Jonathan Speelman

Jonathan Speelman was born in 1956 and graduated from Worcester College Oxford, where he read mathematics. He became an IM and a professional chess player in 1977, a GM in 1980 and was a member of the English Olympic team from 1980–2006. Three times British Champion he played twice in the Candidates, reaching the semi-final (of what was then a knockout series of matches) in 1989 when he lost 4.5-3.5 to Jan Timman. He was twice a second to a world championship challenger: Nigel Short and then Viswanathan Anand against Garry Kasparov in London 1993 and New York 1995.

Jon has written for The Observer (weekly) since 1993 and The Independent since 1998. With its closure (going online, but without Jon on board) he is expanding online activity and is also now offering online tuition. He likes puzzles, especially (cryptic) crosswords and killer sudokus. If you'd like to contact Jon, then please write to jonathan@speelman.demon.co.uk

Recent news

Jon Speelman: Beauty in London and Budapest

10/6/2024 – Every month or so, I have lunch with some chess players in central London. We normally go to a pub and this time I had a decent pint and a reasonable veggie burger which was punctuated by some gossip and some chess. Find here a few of the positions we discussed - plus three remarkable games from the Olympiad in Budapest! | Pictured: Benjamin Gledura (Hungary) at the 2024 FIDE Chess Olympiad | Photo: Michal Walusza

Jon Speelman: Pushing the limits of greed and analysis

9/1/2024 – One of the most popular ideas for my columns here has been to look at great attacking games. Various names have been mentioned, and I'm starting today with a fine example by the Soviet grandmaster Leonid Stein (pictured), one of the greatest attacking players of the mid-20th century. I've also continued with the theme of exploring the limits of analysis, with a game from the Sinquefield Cup between D. Gukesh and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. | Photo: Dutch National Archive

Jon Speelman: Analysis and the Oracle

8/4/2024 – As we try to improve our chess, much of the work involves considerable analysis, which is hugely expedited by talking to our silicon masters. The important thing, however, is not merely to sit at the Oracle's feet and genuflect, but to ask sufficient questions so as to develop our own understanding and, on a very good day, to do some of the work ourselves. | Pictured: Ray Robson | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Saint Louis Chess Club
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Trappers trapped

7/7/2024 – Trapping the pieces of the opponent has a particular charm. When thinking back to the first days of ChessBase and looking at a game Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Alireza Firouzja recently played at the Superbet Classic in Bucharest, Jon Speelman (pictured) remembered a number of famous and entertaining games, in which pieces were caught. | Photo: David Llada
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Jon Speelman: May miscellany

6/2/2024 – Study composition is one of the aspects of chess that has been both most helped and most muddied by computers. Sometimes it turns out that a study is actually unsound or at least has dual(s), and sometimes there are complications regarding the 50-move rule, for example. But if you have an idea, then it has never been easier to test it, so that a process that would once have taken days can now be finalised in mere minutes. | Photo: John Upham

Jon Speelman: The search for less than perfection (or when -0.07 > 0.11)

5/5/2024 – One of the most interesting aspects of the Candidates Tournament was the superb opening preparation, and in particular how they managed to set each other problems which hadn’t been foreseen. This is a special skill that involves interacting with the fearsome engines not to find the “best” moves but ones which are almost as strong according to the silicon evaluation — but lower down the food chain! | Photo: FIDE / Michal Walusza

Jon Speelman: Predators in Toronto

4/7/2024 – As the much-anticipated Candidates Tournament is taking place in Toronto, it’s not too difficult to separate the players into those with a decent chance of winning and becoming Ding’s challenger and those who will hope to have a decent result and gain invaluable experience for the future. After three rounds of play, the overall impression is that these guys are going to beat each other to a pulp and that the level of opening preparation is terrifying! | Photo: FIDE / Michal Walusza

Jon Speelman: Charge of the chestnuts!

3/3/2024 – A fortnight ago, I showed a game by Lu Miaoyi, a ferocious 14-year-old Chinese girl. This started me thinking about the best attacking players of all time. I don’t have an ordered list myself, just some names which I think should go very close to the top. Here I analysed three brilliant attacking wins by Rashid Nezhmetdinov (pictured), Paul Keres and Wei Yi. What is your top ten of attacking players? Share your list in the comments section.

