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
Alekhine’s Themes – move 25, time to attack!
One of my favourite pieces of chess literature is the short 1964 article by Robert J Fischer entitled “The 10 greatest masters in history” which Edward Winter has made available on his excellent Chess History site (http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/fischer4.html) The first time I read it, I dismissed Fischer’s views as eccentric, but the more I learn, the read more…
The power of rook and minor piece against Queen
Another famous Alekhine attack is his game against the 66-year old former World Champion Emanuel Lasker at Zurich 1934. I found some interesting lines while analysing, but what struck me the most was that I twice underestimated a variation involving the sacrifice of the queen for rook, bishop and pawn. After checking my analysis with read more…
Chess for Life on Tour! BPB Limburg Open
The latest stop on the “Chess for Life” promotion tour was the BPB Limburg Open in Maastricht on Saturday 14th May. It’s the second biggest tournament in Holland in terms of numbers of participants and the top section boasted 6 players above 2600. Between the 2nd and 3rd rounds, we talked about 3 read more…
The …c5-c4 dogma
In our “Chess for Life” chapter on Tony Miles, we looked at an original opening plan of Tony’s in which he released the central tension very early with …c5-c4 in one of his patented offbeat openings. Although we discussed this decision at reasonable length in the book, we couldn’t include all the material we’d gathered 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
