On Sunday, the 16-year-old Iranian chess prodigy GM Alireza Firouzja weathered a seven-hour barrage of tough opponents to reach the quarterfinals of the 2019 FIDE World Fischer Random Chess Championship.
Firouzja defeated IM Nicolai Getz and grandmasters Ivan Salgado, Maxim Matlakov and Jan-Krzysztof Duda among a star-studded field, which saw strong GMs such as Georg Meier go out in the first round.
After easily disposing of Getz in the round of 16, Firouzja had a...
When we talk about blitz chess, we usually think about tactics, blunders and opening surprises that force our opponents to spend their precious seconds. I doubt that many people would mention good endgame technique as an integral element of blitz.
Indeed, most times when a blitz game reaches an endgame, both players have just seconds on their clocks and usually have only two rules to play by: Do not lose on time and do not blunder too much.
Here is a very recent example. Just watch the last...
In this post I would like to show you an old game of mine, which I played in 2013 in Dublin in the Irish National Club Championship. I was playing for Galway, and my opponent was another Hungarian, IM Tibor Károlyi, who happened to be playing for the Adare Chess Club from Limerick.
What makes this game special to me is the fact that I managed to beat a strong player with practically zero preparation: I knew the opening theory until move 5, and from that moment I was alone, forced...
Round two of the Sinquefield Cup leg of the Grand Chess Tour saw all six games end in a draw. Anish Giri and Ian Nepomniachtchi had the biggest chances but slipped. Viswanathan Anand still leads the event as he is the only player to win in St. Louis in over 12 games.
Anish Giri was focused but faltered in the end. | Photo: Justin Kellar/Grand Chess Tour.
Anish Giri and Levon Aronian played the longest game of the round. Interestingly, the game started with both players blitzing...
Do you want to learn an excellent and diverse opening without a lot of theory?
IM Keaton Kiewra teaches the course for you! The Trompowsky Attack (1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5) is an excellent try for an advantage that can easily throw Black into shark-infested waters.
IM Kiewra is a theoretical player who has long relied on the "Tromp" as one of his core weapons. He shows you the ideas that have worked for him, presenting you with many lines, traps, strategic weapons that you can deploy in your next game at...
In several recent tweets, Viswanathan Anand explained that his son has taken quite a liking to the instructional videos on ChessKid.com. Well, Akhil, turns out your dad can teach you about winning tactics, too.
"I'll show him the position and see what he says!" Anand joked to Chess.com about whether or not Akhil knows about discovered attacks. "He's progressing nicely and soon hopefully he will understand some of my positions. I think he solves slightly harder ones than this."
Viswanathan Anand...
At one time there were no official titles in chess. In 1950 FIDE created the Grandmaster, the International Master and the International Women Master titles. The first two sets of titles weren't based on ratings, which were almost non-existent at that time anyway, but on other criteria:
Of the 27 Grandmasters, one was the world champion and 14 were qualifiers (not participants) in the 1950 Candidates Tournament. These were:Mikhail Botvinnik, Isaac...
