12/22/2017 – Davide Nastasio's latest review turned out to be more like a theoretical article. The reason is simple: If one is serious about playing the Stonewall Dutch, he or she must consider the homework duty which comes with learning this quite interesting opening. The fact that the Dutch is employed routinely by the top players in the world shows how such opening is still alive and dangerous for those who are unprepared! l'Ami is quite honest in his positional evaluations and recommendations. However, be ready for a bumpy ride!

12/22/2017 – Black has attacked the white knight e5 with 18...f6 (diagram position). Two questions: What's the best square for it? And how can it get there?

12/22/2017 – Other chess reviewers have been at best dismissal and at worst harshly critical of The Secret of Chess, by Lyudmil Tsvetkov. However, according to GM David Smerdon, this book is a one of a kind work that legitimately has the potential to revolutionise how we think about chess. | Photo: Smerdon at the Tromsø Chess Olympiad, by Andreas Kontokanis CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

12/21/2017 – Huaian, China hosted the International Mind Games Association's competition of five mind sports, including chess, which was represented by rapid, blitz and Basque (two simultaneous games) formats. Vladislav Artemiev won the blitz and Dmitry Andreikin took the rapid tournaments for the men, Alexander Grischuk the Basque tournament. For women, the winners are Antoaneta Stafanova and Zhao Xue. | Photo: Gu Xiaobing

12/21/2017 – A solid tactical understanding is sure to help any chess player in critical situations. Whether it is a simple exchange or a mating attack, tactics are ubiquitous. Take advantage of the opportunity to develop your tactical understanding in this series with IM Oliver Reeh and Pascal Simon! Thursday at 15:30 CET (9:30 AM EDT) it's all about the move of the year!

12/21/2017 – In his final event of the year, GM Alex Yermolinsky drove up to Illinois to play in the 2nd Sevan Muradian Memorial, an event that is in honor of one of the most active organizers, whose events provided norms to dozens of players. Many players owe him a debt in gratitude, and Hikaru Nakamura himself offered to match up to $3000 in tournament profit to benefit the Muradian family. Enjoy this report with many fine analyses.

12/17/2017 – Last week we gave you some interesting problems to solve, today we bring you the solutions thereof. And some logical puzzles, which the veteran Super-GM gave us during spectacular walks along the cliffs of Cornwall. For some we need mathematical assistance and invite our readers to provide this. Finally a selection of prize-winning compositions, published over the years, by John Nunn himself. If you do participate there is a a very nice personal prize to win. | Photo: Frederic Friedel

12/17/2017 – Morgon from Canada plays well positionally...before it all goes pear shaped. JS has the blow-by-blow. Fancy Jon taking a look at your games? Send them in! If you appear in the Agony column, not only will you get free detailed commentary of your games by one of chess’s great authors and instructors, and former world no. 4 player, but you also win a free three-month ChessBase Premium Account!

12/17/2017 – Live from Katowice, Poland, December 16th and 17th. This Swiss system rapid tournament features 11 rounds, in which players have 15 minutes plus a 10-second increment for the entire game. Over 1,000 players are participating in all, and the prize fund is €21,000, with €4,000 for 1st place. After day one, Igor Kovalenko, Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Vladimir Potkin and Marcin Dziuba were leading with 6 points, but on day two, Russian IM Maxim Vavulin was perfect and ended in sole first with 10 / 11.

12/17/2017 – In 2005, a Moroccan online chess magazine was created: ‘Maroc–Echecs’. It grew into a very popular chess news site in French and Arabic, and a platform where everybody could express their opinion about matters related to chess with a Moroccan focus. But its very existence imperilled the livelihood of Moroccan players who criticised their federation's management. Part one looked at some of the allegations of corruption and mismanagement. In part two we focus on the testimony of some of those, in the Moroccan chess community, who suffered the consequences. | Pictured (L to R): Mohamed Tissir, Ismael Karim, Ali Sebbar, Abdelaziz Onkoud | Photo: maroc-echecs.com

12/16/2017 – The most well-known quote by Tarrasch, if memory serves me well, is, "he who fears an Isolated Queen Pawn should give up chess." There are many steps one must follow in order to become a chess master. While tactics are fundamental, at a certain point it becomes obvious one needs to know how to treat pawn formations resulting from certain openings. The Isolated Queen Pawn (IQP) results from many different openings, hence the need to know it. When the topic of the DVD is the IQP and Tactics, one knows this is a DVD to have at all costs!

12/16/2017 – Both the open and women's Russian Superfinals in St. Petersburg 2017 could not have been more exciting! In the open event, the two St. Petersburgers Peter Svidler and Nikita Vitiugov were in first place with 7 points each after 11 rounds and had to decide the title in rapid chess (two games 15 minutes + 10 seconds). Svidler took his record eighth title, winning both tiebreak games. The same thing happened in the women's tournament: Alexandra Goryachkina and Natalia Pogonina were tied after eleven rounds also on 7 points each and also followed by an exciting rapid playoff, won by the 19-year-old Goryachkina. | Photo: Eteri Kublashvili