It turns out you don't need randomized pairings to make for an eventful opening of a chess tournament.
The 2018 Chess.com Isle of Man International, the strongest open tournament in history, fielded a score of 2700s. But after only the first round, nearly half are already smarting from an early draw. Nine of the 20, including one of the two top seeds, couldn't escape the opening day without ceding a draw to an IM who was 300 points lower rated.
One former world champion, GM Viswanathan Anand, got...
The European Club Cup became a "Petersburg Tale" as Mednyi Vsadnik defeated Sjakklub Valerenga and then edged out AVE Novy Bor on tiebreak. Cercle d'Echecs de Monte-Carlo won the women's section.
The European Club Cup lasts just seven rounds, but it was still one round too many for Magnus Carlsen's Valerenga. Its successful run finished in a big anticlimax as the two heroes of the previous two matches were the ones who lost their games in the match with the eventual tournament...
HOW TO START OUT
I get many, many players (rated 800 to 1200) asking me what their style is, why do they lose when they had a better game, are their opponents cheating, how to get good fast, or simply how to get a higher rating.
All these players think these questions are something that only they go through, but the truth is that most suffer through the same things as the others. Apparently they think that there is a quick fix that I can give them. Alas, there is no such thing. You have...
GM Judit Polgar, one of the strongest chess players of all time, and THE strongest female chess player of all time joins IM Anna Rudolf for an exciting chess simul against 20 chess opponents from around the world!
Honey I'm home!!
After a period where posting stuff when it suited me was a problem, I am back posting.
O.K. Whilst on holiday recently I took this book with me.
Gyula Breyer. A name thrown about by the 'Raymond Keene - book in a day' chess history writers ( these days the '5 minutes on wiki, 5 on google ,speed read someones badly written article, quote someone's opinions without a clue if they are right, and 10 mins on 'notable games of' at chessgames.com writers) who...
The Irish Sea will play host once again to the top-flight open event Chess.com Isle of Man International from October 20-28. This year's edition will be the strongest open tournament ever held.
While the top four players in the world have decided to skip the turboprop flight, numbers 5-11 are all there along with about 170 other masters for this fifth edition. Headlining this year will be a field normally worthy of an elite round-robin event: Anish Giri, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Vladimir Kramnik,...
Looking for a great way to kick off your school's chess club in the fall? The Fourth "Hour of Chess Week" is the first time we will host the event outside of the spring!
This back-to-school edition still gives you a chance to win 500 gold memberships for your entire school, which is valued at $5,000 USD!
Once again, we will dedicate one full week to encouraging chess in schools (in every school) for at least one hour. We're borrowing from the KhanAcademy playbook (a website and organization...
Magnus Carlsen avoided losing to Ding Liren and dropping to number two in the world rankings, and then saw his team Valerenga grab sole lead at the European Club Cup as Nils Grandelius became the match winner.
It was an eventful day for the world champion. After missing a tactic, he was looking at a lost endgame vs Ding, and was almost certain of playing next month's world championship match as world number-two.
But things ended well for Carlsen, who managed to save the game and his rating,...
Petrov's Defense is not a common opening in club tournaments. It almost doesn't exist in scholastic tournaments, either.
The reason is the opening is not very exciting, and in most lines leads to slow, positional play. Therefore, as Wikipedia puts it: "The Petrov has a reputation of being dull and uninspired."
If White manages to win, it usually happens after a long positional grind, like the next game:
Short, decisive games are uncommon in Petrov's Defense. Nevertheless, I have noticed a...
