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 developing move is not enough!
In my last blog post, we cast our minds into the nightmare of endgames future and saw some evidence that we need to play decisively as Black in the middlegame and not allow ourselves to drift into a passive situation. Just in case we still aren’t totally convinced, it’s also instructive to look at the read more…
Afraid of what might be…
This blog post continues my slight obsession with the intricacies of the …c4 move in a Trompovsky / Torre Attack structure. This time we focus on one of the engine’s best lines for Black: 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5 d5 3.Nd2 Nbd7 4.Ngf3 h6 5.Bh4 e6 6.e3 c5 7.Bd3 Be7 8.c3 0–0 9.0–0 and now instead of read more…
Understanding and knowing
How much should you understand and how much should you know? It’s the eternal question of opening preparation! Ideally, you should understand everything and thus need to know nothing. Unfortunately, you need to know something before you can understand. So you first need to know, then understand, and then you should forget what you know read more…
The mystery of …c4
While indulging myself in some analysis of games by the legendary Italian grandmaster Sergio Mariotti, I came across an extraordinary positional episode in some engine games I ran as part of my analysis. It’s one of those engine recommendations that make you question everything you thought you knew, as well as awakening feelings of guilt 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
