This interesting game doesn’t even make it into Tibor Karolyi’s 3-volume biography of Mikhail Tal, or even in Mikhail Tal’s own collection of Best Games! I found it in “The Complete Manual of Positional Chess, Opening and Middlegame” by Sakaev and Landa, in a chapter entitled “Do not leave the king in the centre”. Good …

I came across the following game in the Illustrated London News of April 26th, 1930 under the heading “USA Naval SS Baffled” and the concluding sentence “This should ‘larn’ the Americans to steal our naval secrets”! Intrigued, I looked at the game which was indeed spectacular.  It was played in the London – Washington Cable …

One of the nice things about looking at the games of a great British player of the past like Sir George Thomas is that you can happily spend hours looking through the British Newspaper Archives, gathering biographical information and reading the tournament reports of that time (and occasionally getting distracted by all the other news …

In the next few months, I am going to spend some time looking at the games of one of the strongest British players of the 1920s and 1930s, 2-times British Champion Sir George Thomas. It is strange that the British players of this period have attracted so little attention, when so many other long-forgotten players …

In this month’s New in Chess, I review a fantastic book by the Odessan study composer and historian Sergei Tkachenko published by the Elk and Ruby publishing house and entitled “Alekhine’s Odessa Secrets. Chess, War and Revolution”. Apart from detailing Alekhine’s activities in Odessa during and after the 1st World War, the book also excelled …