30+ Ways to Checkmate in Chess
Quick Summary This post examines 31 checkmate patterns players should study. It looks at all sorts of checkmates, with a brief history of them and practical examples from games or common positions. Ranging from basic and common to rare and complex, studying these mates will help you with your overall game. Introduction We are foregoing […]
Chess Pattern Recognition – Improve From Zero to Hero
There is no other place to start any journey than where you are now! No matter how poorly you believe your chess pattern recognition skills are, you can improve them. To get your heroic journey off to a good start, learn: Chess tactics exist in all chess games rgardless of your skill-level. Chess pattern recognition […]
Scholar’s Mate in Chess (The 4-Move Checkmate)
Short summary: Scholar’s Mate is an opening sequence where White can checkmate Black in four moves. It takes advantage of the vulnerability of the weak f7 square Black has several good ways to defend against Scholar’s Mate, and actually get an opening advantage by doing so For that reason, Scholar’s Mate often backfires and is […]
Bent Larsen’s Checkmating Attacks
It has been a couple of weeks since our last episode of Checkmate Monday but we are back today with a selection of fine checkmating attacks by the great Bent Larsen. Larsen (1935-2010), the famous Danish Grandmaster, was a fearless player with an original style of play. He could beat anyone on his day, as proved […]
200 Years Ago
This week saw my own Chessable blog posts pass the 200 mark. It does not feel very long ago since I reached 100 posts, but the deception of time set me thinking about what sort of chess was played 200 years ago. Away from the chess board, the world witnessed the start of the […]