. The Classic never disappoints. It’s a unique experience: a celebration of chess in all its forms based around a prestigious super-grandmaster tournament.   This year was particularly exciting as Natasha and I were presented …