I haven't posted here for a while, but I haven't left the chess world. During my long stint at Exeter Chess Club, Tim Paulden invented a new chess variant called Duck Chess, and we had quite a few informal "chess variants" tournaments that featured it.   Recently, it has started to gain more mainstream recognition as Chess.com has added it to their list of chess variants.  Over the past week several of the most prominent chess streamers, including Eric Rosen and Jonathan Schrantz, have picked up on it and tried it out on Chess.com.   Essentially, you make a move and th ..read more

 I remember that one of my most recent updates to my site was on Halloween and featured an article on the Halloween Gambit.  I still need to update the site to address the fact that some pages are in disarray, but so far "life" has been getting in the way of me completing that.  I hope to manage it at some point in the next few weeks. With it being Halloween, I've completed my first complete Lichess study (I've also got a couple ongoing on the Scotch Gambit and the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit) which is on the Halloween Gambit. My conclusion is unchanged though from last time: it's d ..read more

I'm currently writing a Lichess study on the Scotch Gambit/Two Knights Defence position that arises after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 4.d4 exd4 (or 3.d4 exd4 4.Bc4 Nf6). I think this is especially worth revisiting because there have been quite a few new developments since I last examined the line in some depth, mainly in the 5.0-0 lines: (a) 5.0-0 Nxe4 6.Nc3?!, the Nahkmanson Gambit.   Until recently I had rejected this out of hand, but I was first introduced to one of the key points behind this a couple of years ago at my local chess club (6...dxc3 7.Bxf7+, with the idea of Qd ..read more

I have a confession to make.   I created the bulk of my site, https://www.ianchessgambits.com/, at a time when I wasn't in full time employment and had plenty of time to devote to thoroughly analysing a wide range of gambits.  In recent years I've been in full time employment and have inevitably had rather less time, and over time it has become rather too daunting for me.  This has resulted in a large number of pages falling into disarray as procrastination set in, my previous site got discontinued, support for Flash disappeared and some of the ChessBase-based replayab ..read more

 As many will know, the year 2020 has been plagued by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has meant that I have played very little over-the-board chess this year.  However, I have been increasingly actively involved on Chess.com, playing mainly fast games, but also some correspondence type games as well.  It has to be said, though, that even though we're allowed 3 to 7 days per move in those games, in practice I rarely spend much longer on an individual move than I would over the board. I am a member of a group known as "The Unsound Openers", which seems to me to be very apt, especiall ..read more

As I prepare for another revamp of my main chess site, here's a bit of light entertainment. At Exeter Chess Club I was recently playing in a chess variants tournament.  One of my favourites is the variant where if the king reaches one of the central squares (e4, d4, e5, d5) it is an automatic win for the player whose king reaches that square.  Otherwise normal rules of chess apply.  I was playing Black and reached the following position with White to move: I had given up a queen for a rook in order to get my king out to d6.  In normal chess this position would be a straightforward win for ..read more