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When people ask about books, I always send them to this: http://www.danheisman.com/recommended-books.html

London is a very big city. There are quite a few different chess clubs and chess leagues in the area. One of the major club competitions is the London League: http://www.londonchess.org.uk/main.php If…

It's a "programmed learning text", which means though it's not all puzzles, a lot of it consists of exercises to solve, with good explanations of the solutions. It's old definitely. I don't know if th…

"Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess" is a good first tactics book for near-beginners, explaining things like back rank mates very well. It was one of the first chess books I read as a child. It's very old, b…

You could do a much better job of providing useful annotations if you developed an engine with that in mind, rather than bolted it on as an afterthought to one designed for playing. I've thought about…

I've read in various places comments like "Fritz gave this a double exclamation mark", so obviously some engines are able to annotate more helpfully than others.

Agreeing an opening in advance for a training game is probably an excellent idea. Matthew Sadler mentions it in the book "Chess for Life". He learned of the idea from one of the people he interviewed …

In chess the idea that a move can achieve more than one thing at a time is pretty fundamental. From the simplest fork right up to the grandest strategy that exerts pressure on both sides of the board,…

I play tennis as well as chess, so this is something I've thought about before. Some of the similarities to my mind... - Playing white = Having the serve. If you can serve well you have some chance to…

If you want a two-pawn center or a central majority, that seems to be achieved a lot more often after 1 d4 than 1 e4. If you just want to play e4 and d4 to open lines and don't mind that one or both o…