“We perceive after a careful consideration of the evolution of the chess mind that such evolution has gone on, in general, in a way quite similar to that in which it goes on with the individual chess player, only with the latter more rapidly.”Richard RETI
That is, start off trying to play like Morphy, before you try to play like Carlsen.
Chess Championship games:
Alexander Alexandrovitch Alekhin wrestled the crown from Capablanca with and never allowed him a rematch. He did play matches with Bogolyubow and even lost one to Euwe before getting back the worls title. Alekhin’s moves were always trying to get the most out of a position. It wasn’t his style to look for ‘natural’ or…
Champion at 18 years old, we may still be finding out what Gukesh has to teach us. He is known for long thinks — take note, Devon under-10s! Best games of Gukesh: https://lichess.org/study/XhmtHdBp/ts3aEajr Gukesh’ top board performance at the 2024 Olympiad https://lichess.org/study/e8jGWNWG
Smyslov played four times for the World Championship: he came second to Botvinnik in the 1948 tournament (following Alekhin’s death), and then he played Botvinnik three times, drawing in 1954 (so Botvinnik kept the title), winning in 1957, but losing again in 1958. Smyslov was a fine singer and musician, and his games are known…
I think a natural question is, who has taken part in the most World Championship matches, but sometimes the World Championship event is a tournament… Good question! So here is a table based on a Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_Chess_Championships: (Player names are given with their national affiliation) Date Location Winner Score Runner-up Format Match/Tournament Predecessor events…
Elegant and subtle, Capablanca was the perfect endgame machine. His opponents were often in losing positions before they realised it. In other games no-one could decide if he should have won or not… but he did! There is a fine book by Irving Chernev which collected and annotated Capablanca’s endgames: here are the games to…
Boris Spassky beat Petrosian on his second try, failing in 1966 and winning in 1969. Spassky could do many things well, but had a flair for attacking. He also had a collection of opening systems that he knew very well and would use even if other people didn’t think they were very good — like…
