RaindropChess

If you are a chess player who just discovered Go, you are probably staring at that massive 19×19 grid thinking: where do I even begin? You are not alone. I have been there, and so have thousands of other chess players who made the jump to Go (also known as baduk, weiqi, or igo). The … Read more

Building a solid opening repertoire used to mean spending hundreds of dollars on chess courses or subscription services. I spent years bouncing between expensive platforms before discovering that Lichess offers everything you need to build a professional-grade opening repertoire for free. The Lichess Study feature is one of the most powerful yet underutilized tools in … Read more

I spent six months bouncing between ChessBase, Chessable, and Aimchess trying to figure out which one would actually help me improve. After hundreds of hours of training, dozens of tournament games, and more than a few frustrating evenings staring at chess boards, I finally have a clear answer. The ChessBase vs Chessable vs Aimchess debate … Read more

I have played thousands of games at the 1500 level, and one thing I can tell you with certainty: opening traps at 1500 are a completely different beast than traps at 800 or at 2000. At this rating, your opponents know enough to avoid the most obvious blunders, but they still fall for well-disguised tactical … Read more

I’ve noticed something interesting happening at my local chess club lately. More players rated around 1500 are abandoning their trusty Sicilians and Caro-Kanns in favor of a defense that grandmasters consider “unsound” at the highest level. I’m talking about the Scandinavian Defense, also known as the Center Counter Defense. After watching three of my regular … Read more

The 1972 World Chess Championship in Reykjavik, Iceland was won by American Bobby Fischer, who defeated Soviet champion Boris Spassky 12.5-8.5 to become the first American World Chess Champion. The match lasted from July 11 to September 1, 1972, and is widely regarded as the Match of the Century. I have studied this match for … Read more

I have played chess for years, and one thing I see over and over is adult improvers winning material, building a dominant position, and then completely missing the finishing blow. It is frustrating. You played 35 good moves and then the checkmate was right there, staring you in the face, and you played something else. … Read more

When Bobby Fischer defeated Boris Spassky in Reykjavik in 1972, he became the first American-born chess World Champion in history. The nation watched in awe as a 29-year-old from Brooklyn toppled the Soviet chess machine that had dominated the world for decades. But what happened next confounded everyone who had celebrated his victory. Fischer vanished … Read more

Chess streaming on Twitch transformed a centuries-old game into one of the platform’s most compelling content categories. What started as niche broadcasts of grandmasters playing blitz chess has become a cultural phenomenon that brought millions of new viewers into the chess community. The numbers tell a striking story. From March through August 2020, viewers watched … Read more

If you have ever wondered why Stockfish, Leela Chess Zero, and Komodo Dragon sometimes disagree on the same position, you are not alone. These three engines consistently rank at the very top of every major chess engine rating list, yet they reach their conclusions in completely different ways. Understanding the Stockfish vs Leela Chess Zero … Read more