It’s that time again. Every two years, the FIDE Candidates Tournament arrives, ready to nominate another challenger to go into the lion’s den and face off against the reigning World Champion of chess, and every two years, we have to an...
Twenty-year-old GM Javokhir Sindarov is the youngest of eight participants in the upcoming 2026 FIDE Candidates Tournament, the event that will determine the next challenger to World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju. He qualified in November by winning t...
Just because you're playing in the 2026 Candidates Tournament doesn't mean you can't rank your opponents ahead of time. Seven grandmasters, including four of the candidates, recently gave their takes about the field and the tournament which begins...
GM Yaroslav "Yaro" Zherebukh has an impressive resume as a player, when he won the 2015 U.S. Masters and later qualified for the 2017 U.S. Championship, where he won his game against defending champion GM Fabiano Caruana. Yaro has an equally impre...
The chess world holds its breath as it awaits the start of the most important over-the-board tournament of the year. The 2026 FIDE Candidates Tournament and 2026 FIDE Women's Candidates Tournament kick off on March 29 at 8:30 a.m. ET / 14:30 CEST ...
If you're anything like me, then you're freaking out right now over the much-awaited 2026 Candidates Tournament. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. The question is not who will win… but who should you root for? As I’m sure you kn...
As the first quarter of 2026 enters its final weeks, some of the biggest tournaments in both online and over-the-board chess are happening, with the Chess.com Open starting March 14 and the Candidates Tournament, to determine the next world champi...
A national master from Southern California, NM Craig Clawitter also has a winning career record against a certain grandmaster—technically. (You'll have to read on to see who and under what circumstances!) For more than 20 years, Craig h...
GM Vinay Bhat bounces in and out of the chess universe, but he may have finally found his perfect home. Unlike many American grandmasters, who either permanently leave the game after adulthood or grind it out for a lifetime without any steady empl...
Welcome to 2026! We had another great year at Chess.com in 2025, all because of you. As we enter the new year, let's take a look back at the last month of action—GM Magnus Carlsen's continued dominance, our annual Chess.com Awards community ...
2025 will go down as a year that showcased chess at its very best, marked by performances at the highest level and record-breaking activity online. As we have moved to 2026, it's time to look at the moments, games, and numbers that defined the pas...
It's time to remember the most remarkable chess games of 2025. Some memorable classical events gave us magnificent games, such as the traditional Tata Steel Chess tournament, the FIDE Grand Swiss, and the FIDE World Cup, to name three of the ...
GM Magnus Carlsen may have given up the world championship years ago, but he is still the best player in the world. He proved it in several ways in 2025, not the least of which was a bank account that continued to swell. A quarter-million here, an...
Your favorite annual chess quiz tradition is back for the 2025 holidays. Play the puzzler by clicking here. Enjoy this year's quiz, and see if you can win one of our prizes for a top score! Update, January 8 For answers and winners, c...
Sabri Can Onay Yantar, better known to viewers simply as Sabo, is Turkiye's biggest chess content creator. Long before he caught the eye of Chess24 (which eventually brought him to Chess.com) Sabo was turning short-form content into an art form on...
FIDE recently announced that GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu has accrued enough points to win the 2025 FIDE circuit and earn a spot in the 2026 FIDE Candidates Tournament, the final step of the world championship qualification cycle. With Praggnanand...
The third season of the Tech Mahindra Global Chess League is set to start on December 14. Chess titans like World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju, GMs Hikaru Nakamura, Alireza Firouzja, and Hou Yifan are just some of the stars playing in the event, whic...
GM Daniel Naroditsky had several roles at Chess.com during his tragically short life—he would have turned 30 years old as we publish this article on November 9, 2025—but his first role was as an article author. One of Naroditsky's many...
The 2025 Chess World Cup is scheduled to begin on October 30 in Goa, India. Two hundred and six of the best players in the world will compete in a knockout event, with the top 50 seeds receiving a first-round bye. This will be the 11th edition of ...
A major source of excitement in the Speed Chess Championship stems from the inherently chaotic and unpredictable nature of blitz and bullet chess. But that doesn't mean we can't take a look at how these matches might go. These predictions are base...
The Chess.com train rolls on as we enter the last quarter of 2025 and barrel toward 2026. In the past month, the Autumn Split of Titled Tuesday began, we saw four players complete the next steps to the World Championship, released the schedule of ...
Most chess players have a favorite opening trap, a trick they use to win many quick games. At the highest level, these tricks have to be quite sophisticated to catch experienced opponents, but when you're new to chess, many opening traps can rake ...
By now you've probably heard that Chess.com Chief Chess Officer Danny Rensch just released his new memoir, Dark Squares: How Chess Saved My Life. He insists: "This is not a chess book." And indeed, well more than half of the material deals with hi...
If you missed the State Of Chess.com broadcast on September 2, it's not too late to get up to speed on everything that's new around the site this month, including information about the 2026 Esports World Cup (EWC) after the smashing 2025 debut of ...
As we enter August, it's been another big month for Chess.com, and for chess itself as the game reaches new audiences. The esports world unofficially welcomed chess to its ranks with the inaugural Esports World Cup tournament. Chess has also sprea...
