U.S. champion Sam Shankland couldn’t get much from his home advantage against Richard Rapport in an intense opening day of the 2019 Champions Showdown in Saint Louis. The 22-year-old Hungarian superstar had it all too easy in the first four rounds of the rapid match and could have been on full score hadn’t Sam held a pulse-pounding rook endgame on round 4.
Fabiano Caruana redeemed team America as he outplayed India’s Pentala Harikrishna and brought home three convincing wins.
The...
Shortly after the start, the first round of the Aeroflot Open has been canceled due to a bomb threat at the venue, Hotel Cosmos in Moscow. The round has been postponed until tomorrow.
The traditional Aeroflot Open, the super-strong open tournament sponsored by the Russian national airline company, started today at 3 p.m. local time. With top seeds Wei Yi (China), Vladimir Fedoseev (Russia) and Wang Hao (China), the top 10 boards of the round looked like this:
Bo.
No.
Name
FED
Rtg
Result
Name
FED
Rtg
No.
1
51
GM
Moroni...
The Austrian chess master Heinrich Wolf (1875-1943) is not exactly a household name for most chess players these days. Yet he is father to one of the most profound concepts in modern opening theory.
If people have heard of Wolf at all, it is usually for the reason that he was the angstgegner of the great Mikhail Chigorin, holding a crushing 7-0 record against him. He did have some decent tournament results in the first quarter of the 20th century, and he also was a second to Emanuel Lasker...
You might not have heard of this game's players, but you'll recognize—and love—the go-for-broke style of this romantic game. GM Simon Williams concludes his series with a cute miniature checkmate.
Earlier today, as I was playing my Round 6 game at the Oceania Zonal, I was sitting beside a game between two strong club players (rated in the 1900-2100 range), watching events unfold with interest. The game started as follows:
At this point, White got scared of ...b5, creating a nice pawn chain to hang on to the c4-pawn. So, rather than the correct 5.e4 b5 6.e5 Nd5 7.a4, with good compensation for the pawn, he played 5.a4, preventing ...b5.
© ThisIsWhyImBroke
I...
Anish Giri and Ruslan Ponomariov are among the players to make their debut in the 2019 season of the PRO Chess League. Week seven is another Battle Royale week, played on Tuesday beginning at 8:00 a.m. PT and on Thursday beginning at 7 a.m. PT.
Preview by IM Greg Shahade.
This week marks the second Battle Royale of the 2019 PRO Chess League Season and the first time that all four divisions will be mixed together and be competing with one another. Lots of points will be up for grabs as...
The recently concluded Tata Steel chess tournament was very memorable for the U.S. grandmaster Sam Shankland.
From now on he will be forever remembered as a chess player who the beat the former world champion Vladimir Kramnik in his last professional classical game. But Sam will also be remembered as a grandmaster who resigned in a book-drawn position.
Sam Shankland. | Photo: Alina l'Ami/Tata Steel Chess.
I bet you've already seen that game:
A resignation in a dead-drawn position is so unusual...
The recently announced FIDE Grand Swiss tournament, where the winner will qualify for the 2020 Candidates', will be played October 9-20, 2019 in Isle of Man and organized in cooperation with Chess.com. This became official today.
The news was just posted on the FIDE website: The event that was formerly known as the Chess.com Isle of Man International will this year be serving as the FIDE Grand Swiss tournament (the exact name is yet to be determined).
It will be bigger, longer and more prestigious,...
In a continuation from the last article, Is Classical Chess Dead From Draws, we will be comparing different time controls in the Grand Chess Tour (GCT). Mike Klein just wrote a recent piece highlighting the new 2019 format and the players on the invite list.
Last month we analyzed the classical chess draw rate by year when both players were rated over 2750. In the past couple of years, that rate has increased above 70%!
Data CollectionThe data for this article contains all Grand...
