This next game from round 9 of the Cambridge International featured one of my unusual engine ideas, a surprising exchange of minor pieces and a virulent attack along the g-file! Camacho Collados,Marcos (2462) – Sowray,Peter J (2219) [B09] 1. d4 d6 2. e4 Nf6 3. Nc3 g6 4. f4 Bg7 5. Nf3 O-O 6. Qd2 …

A recent trip to the Cambridge International Open (https://lichess.org/broadcast/3rd-cambridge-international-2025/round-6/Wa4LxDIM) to do some commentary together with Natasha Regan (recordings are here for the next 2 weeks: https://www.twitch.tv/wim_natasharegan) reminded me how much fun commentating is and how nice it is to walk around the tournament hall and watch some games. One game that couldn’t fail to catch …

In my last blog post, we cast our minds into the nightmare of endgames future and saw some evidence that we need to play decisively as Black in the middlegame and not allow ourselves to drift into a passive situation. Just in case we still aren’t totally convinced, it’s also instructive to look at the …

This blog post continues my slight obsession with the intricacies of the …c4 move in a Trompovsky / Torre Attack structure. This time we focus on one of the engine’s best lines for Black: 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5 d5 3.Nd2 Nbd7 4.Ngf3 h6 5.Bh4 e6 6.e3 c5 7.Bd3 Be7 8.c3 0–0 9.0–0 and now instead of …

How much should you understand and how much should you know? It’s the eternal question of opening preparation! Ideally, you should understand everything and thus need to know nothing. Unfortunately, you need to know something before you can understand. So you first need to know, then understand, and then you should forget what you know …