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
H.E. Atkins, 9-times British Champion – Part II
The Yorkshiremen F.D Yates and H.E. Atkins were frequent rivals in the British Championships from 1909 until Yates’ untimely death in 1932. Yates came second to Atkins in 4 of Atkins’ 9 British Championship victories! The first game in this article is taken from the match played in 1912 to decide the winner of the read more…
H.E. Atkins, 9-times British Champion – Part I
After my series on 6-times British Champion F.D. Yates, my friend Steve Giddins suggested that I look at the games of one of the 2 players to have exceeded Yates’ record of British Championships: H.E. Atkins (1872-1955), 9-times British Champion (as Steve Giddins pointed out, Jonathan Penrose is the record-holder with 10 victories between 1958 read more…
Heidenfeld’s Queenless Middlegames
In the last few weeks, I’ve spent some time in the train analysing positions from a book “Damen sind Luxus” (“Queens are a luxury”) by W. Heidenfeld which my friend Steve Giddins leant to me over Christmas. I made a few little discoveries which I thought I’d share with you in this article. The games read more…
The King is a strong (or foolhardy) piece!
An oft-quoted maxim of Wilhelm Steinitz is that “the king must be treated as a strong piece both for attack and defence”. While sceptical about the truth of this statement while queens are on the board, I thought of it more than once while analysing a series of tactical queenless middlegame from a book “Damen 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
