Chess Lessons

Chess Strategies for Beginners
Does playing chess seem like an intimidating task for you? Well, here are some chess strategies for beginners that will help you get started...

Chess for Beginners
A guide to chess for beginners and Learn some of the tactics here…

Would-be Robber Picks Wrong Elderly Man, Gets Pummeled
A Michigan man taught a would-be pickpocket a lesson when he subdued the thief with "six or seven" punches until police arrived; the ex-marine and former boxer says he just acted on instinct.

Learn to Live Like Noah's Ark
Noah’s Ark teaches us ten lessons on how to lead a happy and successful life, and you can read it here.

The Rookie: Chess Lessons From a Grandmaster
After a year, we all need time to take stock - not least poor Nigel Short, who has had to put up with my inanities, writes Stephen Moss.

Chess: The Rookie
Chess lessons from a Grandmaster...

The Rookie: Chess Lessons From a Grandmaster
Chess: Nigel Short shows Stephen Moss how great players can adapt their style.

The Rookie
Stephen Moss and Nigel Short play through a 'rip-roaring positional attack' from Russian world champion Alexander Alekhine.

Chess: the Rookie
Stephen Moss and Nigel Short play through some games by the peerless Alexander Alekhine.

The Rookie: Chess Lessons From a Grandmaster
Stephen Moss and Nigel Short on cutting through the dross.

The Rookie: Chess Lessons From a Grandmaster
I have taken to abusing my opponents on the FICS website, accusing them of using computers as they play - as if I can't be beaten without artificial aids! By Stephen Moss

The Rookie
Chess lessons from a Grandmaster.

Chess: The Rookie, Part 39
First cash prize as a chess player. Last week I boasted that, with a little help from former world champion Emanuel Lasker, I felt my play was improving. By Stephen Moss

The Rookie: Chess Lessons From a Grandmaster
Chess: Stephen Moss continues his chess education from Nigel Short with a look at Emmanuel Lasker.

The Rookie
Chess: Stephen Moss on studying Lasker and getting it right.

Chess: Lessons From a Grandmaster
Stephen Moss gets back to basics. No puzzles this week; they're enjoyable and good practice but they don't teach you chess.

The Rookie: Chess Lessons From a Grandmaster; Part 35
Stephen Moss attempts one last spot-the-continuation exercise.

The Rookie: Chess Lessons From a Grandmaster
Chess: Nigel Short challenges Stephen Moss to find the remarkable winning move in a game played in 1957 between Mr Anon and the Ukrainian-born grandmaster, Nicolas Rossolimo.

Chess: Lessons From a Grandmaster
Stephen Moss and Nigel Short study positions from Mark Dvoretsky and Artur Yusupov's book Positional Play.

Chess: The Rookie, Part 31
Dr Short and I are looking at a game Anatoly Karpov played against Robert Hübner in Montreal in 1979. By Stephen Moss and Nigel Short

The Rookie: Chess Lessons From a Grandmaster
Nigel Short and Stephen Moss look at a 1943 game between Mikhail Botvinnik and Evgeny Zagoriansky.

The Rookie: Chess Lessons From a Grandmaster
Chess: Do you ever do those chess puzzles - white to play and mate in four? They're fun, but I'm sure they don't teach you chess, because they tell you there's a Big Tactic lurking (usually involving a flashy sacrifice) and you just have to locate it.

The Rookie: Chess Lessons From a Grandmaster
I was complaining last week about the woes of my chess life; but there is one bright spot in the darkness. A couple of weeks ago, I won the José Raul Capablanca Memorial Chess Society Cup, and as I write the trophy is sitting in front of me, gleaming. By Stephen Moss

The Rookie: Chess Lessons From a Grandmaster
Chess: Stephen Moss studies a wonderful game between Reti and Alekhine and feels his wintry mood lighten.

The Rookie: Chess Lessons From a Grandmaster
Chess: That's enough, for the moment, of "AlekHyne", my nom de blunder on the FICS website. But what of the player to whom the handle is an hommage - the Russian-born world champion Alexander Alekhine (pronounced Al-yekh-een, if you really want to show off,...

