The final of the Chess.com Women's Speed Chess Championship will be played Thursday between GM Valentina Gunina from Russia and GM Elina Danielian from Armenia. A prize fund of $6,000 is at stake.
You can watch Valentina Gunina vs. Elina Danielian Thursday, June 27 at 9 a.m. Pacific (18:00 CEST, 19:00 Moscow) with live commentary by IM Sopiko Guramishvili and IM Anna Rudolf on Chess.com/TV and Twitch.tv/chess.
Our women's-only speed chess event, which has spanned 50 days of...
Magnus Carlsen drew strong reactions in Norway today by creating a new chess club that offers free membership to the first 1,000 members, with Carlsen paying the federation fees himself.
Carlsen said the club was made to help new players and strengthen Norwegian chess. Critics, however, said the club is designed solely to influence an upcoming vote on a contentious sponsorship deal in the Norwegian chess federation.
Carlsen also clarified his stance that he may not play the 2020 world championship...
The classical format of our beloved game is under attack.
People are complaining about boring games that lead to an abundance of draws in super-GM tournaments. They are trying to change everything: the scoring system (three points for a win, one point for a draw), the time control and even the traditional tournament format.
One of the latest attempts was made in the recent Norway Chess super-tournament in Stavanger. To put it mildly, the result failed to impress.
Not only were there a lot of draws;...
Chess games often hinge on the results of a single move, so it's important to take your time to calculate during critical moments. Learn how to know when to take that extra step in calculation to check your tactics.
On his first move, white can play any of 20 legal moves. Several of these moves are good; a few more are probably playable; the rest are bad. But whichever white chooses, black will have 20 responses available to him. This means that by white's second turn, there could be any of (20*20)=400 positions on the board. And that's just from the starting position! The set of all possible moves and countermoves in a game of chess is called its game tree.
After generating all the moves in the current...
The 2020 PRO Chess League season is just around the corner, and with more teams than ever interested in qualifying for the world's only global rapid online chess league, the league will be expanding the number of qualifiers to four.
The first qualifier is scheduled for this September, with the other three to follow in October and November.
For the first time in league history, select teams will have multiple opportunities to qualify and take center stage each week in front of thousands...
What is pawn structure?
From my online glossary, I define it as "the positioning of the whole pawn mass. Also referred to as the pawn skeleton. This positioning of the pawns is what usually dictates the types of plans available in a given position due to open files, space, pawn weaknesses, etc."
It’s normal to develop pieces, put a rook on an open file and make threats. Normal stuff, but not very exciting. Others get a few pieces out and go for an attack. That’s probably more...
Coming back from a four-point deficit hadn't been seen in the history of speed chess matches on Chess.com until Valentina Gunina defeated Alexandra Kosteniuk 16.5-14.5 in Sunday's Women's Speed Chess Championship semifinal.
Gunina will now face Elina Danielian in the final on June 27.
A former world champion in classical chess, Kosteniuk is also known as a strong blitz player. She was perhaps the slight favorite in this match and was leading by a margin of four points after 10 games—and...
I learned the phrase "a horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse" in school when I studied Richard III by William Shakespeare. These days, people use this expression when they want to underline the importance of something.
There is a story about a man who was about to sign a document that would finalize his very painful divorce. Eager to leave the nightmare behind, the guy exclaims: "a pen, a pen, my kingdom for a pen!"
Sometimes we have a similar situation in chess when a knight ("chess horse")...
