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
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…
Lessons from the 4NCL – January 2017
The 4NCL continued in Northampton on 14th-15th January 2017. Fortified by 2 lovely meals courtesy of our generous captain Roger Emerson, I managed to produce a nice attacking finish on the Sunday morning. Presumably I’d need 4 great meals to play well both days! The attack had some unusual points and my investigations prompted the read more…
Rook and Bishop vs Rook – Part III
In this final article in this series on the rook and bishop versus rook ending, I would like to examine both some typical mistakes and some unexpected saving resources from over 600 master games. Cochrane’s Defence. The hidden pitfall. Cochrane’s Defence is the most reliable way to defend this ending when starting from read more…
Rook and Bishop vs Rook – Part II
In a previous article, I examined the winning technique from the Philidor position in detail. In the next couple of articles, I want to spend some time on the best way to defend the rook and bishop against rook ending. To help me, I put together a database of decisive rook and bishop against 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
