Apart from analysing kingside attacks, my other favourite chess pastime is accumulating themes from the games of the great players. In my forthcoming book Chess for Life (co-authored with WIM Natasha Regan) I explain how I used the analysis of themes from Capablanca’s games to help me prepare for the games against Kramnik and Svidler …

One of Alekhine’s most famous and spectacular sacrificial victories is his win against the super-solid Hungarian player Geza Maroczy at the Bled 1931 tournament. Bled was a massive success for Alekhine as he scored 20,5/26 undefeated and finished 5,5 points clear of the rest of the world-class field! As always, there’s plenty new to discover even …

I’ve recently been going through Alekhine’s Collection of Best Games (in the Kindle edition otherwise known as the world’s most complete collection of chess misprints) and stopping whenever a game grabs my attention. I got caught up for a few days by the game Alekhine-Isakov played in 1919, It features a very interesting attack in …

At the recent 4NCL weekend, I played 2 attacking games which was a welcome change from the long grinds I’ve been playing in the past 6 months. This may be related to the Alekhine games I’ve been studying recently! Unfortunately, in my game against Ravi Haria, my attacking play wasn’t quite up to Alekhine’s standard. …

In the bar on the Saturday evening of the recent 4NCL weekend, I teamed up with my Chess for Life co-author WIM Natasha Regan against FM Jonathan Rogers and GM Matthew Turner for a no-holds-barred match of “hand and brain”. It’s a lovely chess variant for pairs in which one player is the “hand” and …