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Posted by Matthew Sadler on 21st October 2016

The fight against hanging pawns

In 1927, Bogolyubow beat Reti twice from the same opening: 1.Nf3 d5 2.c4 e6 3.d4 Nf6 4.Nc3 Nbd7 5.e3. The first game was a sharp fight in an IQP structure; the second was an instructive example of the fight against hanging pawns. In a previous article – https://matthewsadler.me.uk/the-middlegame/hanging-out-with-efim/ – we saw Bogolyubow in trouble while

Posted by Matthew Sadler on 13th October 2016

Alekhine’s Tactical Tidbits

It never ceases to amaze me how many complicated games Alekhine played in his career. While browsing through collections of his games, I’m constantly coming across positions where my first instinct is “That can’t possibly work… can it?” In this post we take a look at a couple of Alekhine tactical tidbits that I analysed

Posted by Matthew Sadler on 13th October 2016

Chess for Life: ECF Book of the Year 2016

Both Natasha and I were delighted to hear that our book “Chess for Life” has won the English Chess Federation 2016 Book of the Year competition. A couple of extracts from the official press release: This year the judges had to make a choice from four books of high quality in the Short List, but

Posted by Matthew Sadler on 6th October 2016

Alekhine’s Themes – Moving the same piece many times

Watching Mihai’s Marin analysis of Karpov’s middlegame skills on a recent Chessbase DVD has been a wonderful learning experience. Marin identified a facet of Karpov’s play that I had never noticed before: moving the same piece many times in succession. After this manoeuvre, no one knows why, but he’s better! Marin cites many examples. This

Posted by Matthew Sadler on 2nd October 2016

In Memoriam Mark Dvoretsky

I was saddened to hear last week that the great Russian trainer Mark Dvoretsky had died at the age of 68. As a tribute, I wanted to share my experiences of studying with Mark in the mid-90’s. I got the opportunity to do so while my friend (and former coach) Steve Giddins was working in