The Rookie: Chess Lessons From a Grandmaster
Chess: I had to show Nigel Short there was hope, so pulled out this game which I played last June against the Hydra supercomputer. By Stephen Moss

The Rookie
Chess lessons from a Grandmaster.

The Rookie
Chess lessons from a Grandmaster.

The Rookie: Chess Lessons From a Grandmaster
Chess: Dr Short and I are looking at some of my internet games to see what I was doing right (not much) and where I was going wrong, writes Stephen Moss.

The Rookie
Chess lessons from a Grandmaster.

The Rookie: Chess Lessons From a Grandmaster
Chess: Last week we analysed a bad loss I suffered playing against the Queen's gambit. By move 20 I was clearly sinking, but Short felt I could still have constructed a defence that would have allowed me to battle on.

Chess Lessons From a Grandmaster
My chess doctor Nigel Short and I are exploring my inert responses to Queen's gambit - in every sense a bête noire for me.

The Rookie
Chess lessons from a Grandmaster.

The Rookie Chess Lessons From a Grandmaster
Chess: Following last week's column on the Sicilian defence, many readers wrote to ask how 1. e4 c5 came by that name. OK, I exaggerate: no one wrote, but we want to tell you anyway. It was named after Pietro Carrera, a Sicilian priest who codified many of the rules of the game in the early 17th century.

Chess Lessons From a Grandmaster
Openings are crucial in chess. The game is often won and lost in the first 15 or so moves, when a powerful position can be constructed which more or less plays itself thereafter. The openings are very formulaic - you can learn sequences of moves and responses to your opponent's moves. But, and it's a huge but, there are thousands of them.

The Rookie
Chess: Last week, we decided that "Respect your chess" was going to be one of our key phrases, along with "Adopt a hero", "Keep the tension" and "Drink like a grandmaster". But, unfortunately, respecting your chess costs money.

The Rookie: Chess Lessons From a Grandmaster
A question has been plaguing me. I have been playing chess for about 37 years, half a lifetime, so why am I still so useless?

The Rookie
Chess lessons from a Grandmaster. These are the horrible moves of the blindfold game I played against Nigel Short last ...

Stephen Moss and Nigel Short: The Rookie Chess Lessons From a Grandmaster
Chess: We hadn't intended to have a third slice of Paul Morphy, one of the pioneering geniuses of chess, but Nigel Short and I ended up playing through this wacky game between Morphy and an unknown who had been given odds of a rook.

Rugby Union: The 17-hour Rugby Marathon That Teaches a Lesson
You can watch all the rugby you like, writes Frank Keating, but whether you watch a decent game is down to the officials, not the players.

The Grandmaster and the Rookie
Chess: Today, Nigel Short, Britain's most successful player ever, starts a new career as this paper's chess columnist. But his greatest challenge will be to transform Guardian journalist Stephen Moss - who admits to being 'truly hopeless' - into a half-decent player.

Man v Machine in Chess Showdown
Chess: Michael Adams, the UK's leading chess grandmaster, will begin a six-match tournament against the Hydra computer at the Wembley Centre in London on June 21

Boxing: Wright's Punch-perfect Display Teaches Trinidad a Lesson
Ronald "Winky" Wright produced the outstanding display of his long career as he handed the former world champion Félix Trinidad a boxing lesson in a middleweight non-title fight in front of more than 14,000 fans at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

Chess tactics
Chess: The Cold War may have long thawed, but team chess still excels in Russia.

The Fischer King
Chess genius, cold warrior turned al-Qaida enthusiast - and now citizen of Iceland. Stephen Moss salutes a living legend

Maggie Kim Teaches Us A Lesson
Young Songbird Is A New Breed of Independent Artist...Maggie Kim bares her soul and everything else (see CD fold out) on her entertaining and funky...

Kasparov defeated by 15-year-old prodigy
Chess: In one of the biggest shocks in chess history, Grandmaster Garry Kasparov, the world No1, has been beaten by a smart alecky teenager.