my latest books
"Re-Engineering the Chess Classics"
Nominated for the 2023 Chess.com Book of the Year
"The Silicon Road to Chess Improvement"
"Game Changer" won the ECF Book of the Year 2019 and the FIDE Book of the Year 2019
A typical Colle-Zukertort position – Part 5
IIn previous blog entries, we discovered that Stuart’s 16.Nd4 Game: 16.Nd4 – while obviously a perfect practical choice in his crucial 8th round game at the British Championships – gave Black a number of opportunities to flatten out the play and drain the attacking life from White’s position by capturing on d4 at various moments. read more…
A typical Colle-Zukertort position – Part 4
We saw in previous blog entries that Black’s best line on move 20 was to capture the knight on d4 with 20…Bxd4. Line: 20…Bxd4 In fact, an exchange on d4 could have been played at multiple occasions between move 16 (when White played 16.Nd4) and move 20: at what moments would this have been a read more…
Whole-board play!
Since 2018, most of the games of chess I’ve analysed seriously have been engine games. I’ve therefore developed a somewhat atypical frame of reference for recognising themes and patterns. I’m more likely to say “Oh I saw that in Alliestein-Komodo” than “Carlsen played like this against Aronian” And that turned out to be the case read more…
A typical Colle-Zukertort position – Part 3
In previous blog posts we noted how important the idea of …f6 – driving away the white knight from e5 – was for Black, and how White tried to prevent it with moves such as 16.Nd4 Game: 16.Nd4 19.Qh3 Game: 19.Qh3 and 20.f5 Game: 20.f5 We saw of course that when 20…f6 finally arrived on read more…
"The secret of my success: with every move I force the opponent to think for themselves!"
- Alexander Alekhine
about
I am a Chess Grandmaster and writer, and one of England's top players. When I am not doing my job as an IT Consultant, I fill my free time with as much chess as possible
my work
Writing and discussing chess has always been one of my passions. I review chess books in a regular column for New in Chess magazine and have written 8 books myself. I also contribute to chess videos regularly.
contact me
I hope that you enjoy the site. I will enrich its content over time and would love to hear what you think. Let me know whether there are any topics you would like me to cover in my blog.
"How many moves do I consider when analysing? Only one, but it's always the best one!"
- Emanuel Lasker
