Generations of American players have contributed significantly to the game of chess. As they have inspired schools of thought, developed creative approaches for all phases of the game, and achieved brilliant wins while enduring difficult losses, t...
The FIDE Candidates Tournament resumes this Monday, April 19, 2021, in Yekaterinburg, Russia. The winner will earn the right to challenge GM Magnus Carlsen for the world championship in November in Dubai. This article provides you with all th...
The FIDE Candidates Tournament will finally resume exactly a week from now, on April 19, 2021. What have the eight participants been up to in the past 13 months? And how have they performed? The story is known: on March 25, 2020, the FIDE Candid...
In chess, an opening transposition occurs when a sequence of moves leads to a position that is more commonly reached by a different move order—same resulting position, different paths to reach the position. Transpositions can be a powerful...
On the sixth day of PogChamps 3 presented by GRIP6, we saw the performance of a few of the best players in the tournament. Once more, the most tactically skilled players came out on top. Notably, the battle between Benjyfishy and Sardoche is pro...
I met GM Karen Asrian during the 1995 Armenian Championship. Back then, Karen was 15, but his advanced endgame skills and positional understanding were already deeply impressive. Evidently, a new talented player was coming up. Indeed, in the next ...
Beth Harmon, the main character of "The Queen's Gambit," not only inspired millions of viewers to pick up the game of chess. Many fans like her not just for her winning moves on the chessboard, but also for her wardrobe. The huge effect that "Th...
Thanks to the critically acclaimed and insanely popular Netflix series, The Queen's Gambit, based upon Walter Tevis' 1983 book of the same title, Beth Harmon has become a household name. In interviews Tevis talked about his own troubled childhoo...
Registration is open for the 2021 Chess.com Daily Chess Championship, which is set to begin at 12 a.m. Pacific on January 1. Each year, the Chess.com Daily Chess Championship has set a new record for the largest tournament we've ever held. ...
There's no doubt about it: "The Queen's Gambit" is a huge hit. With incredible performances by the actors, beautiful sets, and a well-constructed plot, it's no wonder the miniseries is so successful. With 68 million households watching the show in...
GM Hikaru Nakamura has broken all manner of chess barriers in 2020. According to the man himself, he's now a professional streamer, focused on his groundbreaking content on Twitch and YouTube, streaming for thousands of hours and becoming both the...
The Queen's Gambit has become more than "a chess show." The seven-episode Netflix miniseries has captured the attention of audiences worldwide and was the #1 show in over 12 countries. It has introduced or re-ignited viewers' interest in the royal...
What happens when you bring together a powerful pairing software and one of the world's leading online chess platforms? In this article, I (International Arbiter Tania Karali) discuss how you can use Swiss-Manager to create your own tournaments of...
With 15 days to go until the finals of the PRO Chess League, let's look back at some of the best moments of the 2020 season so far. Great chess, heart-breaking drama, and fun moments: the PCL had it all. Endgame Technique Gets The Croatia Bull...
It is no secret that chess is a game of a lot of depth. It is not a simple sport: some consider it to be a science, while others see it as an art form. Sometimes, though, people can view it as a joke—and a pretty good one, too! In that spi...
There are thousands of chess set designs in the world and a large community of chess set collectors. There is an enormous amount of information available on the various chess sets types and designs on Chess.com's Chess Books & Equipment forum,...
Chess federations are the pillars of in-person chess throughout the world. They rate chess events, organize national championships, represent their nation in international competitions, and do a great deal to promote chess. Many federations have...
The Chess.com community comes from all over the world and speaks hundreds of languages. From Guinea-Bissau in Africa (with only 405 members) to the USA (with almost 10 million!), Chess.com's membership truly spans the globe. To serve our communi...
Are you following the 2020 FIDE Candidates Tournament? It's an exciting race so far, with top prize being a ticket to a match with World Champion Magnus Carlsen. For each round of the tournament, we have a video highlighting the game of the day AN...
GM Romain Edouard is one of the great talents of the French chess community, as evidenced by his impressive record of achievements at the youth level. He took part in his first competition at the age of 10 and, in a meteoric rise, became European ...
GM Ian Nepomniachtchi won the 2020/21 FIDE Candidates tournament and will challenge world champion GM Magnus Carlsen for the world championship beginning in November 2021. Nepomniachtchi won the tournament by playing well in both halves while seve...
In the late 1860s, the legendary Paul Morphy had almost entirely retired from chess. He was not the same young genius that he once was. But he still managed to introduce an important opening idea which hadn't been seen in chess before. After the...
The chess world is full of intriguing players and intriguing stories going all the way back to the enigmatic Paul Morphy—but even among this hallowed, august company, Ossip Bernstein manages to stand out. Bernstein's career is noteworthy f...
My last article was about how George Koltanowski slowly got better and better as a chess player; first in the early/mid 1920s (boring and slow), and then in 1928 when he embraced dynamics. Though he was a strong player at that point, he was e...
