There are many well-known world champions, challengers, candidates, world-class players, national champions, and grandmasters in chess circles. The best players our game has ever seen are constantly celebrated and for good reason! However, there a...
Grandmasters are the legendary icons that stand atop the chess world—they are our chess heroes. These giants are not only our favorite players but are also... human. Humans make mistakes (both on and off the board), and, as a species, are al...
Chess.com is excited to welcome GM Vladimir Akopian as an author. In his first article, he shares the story of his game with Mikhail Tal, Tal's last classical game. Dear chess friends, I would like to share with you the analysis of my game with...
The words "quarantine" and "social distancing" are going to be a symbol of the year 2020. People in isolation suffer due to many economical and psychological factors. One of them is boredom. Fortunately, creative minds will always find a solutio...
Our beloved game of chess has had many legends, world champions, challengers, world-class players, and grandmasters. The games of these masters delight, inspire, and teach us the ways of the royal game. It is common to discuss the greatest playe...
Sixty-four is too easy for a chess article, so here are sixty-seven chess quotes you may not have seen before. Or maybe you have... Some stand on their own, some have a bit of commentary, and all are hopefully interesting. Enjoy! Jose Capablanca...
The question in the title of this article might look stupid to many readers. Indeed, who wouldn't like to study a game annotated by a strong player? Well, I am not sure that I have an answer to this question anymore. When I was a kid, an ann...
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...
Ding Liren, the current world number-three and strongest Chinese chess player in history, speaks to David Cox about the rise of Chinese men’s chess, his remarkable 100-game unbeaten streak and the difficulty of maintaining a relationship whi...
The generational meme wars are heating up as "OK, boomer" (often with the necessary comma omitted) is now a catch-all reply to trump any disagreement between the young and old. This unstoppable meme has made its way across the Internet, all over...
How strong was Samuel Reshevsky in his prime? Well, he won the U.S. championship eight times, the same number as Bobby Fischer. Reshevsky also played eight times in the Chess Olympiads (six times on first board). Was he good enough to b...
When I was a student of famous Botvinnik-Kasparov school, the two living legends didn't just teach us how to play chess; they also taught us how to work on chess. The homework that each student would get by the end of a session was invaluable! O...
IM Cyrus Lakdawala contributed to this article. In 1975, Bobby Fischer and Anatoly Karpov were set to play for the world chess championship. Fischer, the reigning world champion, argued with the world chess federation (FIDE) over the format fo...
When we learn the rules of chess and start playing, we never ask ourselves the question in the title of the article. We just enjoy the process of playing, that's all! But almost any person who has played chess for a long time is going to ask: "W...
For Jeremy Silman's article on the early life of Pal Benko, click here. Pal Benko: My ticket to freedom was, naturally, chess. First on my agenda was to qualify for an out-of-country zonal. Of course, I didn’t want to play in a Soviet-co...
Ask any chess player to name a grandmaster who deserved to be the world champion but never became one, and you will get a list of the usual suspects. Bronstein, Korchnoi and Keres will be on the top of the list, and then it becomes ver...
The concept of time in chess is one of the most difficult topics for young kids to grasp. While they have no trouble understanding how you can lose a piece, a pawn or the right to castle, the subject of losing time is usually confusing for them. ...
One of the most promising Dutch junior players of the early 1970s was Roy Dieks from Amsterdam. In the final of the 1972 European Youth Championship, held in Groningen, The Netherlands, Dieks played a crucial game against Tony Miles (who would lat...
In general, when a very strong player faces a lesser one, the result is usually easy to guess. However, once in a while the “victim” turns the tables and devours the giant. In this article I will give you six games where the little fis...
Filmmakers love to use chess in their movies to emphasize the protagonist's intellectual abilities. Naturally you can see chess in many spy movies, since even a regular scoresheet looks like secret code for non-chess-players. Reportedly, postal ...
I have been lucky to play in tournaments with chess players who later became super grandmasters or even world champions. The transformation of talented juniors into the best players in the world was usually a gradual process. With Vladimir&...
Think you have played some long chess games? Check out the games in this article and see if your marathon games match up! Warning! All but one of these games is over 200 moves! Here are the top-four longest-rated chess games ever played: Iva...
David Cox speaks to GM Hikaru Nakamura as he begins a year he hopes will land him a place in the 2020 Candidates' tournament. Sometimes outspoken, and certainly never conventional, the American super-GM Hikaru Nakamura has always been an in...
With another year of chess history nearly in the books, what will fans remember most from 2018? The world championship draw-fest in London? Ding Liren's unbeaten streak? The FIDE regime change? Music as a weapon in esports? Time will tell, ...
