Diagram64

Round 1 highlights...

Recent conflict between two players played on rapid (OTB) tournament, together with certain other doubts gave me some motive to write an article on 'Illegal move rule' which has been normally applied in rapid and blitz games. Let us go from very basics...

1st day of Chess Olympiad has been completed without surprises, all the favourites won their matches. Following are selection from most exciting positions today.

On September 1st, the oldest chess server Internet Chess Club after many years decided to redesign it's site and introduced new play zone ( Click here! ).

Very attracting event (and controversial too) which I was particularly interested this August was match between Vladimir Kramnik and Jose Eduardo Martinez Alcantra , known as 'Clash of Blames', organized by World Chess .

I would rather call it as 'Catalan systems' since white is following standard setup with with Nf3,Bg2,0-0 and queen pawns on d4 an c4 while black has many different ways how to response.  It was local club tournament which we played recently and in which I have opted for a strategical concept with white pieces

  This is endgame from one rapid game (20+0) played online after black had played 54...Kc7-d7. White took some time to calculate the following line: 55. Bd5 Bxd5 56. Kxd5 Kc7 57. Kxe5 h4! when it seems that black would win since white king wouldn't be able to stop black passed pawn on king side.

This post is dedicated to old style chess board which I regularly use for my chess activities.

Most of concerns in many major openings for black is development of Bc8. Whole openings like Queen Gambit, Slav, Queen Indian, French, Caro-kann etc. are dedicated to this problem. So with the opening line from diagram...

 This position was recently played online, it seems that after a5-a4 black pawn couldn't be stopped.

  Considering c5xd4 is it acceptable for white to go for Nbd2 and how to continue if black decides to go for gambit line giving up the c5 pawn?

The following position is from one of recently played online games (15 min). Both sides were developing attacks on different sides of board...