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As you know, having your King in front of your pawn with the opposition is enough to secure the win in the “King and pawn VS King” endgame. If your King has reached the sixth rank though, having the opposition is not always needed any more, as long as…
… In which Kramnik almost proved that Black can get a draw after 1. e4 ! The Berlin defense was used in 2000 by Vladimir Kramnik as a surprise weapon...
When White is playing an Italian game, Black mostly has two ways to react: the safe one with the Giuoco Piano and the sharp one with the Two Knights Defense....
Gambits are not suited for every type of players. Moreover, against a perfect play by the opponent, you often get out of the opening with a slight disadvantage. That's why...
The opening we are going to study is so sharp that it was the favorite opening in the romantic era (before 1900). At that time, players were looking for the...
In the introductory article about the isolated queen’s pawn, we have covered the basic principles and ideas when it comes to playing with an Isolated queen’s pawn. We have also listed the most common opening variations which an IQP can come from. Stjepan Tomić is...
The isolated queen’s pawn, or the IQP is one of the most thematic positional patterns in the chess middlegame. It is something every serious chess player should study, regardless of whether they play openings in which it occurs frequently or not. Positions with an isolated...
In our previous article about the Knight on the sixth rank, we reviewed several beautiful games featuring a Knight on the sixth rank, including the legendary Karpov-Kasparov 1985 game, in which Kasparov's Knight was perhaps the best example of piece domination ever. We also saw...
How to plan effectively ? To answer this question, we continue looking at a great game from Botvinnik against Keres. In the first article, dedicated to the opening, we saw how Botvinnik optimizes his pieces' play to choose a plan. In the second article, dedicated...
This title is a bit of a shortcut, but in King and Pawn endgames, when you have the extra pawn, it is absolutely true ! As we have already seen,...
This article is about this case where the passed pawn cannot get promoted without the King’s help (the other King being in the square of the pawn, remember the rule...
Once we have studied strong and weak pawns, the next question is how to create a passed pawn. This article deals with the easiest case: when you have a pawn...
This article deals with the generic case where you already have a passed pawn that needs to be promoted. It has been created earlier, for instance from a pawn majority....
It is now time for me to unveil an inconvenient truth:the goal of chess is not exactly to capture your opponent’s King. In fact, the rules do not even allow to capture a King.In fact, the game does not stop when a King is captured,...
Interactions with the friend pieces are one thing. You also have to learn how to interact with the opponent’s pieces. In fact, the only interaction possible between your pieces and the opponent’s pieces is the capture ! The piece captures as it moves The rule...
This article could have been called “Interacting with friend pieces”, as the way to capture other pieces in Chess will be detailed in another article. You have just learnt how to move all the pieces (the Queen, the Knight, the pawn…) on an empty chessboard....
Welcome to PawnBreak if you are new to Chess. This article is the first of a series of lessons that will teach you how to play Chess. At the end of these articles, you will be mastering the rules and ready to check more advanced...