Chess

The German expression zugzwang means ‘compulsion to move’ and is most often seen in the endgame. Consider the following position on Diagram 1.   It is Black to move. If Black were not obliged to move he could draw by waiting for White to play 1 c7+ Kc8 2 Kc6 with a draw by stalemate. Instead

Mickey Adams won the British Championship, which finished last week in Torquay, for the seventh time. Leading scores (out of nine) were as follows: 1. Adams 7½; 2. Howell 7; 3= Haria and Palliser 6½; 5= Gordon, Tan and Houska 6. Jovanka Houska has now won the British Women’s Championship a record nine times.  

What distinguishes the expert from the amateur in chess is partly tactical fluency, but also the ability to map out long-term patterns, in other words to visualise a distant goal. Some champions were distinguished by their talent for rough-and-tumble tactics; among such illuminati one could mention Alekhine, Tal and Kasparov. Others, such as Capablanca, Reti, Nimzowitsch,

There are comparisons to be made between tennis and chess. Player X (aka White) serves. Player Y (Black) responds. The advantage of playing White in chess and serving in tennis are similar. Losing your serve is nearly as bad for a tennis player as losing with White is for a chess player. But some champions have

Sixty years ago, the great Mikhail Tal won the Candidates tournament by a massive margin to qualify for a world title match against Botvinnik, which Tal also won, equally convincingly. This week, in homage to Tal, one of his four zero wipeout games against Bobby Fischer, with notes based on those of eyewitness Harry Golombek

Staunton was the most successful British player of all time, winning three matches against European masters in the 1840s which in modern times would certainly have qualified him to be recognised as world champion.   On the social medium of Twitter (@HowardStaunton), an anonymous writer has invented a witty and satirically trenchant imitation of Staunton.

This year Tigran Petrosian would have celebrated his 90th birthday. The Armenian grandmaster and world champion was noted for the profundity and originality of his strategic concepts, as well as his quasi-invincibility in high level contests. He was certainly my role model when I was a student of chess in my teens, a chess hero

The King’s Indian Defence is one of Black’s most dynamic reactions to closed openings such as d4/c4 and Nf3. Black sacrifices space in the centre but gains flank counter-chances on both wings in compensation. It has been a favourite of the pioneering Soviet grandmaster David Bronstein, who was followed enthusiastically by like-minded aggressors such as

The elite tournament at Stavanger in Norway has resulted in yet another victory for the world champion Magnus Carlsen. The format was unorthodox in that draws were replayed as so-called Armageddon blitz games. In such cases White has more time but any draws count as Black wins. Classical wins count as 2-0, whereas Armageddon wins

The Isle of Lewis chess pieces are one of the proudest possessions of the British Museum and also the National Museum of Scotland, which shares the hoard discovered on Uig in 1831. They represent the oldest complete chess sets in the world, with only a few pawns and a rook missing from one set. Now the rook

An unusual tournament has taken place at the Lindores Abbey Whisky Distillery in Scotland, namely a double-round competition between four of the world’s elite, including world champion Magnus Carlsen. The final scores out of six were as follows: Magnus Carlsen 3½, Ding Liren and Sergey Karjakin 3, Viswanathan Anand 2½, and this week I focus

Gawain Jones has fought his way to the no. 1 position on the UK ranking list by a series of recent successes in the world team championship, the Reykjavik Open, and now by scoring first prize in the Sigeman closed invitational tournament in Malmo, Sweden. Gawain’s live rating is now 2,709, ahead of Howell and Sadler

One of the most irritating defences to meet when playing 1 d4 as White is the Benko Gambit (1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 c5 3 d5 b5). It was foreshadowed by a Ruy Lopez between Nimzowitsch and Capablanca from St Petersburg 1914. In that classic game, White won a queenside pawn in ingenious fashion, only

This year’s Grand Chess Tour kicked off in the Ivory Coast with a significant innovation, the first ever tournament in Africa involving a reigning world champion. Magnus Carlsen duly triumphed in the overall scores of a combined rapid and blitz event. The champion, however, did not have it all his own way. Carlsen easily won

The French Defence appears to be somewhat cautious in nature but can in fact lead to disruptive middlegame clashes. It was a favourite of such aficionados of counterattack as Aron Nimzowitsch, Mikhail Botvinnik and Viktor Korchnoi. One of my favourite lines was espoused by world champion Tigran Petrosian, for example in the following win against

In my column of 20 April I reported on the overwhelming victory by world champion Magnus Carlsen in the elite Gashimov Memorial tournament at Shamkir, Azerbaijan. Almost immediately he went on to repeat his annihilation of the world’s best by taking first prize at the Grenke tournament in Baden Baden and Karlsruhe, in Germany.   After