GM Jonathan Tisdall's reflections on the Carlsen-Caruana World Championship at halftime. (You can read his preview of the match here.) For convenience, we've copied the games with GM Sam Shankland's annotations from our news reports.
I arrived in London for Game 5, exchanging the weird sense of omnipresent national fervor for the long absent joy of experiencing this most intense of all chess events live and up close. Yes, in many ways watching from the comfort of your home with a plethora of excellent...
A plus-one score was enough for Maxime Vachier-Lagrave to win the 2018 Shenzen Masters in China. The French GM edged out Anish Giri and Ding Liren on tiebreak after all finished on 5.5/10.
It was Vachier-Lagrave's victory over Ding Liren, from round six, that got him the better tiebreak—a special game indeed. After Ding had remained undefeated for exactly 100 games, thereby improving Mikhail Tal's streak in the 1970s by five games, he went down in a spectacular encounter with MVL.
Maxime...
It's the biggest chess event of the year as World Champion Magnus Carlsen will try to defend his title against the American challenger Fabiano Caruana.
The 2018 world chess championship will run November 9-28, and you can follow it all on Chess.com.
Game seven will start Sunday, November 18 at 7 a.m. Pacific time (10 a.m. Eastern, 3 p.m. London/GMT. Your local time: ).
Caruana will play Black and Carlsen will play White in game seven. The match is scheduled for 12 games plus...
Fabiano Caruana is playing for the win! With the black pieces, he employs his famous Petroff Defense against Magnus Carlsen and has the champion on the ropes! Don't miss GM Alex Yermolinsky's post-game analysis.
Last week, I was in London for business, and of course I paid a visit to the World Championship match between Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana.
It wasn't my first World Championship visit. In 2013, for instance, I had the opportunity to visit the Anand-Carlsen match in Chennai, India. As I wrote at the time in my blog post about that amazing event, my experience with World Championship matches hadn't been particularly lucky up until that point. And as I stood outside in front of the entrance...
It has been 16,878 days since an American has won a game in an undisputed world championship match (Spassky vs Fischer, game 21, Aug. 31, 1972). And since the top American is not a supercomputer, it will be at least two more.
In today's round six of the 2018 world chess championship, Fabiano Caruana pressed in a piece-for-three-pawns ending, but missed an incredibly opaque forced win against Magnus Carlsen.
Yes, the Norwegian supercomputer "Sesse" announced mate in 30, but even top grandmaster...
Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana drew their sixth game of the 2018 world chess championship. The champion opened with 1. e4 for the first time, and the challenger answered with his trusty Petroff Defense.
The opening 20 plies featured quite a knight dance, as 15 of those moves came from knights. Even so, the board become somewhat symmetric, until Caruana applied some pressure. Carlsen bailed out into a piece-for-three-pawns ending, and it was good enough to hold the draw in...
With four opening draws, the first week of the 2018 world chess championship was about to be labeled the "calm b4 the storm" after an early thunderclap today. But even wing gambits can't seem give either player separation.
In today's round five, Magnus Carlsen went back to the Sicilian, and again Fabiano Caruana repeated the Rossolimo. But just when it seemed some small nuance would differentiate the action from rounds one and three, the challenger hit the board with the spike 6. b4!?
"It's really...
In March 2017, I looked to see who made the most official brilliancy prizes. This led to three articles. Mikhail Tal was number one with 15 brilliancy prizes:
Tal's brilliancy prizes
Anatoly Karpov and Rashid Nezhmetdinov both had 10, putting them in a tie for second-third:
Karpov's brilliancy prizes
Nezhmetdinov's brilliancy prizes
I had intended to write an article about Kasparov, who came in second with 12, but for some reason (old age?) I completely forgot to do it. Now it’s...
