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
Hidden dynamic factors
While researching a previous blog article on the plan of …c5-c4 in Queen’s Gambit Declined positions, I came across the game Botvinnik-Capablanca AVRO 1938. None other than Garry Kasparov dedicates great attention to this wonderful game both in Chessbase and in his book “My Great Predecessors Volume II”. His comment to Capablanca’s 14th move (14…c4) read more…
Lessons from the 4NCL – November 2016 Part II
My second game of the 4NCL weekend was a tough battle against Andrew Lewis. As Black, I won a pawn in the opening but never quite managed to neutralise the compensation White enjoyed due to his 2 bishops and my awkwardly-placed queen. As always a playable version of this article is available at http://cloudserver.chessbase.com/MTIyMTYx/replay.html read more…
Play through games from this blog online!
Thanks to a tip from Allan Beardsworth (allanbeardsworth.com) , it is now possible to play through (some of) the material on this blog online. Just go to my Chessbase Cloud site at http://cloudserver.chessbase.com/MTIyMTYx/replay.html and you’ll find the .pgn files for my latest article presented via the Chessbase Viewer. Time permitting, I’ll gradually add some older articles read more…
Chess for Life On Tour! London Chess Classic
December is a hectic time at work, but I always make time for a visit to the wonderful London Chess Classic. The Classic never disappoints. It’s a unique experience: a celebration of chess in all its forms based around a prestigious super-grandmaster tournament. This year was particularly exciting as Natasha and I were presented 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
