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
Maroczy Bound (hand and foot)
One of Alekhine’s most famous and spectacular sacrificial victories is his win against the super-solid Hungarian player Geza Maroczy at the Bled 1931 tournament. Bled was a massive success for Alekhine as he scored 20,5/26 undefeated and finished 5,5 points clear of the rest of the world-class field! As always, there’s plenty new to discover even read more…
Attacking with Alekhine
I’ve recently been going through Alekhine’s Collection of Best Games (in the Kindle edition otherwise known as the world’s most complete collection of chess misprints) and stopping whenever a game grabs my attention. I got caught up for a few days by the game Alekhine-Isakov played in 1919, It features a very interesting attack in read more…
Trying to play like Alekhine
At the recent 4NCL weekend, I played 2 attacking games which was a welcome change from the long grinds I’ve been playing in the past 6 months. This may be related to the Alekhine games I’ve been studying recently! Unfortunately, in my game against Ravi Haria, my attacking play wasn’t quite up to Alekhine’s standard. read more…
Hand and Brain
In the bar on the Saturday evening of the recent 4NCL weekend, I teamed up with my Chess for Life co-author WIM Natasha Regan against FM Jonathan Rogers and GM Matthew Turner for a no-holds-barred match of “hand and brain”. It’s a lovely chess variant for pairs in which one player is the “hand” and 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
