Jon Speelman's Agony Column

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News

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Jon Speelman: Remember 1963 (plus other worthy exhortations and an assertion)

12/4/2024 – Grandmaster Jon Speelman delves into the ongoing World Chess Championship match in Singapore, offering insightful analysis and drawing fascinating parallels to historic encounters like Botvinnik v. Petrosian in 1963. With Gukesh and Ding trading psychological blows as much as tactical ones, Speelman highlights critical moments that reveal each player's mindset and strategy under immense pressure. From Gukesh's bold refusal of a threefold repetition to Ding's cautious attempts to regain control, Speelman's commentary illuminates the evolving dynamics of a closely contested match. | Photo: FIDE / Eng Chin An

Jon Speelman: Beware ferocious chess children

11/3/2024 – When facing a young, ambitious opponent, it's best not to let them gain momentum. At the recent Hoogeveen Open, Surya Shekhar Ganguly learned this the hard way against Emil Frederick Schuricht, a German teenager who, despite being rated 2145, outplayed the Indian GM spectacularly on the dark squares. Meanwhile, young chess prodigies keep raising the bar - most notably 9-year-old Ethan Pang (pictured), who reached an impressive 2303 rating this month. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

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: 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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