With one round to go Fabiano Caruana is the sole leader at the FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss in Isle of Man. The American GM defeated David Anton in a bloody penultimate round with seven decisive games on the top eight boards.
Seven players are trailing Caruana by half a point. In order of first tiebreak—which is likely to decide the fight for the spot in the Candidates' tournament—these are Wang Hao, Kirill Alekseenko, Magnus Carlsen, Levon Aronian, Nikita Vitiugov,...
Hikaru Nakamura had a slow start but after a convincing win against Vladislav Kovalev, the American grandmaster now finds himself tied for first place with David Anton, Levon Aronian and Fabiano Caruana at the FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss in Isle of Man. There are just two rounds to go.
You can follow the games here as part of our live portal, Chess.com/events. There's daily coverage by GM Daniel King and IM Anna Rudolf, joined by WIM Fiona Steil-Antoni for interviews,...
Sports commentators love to mention chess during their broadcasts of football, basketball and baseball games, but often these shallow metaphors don't show a true understanding of chess.
IM Daniel Rensch recently observed, while watching a sports game, that it would be interesting if announcers used more realistic chess comparisons in their commentary. Instead of spouting the cliche that "it's a chess game between the coaches," announcers who actually knew chess could use more relevant references.
Which...
The King's Gambit is supposedly a not-so-serious opening. But if it was good enough for the legendary world champion Boris Spassky, perhaps it's worth another look. Find out how Spassky used the King's Gambit to defeat another famous player, David Bronstein.
More fun from Round 9 at the FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss.
The game that took most of my time was, unfortunately, more bad luck for my buddy Eric Hansen. Opening preparation has been his Achilles this event, and his own PRO Chess League teammate was the latest to use home cooking against the Canadian.
Vidit Gujrathi had a spectacular attack (though it also included a few missed wins!) against Aryan Tari, and I also took the time to review an instructive endgame of Rook and Knight vs Rook...
With a surprisingly quick and crushing win over Alexander Grischuk, the Spanish grandmaster David Anton joined Levon Aronian and Fabiano Caruana in the lead at the FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss in Isle of Man. There are three rounds to go.
But the story of this round was about two other games that started out identically.
You can follow the games here as part of our live portal, Chess.com/events. There's daily coverage by GM Daniel King and IM Anna Rudolf, joined by WIM...
Something Old
Deep into the 19th century chess was still characterized by match play.
The idea of tournaments was slow to catch on. Prior to the London International Tournament of 1851 (the first international tournament), the number of tournaments could have been counted on one hand with fingers left over. London 1851 was a clumsy match-tournament, but a catalyst nonetheless. The decade-plus between the 1851 and the second international...
As the only winner in round seven among the top 12 boards, Levon Aronian swapped places with Wang Hao to join Fabiano Caruana in the lead at the FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss in Isle of Man. There are four rounds to go.
You can follow the games here as part of our live portal, Chess.com/events. There's daily coverage by GM Daniel King and IM Anna Rudolf, joined by WIM Fiona Steil-Antoni for interviews, on Twitch.tv/chess.
The show starts daily at 14:50 local time, which...
When we learn the rules of chess and start playing, we never ask ourselves the question in the title of the article.
We just enjoy the process of playing, that's all! But almost any person who has played chess for a long time is going to ask: "What is chess?"
The answer depends on the time this question is asked. For example, after last year's world championship tiebreak, Fabiano Caruana might have answered something like: "What is chess? Magnus don't hurt me, don't hurt me no more."
Fabiano...
