What makes a photo "iconic" and not simply interesting or even outstanding? If you find that a difficult question to answer, you are not alone. The two leading dictionaries in the world can't exactly agree either. Merriam-Webster: iconic, ...
With two IM norms under his belt and over a decade of chess-teaching experience, FM Michel Coto Mederos is well-versed in coaching students online and in person. Some of his young pupils have even become national champions in their age categories,...
Dylan Quercia is a multi-faceted creator, chess player, and coach who has helped students improve their game for over 20 years. Dylan—a.k.a. Coach Q— is also one of the driving forces behind the film King Chess, an award-winning docume...
Hi, my name is Lula. And I play chess... or at least I did, until I accidentally took an eight-month classical chess break and moved to Paris, France, to pursue my dreams as a chic cat mom. But now I'm back, and I just played my first tournament...
Do you still remember when you were bitten by the chess bug? Followed by that feverish desire to improve in the game? Only to realize that you started “too late” to amount to anything? In this era of prodigies and 12-year-old grandma...
Many people who just started playing chess ask what games they should study in order to improve their skills. It is tempting to study games played by the highest-rated player in history, GM Magnus Carlsen, but this can be really counterproductive,...
November has come, bringing with it a huge new partnership and lots of exciting developments in the chess world. Can you defeat Duo, or will this cultured green owl be your doom? Here's what this monthly update covers: Product & En...
Whether you're a fearless attacker or a calm defender, I promise there's a chess legend who shares similarities to your playing style. That is unless your playing style is memorizing 10 moves of theory and then blundering your queen. But I'm sure ...
Some chess games played by legendary players featured such impressive new concepts that they instantly became iconic. As time passed, these concepts turned into chess axioms. According to Wikipedia, "In classic philosophy, an axiom is a statement ...
There have been many attempts to estimate ratings of chess players, both past and present, by looking at their game scores and comparing the moves with a top engine's choices, including one notable study here on Chess.com in 2017. These at...
Who is the best? It's a question we ask about almost every competitive endeavor, and chess is no exception. For many years, we here at Chess.com have bestowed the Chess.com Awards at the end of every year. But it's time to think with longer timesc...
The game of chess didn't have a world championship until 1886. It took an additional 41 years for there to be a women's world championship, first held in 1927. Despite the shorter time period, there have been as many women's champions, 17,...
May's Coach of the Month is WGM Jennifer Perez Rodriguez, a titled chess player and coach representing Paraguay. She has won numerous honors as a competitive over-the-board player, and is also known for sharing her love of chess on her Twitch chan...
GM Magnus Carlsen won't be the official world champion of classical chess for much longer, but he has proven again and again in events outside of the FIDE-managed classical world championship that he is the best player in the world. Carlsen's re...
The opening is the part of chess that players study the most. I doubt that this statement came as a big surprise to you, considering the humongous amount of books and videos on this subject. When I ask my students what kind of chess books they hav...
The recently concluded World Team Championship is in the history books already. China again demonstrated its enormous chess potential by winning the tournament, even without the presence of its top players. Uzbekistan was another hero of this even...
Few would question that, in an ideal world, the best chess player would be the world champion and vice versa. We can agree that GM Magnus Carlsen, who has been world number-one by rating since 2010 and world champion since 2013, is both. But at so...
The FTX Crypto Cup was an exciting tournament where any chess player could find something to love. For me, the most attractive part of the tournament was its abundance of blunders. Yes, you read that correctly! Now, let me explain my point. ...
Have you ever wondered how much money the top chess players can make by winning games? There are so many tournaments and matches run by various organizers that it's extremely hard to track how much prize money the best chess players have won in th...
GM Magnus Carlsen made waves with his recent decision not to play in the 2023 World Championship. However, he is hardly the first world champion to quit or criticize the championship system, or otherwise tire of the role or leave its acquisition t...
In honor of the 44th Chess Olympiad, we at Chess.com asked the question: If you could put every country's best five players ever on the same team, how good would those teams be? Now there are many arguments, and not just in chess, about how good...
Tuesday, July 11, 1972, 5 p.m. local time. The 1,800 spectators at Laugardalsholl applaud as GM Boris Spassky, the reigning world champion, enters the stage. He sits down, makes his first move (1.d4), and arbiter GM Lothar Schmid starts the clock....
Chess has a long tradition of matches for the highest crown. Even after 50 years, perhaps the Match of the Century still reigns supreme as the greatest competition between a challenger and a defending champion. My reflection on the World Chess Cha...
No other tournament in chess combines the tradition and importance of the Candidates Tournament, which determines who plays the reigning champion in a match for the title. Depending how you count, it has been around for at least 70 years and up ...
A board theme says a lot about a person... like, it says which color board you like. But more than that, it gives important insight into your personality and play style. We looked at some of the most popular and some of the most divisive board the...