Jon Speelman: The joy of innumeracy

2/18/2024 – Today’s column is about sacrifices and the exchange in particular. If you’re shown a chess position cold, then the first thing you do normally is to count the pieces just to check that the material is fairly balanced. But the relative activity is at least as important. The “joy of innumeracy” might turn out to be a valuable (in)ability in many chess positions! | Pictured: Lu Miaoyi at the 2023 Rapid and Blitz World Championships. | Photo: Lennart Ootes
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Jon Speelman: Five abreast

2/4/2024 – In the final round of the Tata Steel Masters, five players started first equal and four of them won. Big pile ups do occur quite often at the end of open Swiss tournaments, but I don’t think that I’ve ever seen this before at the end of a top-class all-play-all. The last round was a fantastic spectacle, so I thought I’d add some of my own observations now, augmented by some incredible moves from our silicon lords and masters. | Photo: Jurriaan Hoefsmit / Tata Steel Chess
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Jon Speelman: Sensible decision making

1/21/2024 – Since we can’t hope to emulate the calculating ability of modern engines, what we must do is to plough a sensible course, in which we calculate as much as possible within the constraints of the time limit, aiming for positions to play in which we feel reasonably comfortable. There’s little advantage in going for some horrifically complicated line in which the machine is very happy but we feel seasick! | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Tata Steel Chess
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Jon Speelman: To and fro - 2023 and 2024

1/7/2024 – As the new year gets underway, it's traditional to look both forwards and backwards. 2023 saw Magnus Carlsen abdicate his world title, Ding Liren capture the vacant crown after a nail-biting match against Ian Nepomniachtchi and Ju Wenjun retain her world title also by a narrow margin after defeating her countrywoman Lei Tingjie. Jon Speelman looks back to 2023 and forward to 2024. | Photo: Fabiano Caruana | Photo: Lennart Ootes
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Jon Speelman: Light and dark

12/17/2023 – In order to attack the enemy king successfully in a game of chess, you need sufficient firepower and a clear target. Often there will be a complex of squares of the same colour that come under attack, and so we have white or dark-square games. Today we have some instances of attacks on both light and dark squares, featuring the likes of Johannes Zukertort (pictured) and Anatoly Karpov!
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Jon Speelman: Major and minor

12/3/2023 – Endings with a rook and a minor piece each are especially difficult. There is still enough firepower on the board for plenty of tactics, up to and often including mating attacks. But in contrast to middlegames, where unless matters are very forcing you have to rely to a great extent on intuition, in principle you “ought” — with material limited — to be able to calculate fairly accurately! | Photo: John Saunders (2007)
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Jon Speelman: Calculation without excessive genuflection

11/19/2023 – This week, I’m looking at calculation and what’s reasonable for a mere human being without excessive genuflection to our silicon lords and masters. One thing that the silicon brings us is a totally unprejudiced “eye”, but seeing far enough in difficult positions over the board is something any competitive player needs to develop properly. | Pictured: Vidit Gujrathi | Photo: FIDE / Stev Bonhage
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Jon Speelman: Fireworks old and new

11/5/2023 – Marking Guy Fawkes Day in the UK, Jon Speelman goes over a number of suitably pyrotechnic games. Three correspondence-chess marvels from the 1980s are followed by recent games from the Qatar Masters and the FIDE Grand Swiss. Fire on board!
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Jon Speelman: Anybody can have an off day

10/22/2023 – Magnus Carlsen’s disastrous loss to Alisher Suleymenov in Qatar has gone round the world, partly because it was an excellent game but mainly because it was so unusual: Carlsen’s first defeat by such a relatively “weak” opponent since the Norwegian Championship of 2006! Unusual but not really that shocking. Anybody can have an off day, and the truly shocking thing is that Carlsen has managed for nearly two decades to avoid losing at classical chess to such an opponent. | Photo: Aditya Sur Roy
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Jon Speelman: Trusting your hand

10/1/2023 – A little over a week ago, Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura did battle in the Speed Chess Championship. Over three hours, they battered each other at 5+1, 3+1 and 1+1 until Carlsen emerged the victor by the narrowest possible margin. It was a great spectacle, and the thing I liked most of all was how these two great players, when things are going well, ‘trust their hands’. Their autopilots can outperform most people even at much slower time limits, and there were a few decisions which I particularly admired. | Photo: Lennart Ootes
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