It's been several years since the Chess.com Isle of Man International was a combination chess and poker event, but GM Levon Aronian showed in today's round two that there's still room for bluffing. On top board, he played a calculated risk that worked to move him to 2.0/2, where he was joined one board lower by a birthday boy. GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave gave himself the best 28th birthday gift -- a winning rook ending.
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave seems to have been given a Chess.com polo...
It turns out you don't need randomized pairings to make for an eventful opening of a chess tournament.
The 2018 Chess.com Isle of Man International, the strongest open tournament in history, fielded a score of 2700s. But after only the first round, nearly half are already smarting from an early draw. Nine of the 20, including one of the two top seeds, couldn't escape the opening day without ceding a draw to an IM who was 300 points lower rated.
One former world champion, GM Viswanathan Anand, got...
HOW TO START OUT
I get many, many players (rated 800 to 1200) asking me what their style is, why do they lose when they had a better game, are their opponents cheating, how to get good fast, or simply how to get a higher rating.
All these players think these questions are something that only they go through, but the truth is that most suffer through the same things as the others. Apparently they think that there is a quick fix that I can give them. Alas, there is no such thing. You have...
Two masters of poker join two masters of chess for a game that will take them all out of their element: hand and brain chess! Watch Daniel Negreanu and Jen Shahade battling Daniel Rensch and Liv Boeree as the masters name the piece to move, but the poker players pick the move.
Throughout the show, we'll be counting down to the winner of the Pokerstars platinum pass which goes to the best chess/poker hybrid game!
It's rare that the Soviets were out-prepared, but in a game preceding our featured game against Yasser Seirawan, Anatoly Karpov found his prepared piece sacrifice (likely prepared by Efim Geller) refuted over the chess board in fine fashion. You can see Seirawan's excellent notes to that game and our featured game in his excellent books, "Winning Chess Brilliancies" and "Chess Duels."
In this game, Karpov gets his vengeance, sacrificing first a pawn, then a piece, then a rook to force a beautiful...
The European Club Cup became a "Petersburg Tale" as Mednyi Vsadnik defeated Sjakklub Valerenga and then edged out AVE Novy Bor on tiebreak. Cercle d'Echecs de Monte-Carlo won the women's section.
The European Club Cup lasts just seven rounds, but it was still one round too many for Magnus Carlsen's Valerenga. Its successful run finished in a big anticlimax as the two heroes of the previous two matches were the ones who lost their games in the match with the eventual tournament...
Looking for a great way to kick off your school's chess club in the fall? The Fourth "Hour of Chess Week" is the first time we will host the event outside of the spring!
This back-to-school edition still gives you a chance to win 500 gold memberships for your entire school, which is valued at $5,000 USD!
Once again, we will dedicate one full week to encouraging chess in schools (in every school) for at least one hour. We're borrowing from the KhanAcademy playbook (a website and organization...
The Irish Sea will play host once again to the top-flight open event Chess.com Isle of Man International from October 20-28. This year's edition will be the strongest open tournament ever held.
While the top four players in the world have decided to skip the turboprop flight, numbers 5-11 are all there along with about 170 other masters for this fifth edition. Headlining this year will be a field normally worthy of an elite round-robin event: Anish Giri, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Vladimir Kramnik,...
Petrov's Defense is not a common opening in club tournaments. It almost doesn't exist in scholastic tournaments, either.
The reason is the opening is not very exciting, and in most lines leads to slow, positional play. Therefore, as Wikipedia puts it: "The Petrov has a reputation of being dull and uninspired."
If White manages to win, it usually happens after a long positional grind, like the next game:
Short, decisive games are uncommon in Petrov's Defense. Nevertheless, I have noticed a...
