We’re not talking about a chess set swap shop here – though that would be kind of cool, but rather the exchange of pieces of equal value for each other. Obviously the ideal in chess is to take your opponents pieces for free, but in most cases your opponent is likely to be quite stingy [...]
When you’re playing a game of chess there are certain strategies available to you as a player that enable you to force your opponent to do something other than they wish to do. This is what’s known as tactical play and there are 3 key components to a tactical game that enable the best players [...]
We’ve already looked at some tips for the start of the game, this time we’ll look at the mid-game but we’re going to move to a slightly more conceptual level as this part of the game can be very complex indeed. Acknowledge the arrival of the Midgame Really this means taking some time to consciously [...]
One of the hardest things to do in Chess is to choose an opening, particularly when you’re unfamiliar with your opponents strengths and weaknesses. There are literally thousands of possible combinations of move – only 3 physical moves into the game. However, not all of these choices are created equal. So we’ve got a quick [...]
When the Oxford Press put together a series of “Top 10 Chess Players” from a series of different professions, they came to an extraordinary conclusion. Scientists aren’t very good at chess, in fact they couldn’t find 10 great chess playing scientists at all. One particularly notable omission from the (shortened) list was Einstein. Despite his [...]