In our “Chess for Life” chapter on Tony Miles, we looked at an original opening plan of Tony’s in which he released the central tension very early with …c5-c4 in one of his patented offbeat openings. Although we discussed this decision at reasonable length in the book, we couldn’t include all the material we’d gathered …

Yesterday, Natasha and I kicked off the “Chess for Life” promotion tour with an evening lecture at the Richmond and Twickenham Chess Club. We started off proceedings with a theme from Capablanca’s games – “Linked Knights” – and then showed how Capablanca’s arch-rival Alekhine made use of a turbo-charged version of the same theme to …

You can’t help noticing when your book is in the news! The May 2016 edition of CHESS magazine features a full page review of “Chess for Life” by Sean Marsh.       The review mentions Capablanca’s fights in the late 1930’s against the posse of emerging young players such as future World Champion Botvinnik, Sergei …

In an earlier post, I examined Alekhine’s predilection for centre-clearing gambits by analysing 2 of his games against Reshevsky and Rabinovich. I also mentioned Alekhine’s game against Winter at Hastings 1936/7 which featured a speculative Gambit against the solid Caro-Kann: 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 de 4.Ne4 Nf6 5.Bd3. I hadn’t realised it at the …

When work gets tough, I always look to chess – now just a hobby for me – for some joy and relief. So it was a nice boost to get a mail from my Dad at the beginning of April, pointing out that I’d just achieved my highest ELO rating ever – 2670 – beating …