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Posted by Matthew Sadler on 1st June 2016

Chess For Life On Tour! Ashtead Chess Club

On May 31st we made our next stop on the “Chess for Life” promotion tour – this time at the Ashtead Chess Club. We started off with an impromptu demonstration of Paul Morphy’s famous game against Count Isouard for the benefit of the juniors still present. We were both very impressed at how many of

Posted by Matthew Sadler on 1st June 2016

Alekhine’s Themes: …dxc4 followed by …Bg4

Although I love analysing attacks and crunching out reams of variations, it’s often just as useful to reflect quietly on the general course that a game has taken. The aim then is not to discover the whole truth about the position, but rather to get into the heads of the players and to understand the

Posted by Matthew Sadler on 25th May 2016

Alekhine’s Themes – move 25, time to attack!

One of my favourite pieces of chess literature is the short 1964 article by Robert J Fischer entitled “The 10 greatest masters in history” which Edward Winter has made available on his excellent Chess History site (http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/fischer4.html) The first time I read it, I dismissed Fischer’s views as eccentric, but the more I learn, the

Posted by Matthew Sadler on 17th May 2016

The power of rook and minor piece against Queen

Another famous Alekhine attack is his game against the 66-year old former World Champion Emanuel Lasker at Zurich 1934. I found some interesting lines while analysing, but what struck me the most was that I twice underestimated a variation involving the sacrifice of the queen for rook, bishop and pawn. After checking my analysis with

Posted by Matthew Sadler on 16th May 2016

Chess for Life on Tour! BPB Limburg Open

The latest stop on the “Chess for Life” promotion tour was the BPB Limburg Open in Maastricht on Saturday 14th May. It’s the second biggest tournament in Holland in terms of numbers of participants and the top section boasted 6 players above 2600.     Between the 2nd and 3rd rounds, we talked about 3