GM Matthew Sadler analyses a critical decision in game 80 of the TCEC SuperFinal between Leela Zero and Stockfish.

Leela Zero committed a severe blunder in its TCEC match against Stockfish. GM Matthew Sadler analyses why this happened.

Idly flicking through one of the many Russian chess books I recently purchased from my friend Steve Giddins, my eye was caught by a diagram from a game by Peter Romanovsky. Peter Romanovsky was a strong Russian master and author especially active in the 1910s and 1920s. I had read his book “Soviet Middlegame Technique” …

The next stop for me through my tour of old books about forgotten players was the Latvian Grandmaster Aivars Gipslis (1937-2000) He is one of many names I had heard of without knowing anything concrete about them. He was ranked 19th in the world on the January and July 1971 lists with a rating of …

Continuing my journey through books from Steve Giddins’ collection, I came across a volume of Russian Grandmaster Alexander Zaitsev’s best games. If you know your Karpov games, then his name may ring a bell as he was the Black player in this astonishing position after 18 moves at the 1970 Russian Championship, a game Karpov …