Schacksnack

A five-time world champion Vishy Anand explains how he manages to compete at the top level although being semi-retired, the generational differences, and much more.

In this video, IM Thomas Engqvist explores Best Play – A New Method For Discovering The Best Move by Alexander Shashin, a revolutionary book aimed at intermediate and advanced players. Shashin introduces a completely new approach to evaluating positions and selecting moves, reducing the typical 5–7 candidate moves to just 2–3, making decision-making far more precise. The method is built around five key elements: material, time, king safety, compactness (density), and spatial expansion (elevation). These are analysed using algorithms inspired by Tal’s attacking style, Capablanca’s strategic manoeuvring, and Petrosian’s defensive mastery. Join Thomas as he breaks down this innovative system and demonstrates how it can transform your understanding of chess.

Join Swedish International Master Thomas Engqvist for an insightful and accessible exploration of Anatoly Karpov’s unique genius, with special focus on one of the most essential elements of classical chess strategy: creating harmony between your pieces.

In this episode, Engqvist offers a clear, pedagogical breakdown of the brilliant game Shusharin–Karpov, Chelyabinsk 1961—an early demonstration of Karpov’s remarkable ability to coordinate his forces effortlessly and build positions of quiet, overwhelming strength.

Drawing inspiration from the annotations of English IM Robert Wade in The Complete Games of World Champion Anatoly Karpov (O’Connell, Levy & Adams, Batsford 1976), Engqvist highlights:

How Karpov develops his pieces with natural harmony

How small positional decisions accumulate into a decisive advantage

How coordination, activity, and structure form the backbone of classical chess.

This 40-minute lesson is suitable for all chess players, regardless of level. Whether you’re a beginner learning to coordinate your pieces or a seasoned player seeking deeper strategic insight, this video reveals timeless lessons from one of the greatest positional players in history.

Topics Covered:

Creating harmony in a chess position

Karpov’s early positional brilliance

Ruy Lopez / Spanish Opening structures

Pinning motifs and long-term pressure

Classical and scientific chess principles

Practical takeaways for improving your own play

About the Series

This is part of a wider series where IM Thomas Engqvist presents iconic, instructive, and sometimes forgotten gems from chess history.

Step into the extraordinary chess world of Miguel Najdorf (1910–1997), who spent 33 months between 1946 and 1949 ranked as World No. 2. In this video, we review the 2005 Batsford book Najdorf: Life and Games by Tomasz Lissowski, Adrian Mikhalchishin and Liliana Najdorf, translated by John Sugden, and featuring Najdorf’s own insightful game annotations.

We also dive deeply into one of the most celebrated games in chess history – the Polish Immortal, played between Glücksberg and Najdorf (Warsaw 1930) – exploring its brilliance, attacking ideas and enduring historical significance.

This video is the first instalment in a new series on immortal games, presented by chess enthusiast Björn Knöppel, with IM Thomas Engqvist behind the camera.

Whether you are a club player, a coach, or simply a lover of chess history, this 40-minute episode offers inspiration, instruction and entertainment.

In this video, I present my 24th recommendation for the best middlegame books: Wilhelm Steinitz’s Modern Chess Instructor. This influential work, published by the first World Champion, laid the foundations for what he called the “modern school” – today known as classical chess or the scientific approach.

I discuss how Steinitz’s ideas shaped later authors such as Emanuel Lasker and Max Euwe, and how the principles of equilibrium, accumulation of small advantages and defensive resilience still influence contemporary chess thinking. I also compare Modern Chess Instructor with Lasker’s Manual of Chess, showing how Steinitz’s teachings inspired the next generation of world champions.

This episode is aimed at all chess enthusiasts – players, coaches, historians and lovers of classical chess literature. My purpose is to inform, entertain, teach and inspire, while highlighting one of the most important contributions to chess understanding.

⏱️ Video length: 30 minutes

📘 Series: Best Middlegame Books – Recommendation No. 24

🎥 Presenter: IM Thomas Engqvist

In this 45-minute video, IM Thomas Engqvist takes a deep and structured look at Daniel Naroditsky’s book Complex Chess Endgames – Practical Lessons, Critical Ideas & Plans (New in Chess, 2012).

Naroditsky’s work is placed in context by comparing it with other leading endgame books in the same genre:

Glenn Flear’s Practical Endgame Play – Beyond the Basics (2007)

Mikhalchishin & Stetko’s Complex Chess Endgames (2017)

These books focus primarily on endgames with two pieces each – the so-called “Nuckies”, to use Flear’s terminology – but they also cover more complex material, including one-piece endgames (Naroditsky) and positions with three or four pieces (Mikhalchishin/Stetko).

This video is aimed at chess players and coaches of all levels. My goal is to inform, teach, entertain, and inspire by presenting clear comparisons, practical lessons, and instructive examples from modern endgame literature. Key themes include:

• two-piece endgames (“Nuckies”)

• exploiting weaknesses

• handling passed pawns

• passive vs active defence

• deep calculation

• king activity

If you’re serious about improving your endgame understanding, this video will give you valuable insights into the strengths and unique approaches of each author.

In this video, the Austrian GM Felix Blohberger will analyze an important theoretical rook endgame: 3vs3 on the kingside with an extra b-pawn. This rook endgame is quite important, since it can often arise in our games. I hope you´ll enjoy the video!

IM Thomas Engqvist analyses the latest Dubov vs Meier game from the FIDE World Cup 2025, focusing on the Vienna Game. Using Andrew Soltis’ insights from ”Studying Chess Made Easy”, he demonstrates how knowing which lines to memorise—and memorising them properly—is crucial in sharp and unusual openings. The video illustrates the dangers of being unprepared with concrete examples from the game, showing how a lack of memorised knowledge can lead to mistakes even at the highest level. A must-watch for players aiming to improve their opening preparation and practical understanding of chess.

“Think Like a Grandmaster” (Batsford, 1971) is one of the most influential training books in modern chess history. Alexander Kotov (1913–1981) set out to explain how strong players actually think, and the result became a cornerstone of the Soviet School. His concepts of the candidate moves and the tree of variations encouraged players to discipline their thought process instead of relying purely on intuition.

This book made a deep impression on me when I first studied it. Kotov urges us to avoid jumping impulsively between lines and instead analyse in a structured and logical way: identify candidate moves, examine each branch of the variation tree only once, and then evaluate before deciding. The tension between methodical calculation and natural intuition is central to the book, and to chess itself.

In this video I also discuss Kotov’s two later books in the trilogy:

Play Like a Grandmaster (1978), which focuses on practical decision-making during the middlegame, and

Train Like a Grandmaster (1981), which examines how masters study and improve over time.

To provide contrast and balance, I compare Kotov’s method with Jonathan Tisdall’s outstanding book Improve Your Chess Now, which explores the more dynamic, flexible, and intuitive side of calculation — a refreshing counterpart to Kotov’s structured model.

Kotov was not only a teacher but also a strong player, most famously remembered for his brilliant queen sacrifice as Black against Averbakh in the Neuhausen–Zurich Candidates Tournament, 1953 — one of the great attacking masterpieces of 20th-century chess.

No list of classic chess literature is complete without Kotov — and no study of calculation is complete without understanding both his discipline and the modern reactions to it.