The 2018 Chess.com Speed Chess Championship will feature 16 of the world's best chess players in an innovative eSports bracket tournament and a starting (guaranteed) prize pool of $55,000.
Check out the new 2018 Speed Chess Championship hype video to get you psyched up for the tournament.
You can find important information on the event below.
Broadcast and streaming
Bracket
Matchups and pairings
Fantasy prediction contest
NEW! SmarterChess predictions
Schedule
Event prizes
Detailed...
It's a good thing the World Chess Hall of Fame keeps its giant chess set on the ground floor. Sure, GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and IM Danny Rensch still do their best to cause maximum carnage, but it's usually only those two that end up sweaty and bruised.
Now take those same oversized pieces and place them atop an apartment complex. What do you get? A type of Newtonian revelry that we will dub the "Gravity Gambit."
That story and much more is in this next edition of In Other News.
Giant Chess...
Some 20 years ago I had a conversation with a grandmaster who grew up in a bad neighborhood. He was recollecting his youth years when street fighting was pretty common.
I don't remember much from his stories, but one of his phrases has stuck in my mind: "It is not the strongest who wins the fight but the craziest!"
A game that was played almost 170 years ago by two of the best Russian players of that time clearly proves the point. Carl Jaenisch developed his Jaenisch Gambit...
Having an extra piece vs a bunch of pawns is a classic chess conundrum. The piece should be more powerful, but if those pawns get rolling, it could be trouble. U.S. chess champion Sam Shankland shows you how he used the piece to win a critical game in the biggest tournament of his life.
2. Nc3 Is that a joke? I felt I should have a fine position againsg that move, but after around 15 moves I found myself under the pressure and attack against my king. I played too early f7-f5. He did not find the nice Bxh6 sacrifice to capitalise on my mistake. He allowed me a counter-attack, which won 2 pieces against the rook and a pawn, but just in the next move I blundered a piece. It was all under time pressure.
So his opening worked well for him, in term of winning time.
After the blunder...
Jan-Krzysztof Duda has been going up in the FIDE ratings, and won this year's Polish championship. Yesterday he took the lead at the Sparkassen Chess Meeting as the only winner so far.
Duda scored against Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu, who had shown such excellent preparation yesterday against Kramnik. It seems that he has done some serious work for Dortmund, because in round two he played, for the first time, 3.Bb5+ in the Sicilian.
That might have been the reason for Duda to deviate from his...
The Game of the Century is one of the greatest chess games in all of chess history and likely the greatest game ever played by a junior. The 26-year-old international master Donald Byrne took on the young, 13-year-old Bobby Fischer in what would become one of the most famous chess games ever played.
The Game
White: Donald Byrne
Black: Bobby Fischer
1.Nf3 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7
Throughout Fischer's career he liked to fianchetto his kings bishop in such openings as the King's Indian Defense...
On his 28th birthday Ian Nepomniachtchi reached a winning position in a queen endgame vs Anish Giri but failed to convert. The other three games of the 46th Sparkassen Chess Meeting's first round also ended in draws.
This year's Dortmund tournament took off on Saturday afternoon in the Orchestra Center NRW, and more than six and a half hours all games had ended peacefully. There was definitely some fighting chess though. Especially our Game of the Day saw lots of nice, hidden resources.
Schach...
I get so many questions and statements about chess, but being old (yep, 108 years old…don’t worry though, the friends that are still alive tell me that I don’t look more than 98) means that all those questions have been asked over and over and over.
Seriously, I’ve gotten letters from Chess.com members saying, “Oh my god! I thought you were dead!” Not so fast, Mr. chess guy. Not so fast! I’m still around!
So what are those “over and overs?”...
