Jan-Krzysztof Duda won his third-round game today at the Sparkassen Chess Meeting. He kept his lead by beating his compatriot and last year's tournament winner, Radoslaw Wojtaszek.
The round saw two more decisive games. Again using very little time on the clock, Ian Nepomniachtchi outplayed Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu, whereas Anish Giri over-pressed and lost from a better position against Vladislav Kovalev.
Kovalev tried a well-known gambit from the Nimzowitsch Sicilian. Perhaps caught off-guard...
It's a good thing the World Chess Hall of Fame keeps its giant chess set on the ground floor. Sure, GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and IM Danny Rensch still do their best to cause maximum carnage, but it's usually only those two that end up sweaty and bruised.
Now take those same oversized pieces and place them atop an apartment complex. What do you get? A type of Newtonian revelry that we will dub the "Gravity Gambit."
That story and much more is in this next edition of In Other News.
Giant Chess...
The 2018 Chess.com Speed Chess Championship will feature 16 of the world's best chess players in an innovative eSports bracket tournament and a starting (guaranteed) prize pool of $55,000.
Check out the new 2018 Speed Chess Championship hype video to get you psyched up for the tournament.
You can find important information on the event below.
Broadcast and streaming
Bracket
Matchups and pairings
Fantasy prediction contest
NEW! SmarterChess predictions
Schedule
Results
Event prizes
Detailed...
Alexei Shirov is known for his fiery style, and he is often compared to the legendary Mikhail Tal as both grandmasters had the penchant for blowing their opponents off the chessboard. But Shirov can play subtle and brilliant endgames too, as this lesson will teach you.
The Dortmund tournament is underway with some new faces and some old ones.
Kramnik is trying to win the tournament for the 11th time, Giri is trying to win a tournament for a 1st time after 2011. And they were working together in Berlin at the Candidates, quite a colourful pair!
The first three rounds saw the world's best U20 player, GM Duda from Poland, take the lead. It is his will to beat an out-of-form Nisipeanu that was rewarded and the secret to his further progress. He also beat fellow Polish...
Jan-Krzysztof Duda has been going up in the FIDE ratings, and won this year's Polish championship. Yesterday he took the lead at the Sparkassen Chess Meeting as the only winner so far.
Duda scored against Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu, who had shown such excellent preparation yesterday against Kramnik. It seems that he has done some serious work for Dortmund, because in round two he played, for the first time, 3.Bb5+ in the Sicilian.
That might have been the reason for Duda to deviate from his...
Some 20 years ago I had a conversation with a grandmaster who grew up in a bad neighborhood. He was recollecting his youth years when street fighting was pretty common.
I don't remember much from his stories, but one of his phrases has stuck in my mind: "It is not the strongest who wins the fight but the craziest!"
A game that was played almost 170 years ago by two of the best Russian players of that time clearly proves the point. Carl Jaenisch developed his Jaenisch Gambit...
On his 28th birthday Ian Nepomniachtchi reached a winning position in a queen endgame vs Anish Giri but failed to convert. The other three games of the 46th Sparkassen Chess Meeting's first round also ended in draws.
This year's Dortmund tournament took off on Saturday afternoon in the Orchestra Center NRW, and more than six and a half hours all games had ended peacefully. There was definitely some fighting chess though. Especially our Game of the Day saw lots of nice, hidden resources.
Schach...
The Game of the Century is one of the greatest chess games in all of chess history and likely the greatest game ever played by a junior. The 26-year-old international master Donald Byrne took on the young, 13-year-old Bobby Fischer in what would become one of the most famous chess games ever played.
The Game
White: Donald Byrne
Black: Bobby Fischer
1.Nf3 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7
Throughout Fischer's career he liked to fianchetto his kings bishop in such openings as the King's Indian Defense...
