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We Need to Talk about Garry, Part 2

Why Life Does Not Imitate Chess Garry Kasparov is an archetypal winner: one that every ambitious person should learn from. So says Alastair Campbell. And he should know: he’s written a book on this subject!i ‘Running through everything Kasparov says is the idea that winners…

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How to Avoid Traps

  ‘A player of average strength asked us how to avoid traps in the opening. We gave him four rules: Move nothing beyond the fourth/fifth rank till all your pieces are developed (except a pawn, if it hits a piece or takes something). When Black,…

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Move 40

‘Here I spent quite a bit of time. First of all, even if you have enough time approaching the time control, you will inevitably get some heightened emotions approaching move 40. It is almost always very useful to calm down before making more decisions. Chess…

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More Poems

North of the Border The Prawn¹ fell madly in love with the Cat And the Cat with the Prawn was smitten And so they got married and soon begat A lovely fluffy Pritten But no one was there to tell them so As they spoiled it…

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Hip To Be Square

Whenever the popular press presumes to write with authority about chess, the self-appointed custodians of the game (that’s us) get sniffy, usually with good reason. When chess hits the headlines it tends to trigger a reflex in newspapers. They (tabloids especially) reach for their trusty…

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Chess and Politics

John L. Watson [This withering indictment of the stupidity and arrogance of chess players was written over 16 years ago. It is still relevant today and lends weight to Sarah Hurst’s recent observation that ‘chess brilliance has nothing to do with high intelligence in other areas,…

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The Last Romantic

 Schmidt – Rossolimo Heidelberg, 1949 Black to play   This game is annotated in Victor Kahn’s La Conduite de la Partie d’Echecs, an attractive little book brimming with instructive examples of attacking chess. Too bad that it’s in French and long out of print. One of the great chess…

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Recipe for a Plan

  ‘What does the average player do when he can neither threaten anything useful nor has to parry some specific threat? He just has no guide, and probably ends up making a pawn move which he thinks will do least harm, but may actually ruin…

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