11/15/2023 – In chess, blunders are inevitable. Of course, you might try to minimize them with tactical training, but you will never be able to get rid of them altogether. The same is true for unpleasant surprises. Whatever you do to be fully prepared for anything that might happen at the board, your opponent will still be time to time able to play a nasty unexpected move that gets you in a state of shock and horror. | Photo: A shocked Magnus Carlsen, analysing a game he played against Levon Aronian at the Grand Chess Tour tournament in Zagreb 2019 | Photo: Lennart Ootes

8/13/2023 – It is always frustrating to learn of a shot or move that you missed in a game but that was well within your ability to find. It happens to everyone, of course, but the question is how can we reduce this. In this article we will look at a strategy to help fight some of these misses.

10/11/2021 – What if you could get an estimate of your Elo rating just by doing a single test, as opposed to playing a couple of dozen games at long time controls? It isn’t an exaggeration to say this sounds like one of those inane personality ‘quizzes’ you see in supermarket magazines. But this proposal was the subject of a university study to do just that. Try it yourself!

3/13/2020 – There are three different outcomes for a chess game. We can win, we can draw or we can lose. There are also three different ways how we can lose a game. We get checkmated, we lose on time, or we resign. Resigning is normally an option if we are losing too much material, the time is almost up, or we are about to get checkmated. Nonetheless, we often insist to keeping on playing our lost game, instead of just resigning. | Photo: Steve Buissinne (Pixabay)

7/20/2018 – Chess players, chess authors and chess psychologists attempt to teach and explain chess playing and development of chess skills with the concept of pattern and pattern recognition. However, the lack of a precise definition of pattern raises the question of what we are supposed to recognise and if chess may not be too diverse and too complex to be reduced to simplified didactic devices like 'patterns.' This is comprehensively considered in a paper by RUNE VIK-HANSEN.

6/8/2018 – The recent article by Qiyu Zhou on pattern recognition was very well received — by our readers and in academic circles. At the end of the article, Frederic Friedel asked readers if anyone could locate footage from a science documentary he had produced 38 years ago, in which similar experiments were conducted. Unfortunately nobody apparently could, and so this promised follow-up article will have to make do with vivid descriptions and black and white photos. | Pictured: A teenage Nigel Short, a subject of Friedel's chess experiments

3/22/2018 – Chess is a mind game. When you sit at the board, it is just you, your thoughts and your emotions. In such a scenario having the right psychology is of utmost importance to serious tournament players. You may polish your opening knowledge, endgame skills, combinational abilities endlessly, but if you are not able to get in the right frame of mind then improving at the game is very difficult. With this in mind, Dr. Shrirang Joshi, a well-known psychiatrist and counsellor gives us three tips which can help us before, during and after the game. These are simple directives which are easy to understand, but quite difficult to implement. | Photo: Chess Directory

2/19/2018 – We often hear that chess is useful in other phases of life. While this is true for the ones who play the sport, it is still quite a big question to the uninitiated as to what exactly are the benefits of playing chess. Also, the benefits are so vast that sometimes it is difficult even for an experienced player to jot them all down. Dr. Shrirang Joshi is a well-known psychiatrist and counsellor based in Mumbai. He spent a lot of time studying the benefits of chess and now brings us the details of his findings. In this article you learn how lessons learnt from chess can be better applied to our day to day life. | Photo: Val Vesa

7/24/2017 – The label has settled into chess parlance, but its usage is a disservice to the inherent meritocracy of chess that all players appreciate. FM ALISA MELEKHINA argues that it's time to let the term “women’s chess” fade into our patriarchal past. | Photo: Doug Morisoli

12/3/2015 – In the second part of her in-depth interview Dronavalli Harika, India's number two women player, who recently became the first Women World Champion in Online-Blitz, talks about her repertoire, her love of chess books, psychology in chess, how she would pay tribute to her coach, and her ambition to become number one on the women's ranking list.

6/19/2014 – There are two theories to explain male predominance at the apex of intellectual achievement: some attribute it to some innate evolutionary ability differences, others to social factors of present-day society. Robert Howard of Sydney, Australia, has sent us the most profound and well-researched article we have seen on this subject – we urge everyone to read and ...

3/3/2014 – In part 1 of this paper we saw that chess players are sometimes misled by familiar patterns and motifs. The "Einstellung" effect can potentially be overcome by conscious effort, but also put to use, in modified ways, to outwit your opponent. Chess trainer Rick Lahaye gives practical examples, some involving which part of the board to stare at.

2/23/2014 – When confronted with a decision in chess, people are sometimes misled by familiar patterns and motifs, which cause them to miss better solutions. This is known as the "Einstellung" effect, and it has been systematically studied by a team of researchers. Their results have direct implications for practical playing strategy. Part one describes the basic research, including eye-tracking experiments.