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 …

When I retired from professional chess, one of the things I was looking forward to was playing for fun. Without the pressure of having to maintain my ELO rating, I was looking forward to playing attractively and creatively, and I was hoping I’d react calmly when the inevitable losses came along. That never quite happened …