In this book the author addresses 366 (one for each day of the year) intriguing chess topics which could be of interest to any chess fan, regardless of the playing level. For example:

·        IQ and chess skills

·        Talent vs. hard work

·        How many games to play per year?

·        Are women underrated or overrated as compared to men?

·        Rating inflation in chess

·        What does your chess tell about your personality?

·        Playing computers: dos and don’ts

·        Developing your chess memory and visualization

·        How does one prepare for an upcoming tournament?

·        Is 1.e4 really “best by test”?

“Yearbook of Chess Wisdom” is packed with insights and is based on analytical research, vast personal experience and conversations with some of the world’s leading chess players and coaches.

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In the 2015 FIDE World Chess Blitz Championship 21 rounds Swiss system had to be played. The players got 3 minutes for the whole game plus an increment of 2 seconds per move. The reigning blitz champion Magnus Carlsen began well, but losses against Karjakin, Radjabov, Grischuk and Ivanchuk made it impossible for him to defend his title. After 20 rounds Vladimir Kramnik and Alexander Grischuk lead with 14,5 points ahead of Maxime Vachier Lagrave and Vassily Ivanchuk (14 points each). By defeating Boris Gelfand with the Black pieces Alexander Grischuk won his 3^rd Blitz title. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave won against Rustam Kasimdzhanov and became 2^nd while Vladimir Kramnik had difficulties against Vassily Ivanchuk, but cleverly saved a difficult endgame with two Knights on both sides and a Pawn down. This draw meant the Bronze medal for him. In the press conference he said that 15 or 20 years ago he had been a really good blitz player, but he had not expected such a good result today. FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumchinov announced that Berlin will host either a World Chess Championship or a Chess Olympiad, but could not yet give any date or details.

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On Saturday, October, 10^th, the 2015 FIDE World Chess Rapid and Blitz Championship began in Berlin. The playing hall „Bolle Meierei“ is situated next to the German department of the interior and the river Spree. Participants from all over the world took part in this prestigious event. In the rapid tournament 15 rounds Swiss system had to be played on three consecutive days. The players got 15 minutes for the whole game plus an increment of 10 seconds per move.

On Saturday the first five rounds were played. Sergey Karjakin who had won the World Cup just one week before presented himself in top form. He won his first three games against Jure Borisek, Grzegorz Gajewski and Anton Korobov. Only Yuriy Kryvoruchko managed to reach a draw against him. In the fifth round Karjakin defeated the German grandmaster Georg Meier and took the sole lead with 4,5 out of 5 ahead of 16 players with 4 points each, amongst them Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi. Carlsen had won three of his five games. Ehsam Ghaem Maghami, a grandmaster from Iran, surprisingly drew against Carlsen in round 1, and so did Yuriy Kryvoruchko in round 5. At the end of the day 16 players had reached 3,5 out of 5, one of them being former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik.

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Round 7



Round 8



Round 9



Round 10



Round 11

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By GM Mauricio Flores Rios, Chile
Best rating: 2537

It’s been a while since I finished writing Chess Structures, but I like the topic so much that I keep coming back to it – I know how much it improved my understanding of chess. I follow games on Chessbomb pretty much daily and I really enjoy it when I see a nice ‘structure-concept’ being applied. Often these games reproduce ideas shown in the book almost identically, while sometimes there are small (yet very important!) differences. So I thought, why not start a blog in which I will, once in a while, post a game which builds upon the ideas I shared with the readers of my book. The permanent location of my blog is chess-structures.com.

Now let’s get started with some chess. As you may have realized, almost every game in my book was decisive (that is, not a draw) since drawn games (especially agreed draws) are like an unfinished story, and people just don’t like to read stories without an ending… Anyway, the only exception to this rule was Onischuk – Dominguez from the World Cup of 2013. This game was a Carlsbad structure (Chapter 5) which I thought was very instructive, as it shows how Black might completely neutralize White’s queenside plans. As I was following the Women’s World Championship in Sochi, I found a great example which pretty much takes off where Dominguez left off, and brings home the full point. The contenders: young star Guo Qi from China was White against World finalist Natalia Pogonina. Let’s see the game:

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