Keep Calm and Carry On!

The incredibly strong Gashimov Memorial Tournament just started a few days ago and already we have seen some of Carlsen's "usual" masterpieces.

Today's post is about Carlsen's beautiful Round 2 win against Nakamura: Carlsen demonstrated, once again, his incredible ability to exploit small advantages and gradually, almost gently, convert them into a winning and eventually won position. The comparaison with the Karpov of the 80s is definitively not far-fetched.

I encourage you to watch Daniel King's report below: once again, he does a beautiful job explaining complex stuff in his usual clear and concise style:

For me, the big takeaway is this: in a superior endgame position,

• Think Prophylaxis
• Take your time (i.e do not rush the pawns until the time has come)
• and then press forward!

Wednesday, April 23, 2014 Update!

Carlsen got a taste of his own medicine today where Caruana played a very smooth, very "Carlsen-like" game. Kudos to Caruana for not buckling up under Carlsen's final attempt to escape!

Afraid to lose, afraid to win, afraid to play!

In the latest edition (2014-2) of New In Chess, Levon Aronian gave a very interesting interview and said something that struck me as fairly obvious and yet it took me a while, in my early Chess days, to realize how powerful this is:

We are living in a society that is fixated on numbers, rankings, things like this. It's difficult to forget this, even though that's what we should be trying to do. Sometimes you think, "oh, I don't want to lose this rating, I want to gain more". As soon as you allow yourself to forget it, that's when you start playing well.

Being not too focused on your Elo rating will definitively, in the medium-long run, help you improving your overall play!

Chess Tips: the 15 seconds rule

During regular games...