Sam Shankland shocked the chess world by winning the 2018 U.S. Champs ahead of the "big three," Caruana, Nakamura, and So. He shows you exactly how he did it by presenting each of his six wins! Watch as he kicks things off with his first win against Zviad Izoria with the black pieces!
The 2018 African Individual Chess Championship was a walk in the park for Egyptian GM Bassem Amin, the only African player to ever reach a rating of 2700. He won the tournament for the fifth time. Amin ended the main section of the tournament on 8.5/9, won the blitz African championship and was tied for first place in the rapid, proving to be the strongest player in the continent. Here's his game from round six which included a positional queen sacrifice. The only challenge...
If you were to list your five favorite chess moves, how would you pick them? Would you have to research them, or do you already have them memorized? When it comes to memory, research suggests that you are more likely to remember a move you've seen many times over a longer period of time (rather than a single game that you played over five hours). You are also more likely to remember moves—whether they are yours or from others—that made an emotional impact on you. OK, but that's...
Surprise! It's stalemate on the board after a shockingly low number of moves. Was this one of the greatest chess failures ever? Or did the players do it on purpose to make a draw?
Besides our regular prize fund, there's something very special to win in our next Titled Tuesday tournament, on Tuesday, June 5: The best male and best female player will earn an expenses-paid spot in the Chess.com Isle of Man International. You might have noticed that this year's Chess.com Isle of Man tournament (October 20-28) will be strong—ridiculously strong. Right now, the lineup of the masters includes Vladimir Kramnik, Ding Liren, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Sergey Karjakin,...
Two weeks after his success at the U.S. championship, Sam Shankland won another tournament: the Capablanca Memorial in Havana, Cuba. With a score of 7.5/10 and a 2829 performance rating, the American grandmaster entered the world's top 30. The first edition of the Capablanca Memorial took place in 1962. One of the founders was Che Guevara, the director of the National Bank and Minister of Industries, and a big chess fan. The fourth edition, in 1965, is famous for the participation of...
There was an anniversary a few days ago that was completely missed by the chess world. I am not talking about any chess player's birthday since they generally are covered by many chess publications (believe it or not, I even saw a note about Karl Marx's 200-year anniversary on many chess-related websites!). Instead we can celebrate a five-year anniversary that has seriously affected the modern chess elite. On April 21, 2013, in the first round of Alekhine Memorial, GM Levon Aronian played GM Ding...
Ju Wenjun is the new women's world champion. She drew with reigning champion Tan Zhongyi in the final game of the women's world championship in Chongqing today to set the final score at 5.5-4.5. It was a tense final game in a tense match. Tan needed to win with the black pieces, and chose a setup you might think was never played before in a world championship before: the Hippopotamus! But in his annotations, Dejan Bojkov reminded us that Boris Spassky used a similar setup...
Find out who won the major chess tournaments in 2018. Click here for the upcoming Chess Tournament Calendar. Completed 2018 Chess Tournaments: MAY 2018 May 13-21: African Individual Chess Championship (Livingstone, Zambia) The 2018 African Individual Chess Championship was a walk in the park for Egyptian GM Bassem Amin, the only African player to ever reach a rating of 2700. He won the tournament for the fifth time. Read the news report here. Bassem Amin retained his African title....
