Zukertort – Potter London, 1876 Black to play Black has been gradually outplayed and is hanging on by his fingertips. He’s a pawn down, his queen is attacked, and the threat of a4-a5 seems terminal. After 36…Qe4 37 Qxe4 fxe4 38 a4 the pawn will…
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To mark the historic visit of FIDE President His Excellency Kirsan Ilyumzhinov to London last week, we invite readers to offer captions to these excellent photos we’ve appropriated without permission from FIDE’s website. Winners will receive the following prizes: A trip to Mars to meet the President’s…
Read MoreKupper – Leepin Basel, 1954 White to play Black has nothing to fear from 27 Qd8+ Kh7 28 Nf8+ Kh6 29 Qd4 Re2 when the position is equal. 27 Nf8! A brilliant move, and the only decisive one. 27…Bh7 27…Qxe5 fails…
Read More‘There is no need to play chess well at all. The dilettante who treats it almost completely as a game of chance doesn’t necessarily derive less pleasure from it than the grandmaster who strives for perfection.’ J.H. Donner NRC Handelsblad, 13 April 1981, reproduced in The King: Chess…
Read More‘Everything about our situation was a riddle. Why would Karpov and three of his colleagues jump on a plane and fly hundreds of miles to Kalmykia to open a criminal case against me just for revenge?’ Bill Browder, Red Notice: How I Became Putin’s No….
Read More‘Chess is, famously, an activity entirely unrelated to the rest of life: from this springs its fragile profundity.’ Julian Barnes, ‘TDF: The World Chess Championship’ The New Yorker (December 1993) reproduced in Letters from London 1990-1995 (Picador, 1995), p.249 ‘We could even make…
Read More‘In other sports, the persecution of some players, coaches or officials by the press not rarely offers a sad spectacle. With chess, the main problem is that the game is too esoteric by nature to satisfy the interest of the public at large . ….
Read More‘Security passes were something I never felt the need to wear, particularly when coupled with Rambo [John Stevens]. The way we were viewing it was, “If our hairdos aren’t our pass, well, we’ll pass on the gig, thank you.” Rambo and I got into so…
Read MoreSarah Hurst was a regular contributor to CHESS magazine in the 1990s and also edited the British Chess Federation’s newsletter, ChessMoves. Her fine book Curse of Kirsan: Adventures in the Chess Underworld is now available on Kindle at a bargain price. Since 2002 she has been translating…
Read MoreEliskases – Henneberger Bad Liebwerda, 1934 Black to play Walter Henneberger (1883–1969) was a Swiss master whose career as a school teacher afforded him few opportunities to compete in international tournaments. In the early 1900s he won the Swiss Championship four times but was…
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