For the section on Keith Arkell’s rook endings in my new book “Chess for Life” (co-authored with WIM Natasha Regan) I played through more than 300 of Keith’s rook endings. A heroic effort I hope you agree! The effort seems to have rubbed off on my play – I’ve had more rook endings than ever …

One of the things that made Alekhine very frightening to play against was his inventiveness in the openings. His particular forte was provoking quick crises in solid-looking 1.d4 openings. Alekhine was a master at forcing the opponent to solve concrete problems an at unexpectedly early moment in the game. Without the buffer of modern opening …

A day late on my site, but still heartfelt. A post to mark the 70th anniversary of Alexander Alekhine’s death. During a visit to Paris a couple of summers ago, I made a trip to the beautiful Cimetière du Montparnasse to visit his grave. I took a chessboard with me on which Kasparov had once …

Since the book has appeared, we’ve been catching up with our role models to hand over signed copies and thank them for their participation. At the recent 4NCL we caught up with Jon Speelman, Keith Arkell and Ingrid Lauterbach. Thanks to the help of a passing English GM, we managed to get a photo of …

One of the nicest themes we discuss in “Chess for Life” comes up in the chapter on Sergei Tiviakov. In this chapter we discuss one of Sergei’s most significant contributions to chess theory: the 3…Qd6 Scandinavian (1.e4 d5 2.ed Qd5 3.Nc3 Qd6). While writing the book, I played the opening a few times to get …