Mark's Chess Blog

Which opening is the closest in spirit to the Queen's Indian Defense (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 b6)? If you guessed King's Indian because of the name, you guessed wrong. ... Read More

Vote in our new poll : Who will win the Topalov - Kramnik unification match? The big match is scheduled for 21 September - 13 October. The poll ends a ... Read More

The Chess Journalists of America (CJA) recently announced their 2006 awards. Pete Tamburro, Chief Judge of the CJA and Chairman of the Awards Committee, was given the award for Chess ... Read More

Should you play the board or play the opponent? It's a trick question, because the answer depends on where you happen to be on the chess learning curve. Inexperienced players ... Read More

A recent New York Times article highlighted the problem of cheating in big money chess tournaments, which is becoming a sophisticated business. What can be done about it? Let us ... Read More

Which chess sites are the most popular on the Web? If the visitors to About Chess are any guide, the most popular sites, after those designed to improve your game, ... Read More

Since the dawn of the computer age, the development of chess playing computers has paralleled the development of general computing. Early computer pioneers and artificial intelligence (AI) researchers took an ... Read More

In Square Size in Tournaments, Colock asks, 'What size squares do GMs use during world title matches and other major tournaments? Who decides on which size to use?'. We knew where to ... Read More

For tournaments played since 2000, our register of Famous Chess Tournaments (1990-) includes only events which are category 17 or more. Two events which finished in the past few weeks -- Dortmund and Biel ... Read More

We brought our register of 'Famous Chess Tournaments' up to date by including important events played during the years 2003 through 2005. We also updated our register of World Championship ... Read More

Along with its new digs (see the recent post Tales of Two Chess Federations), the USCF has a new look for its flagship Chess Life magazine and for its Web site. Toss in ... Read More

July was a sad month in the world of chess. Many blogs commented on the untimely deaths of GM Aleksander Wojtkiewicz and Jessie Gilbert. Other topics of common interest were ... Read More