In one of his games at the 1958 Chess Olympiad in Munich, GM Mikhail "the Magician" Tal, true to his style, sacrificed a pawn. His team member, then world champion GM Mikhail Botvinnik, asked him, "why did you sacrifice that pawn?" "It was in my w...
Chess has a deep-rooted history in India, tracing back to its origins as chaturanga. The transition from the traditional Indian version to the westernized format remains an overlooked chapter, but a remarkable discovery has now brought this forgot...
Did you see Magnus Carlsen's dramatic outburst against world champion Gukesh Dommaraju? A seething Magnus Carlsen slammed his fist into a table after suffering his first defeat to world champion Gukesh Dommaraju in a classical game https://t.c...
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, ...
It's evening in Romania, and WFM Maria Yugina and GM Mihail Marin are sitting on the couch at home for our interview. Their rescue dog, Foxy, bounces around the room, playing around and chasing her own tail, at one point disconnecting the camera a...
There are three things you can watch forever: fire burning, water falling, and movies with Sir Anthony Hopkins. The psychological thriller "Fracture" was a big blockbuster in 2007. A very smart screenplay coupled with brilliant performances by Ant...
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...
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 almost as many women's champio...
In this last article celebrating Black History Month, I was lucky enough to have an illuminating conversation with the legendary New York City coach NM Jerald Times. You can see the full interview below: You can also see a few of the interv...
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...
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 Vishnu Prasanna is India's 33rd grandmaster. He has worked as a second to GM Baskaran Adhiban and has also coached many chess players since 2016 including GM Surya Shekhar Ganguly. India's second-highest-rated player, GM Gukesh D, is also ...
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...
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 ...
Morphy. Capablanca. Fischer. Most chess fans know these legendary names. Other young players, like GM Abhimanyu Mishra or ChessKid FM Tani Adewumi, are known to chess fans right now and we await to see just how good they will become. And...
What, other than hopeless addiction, really keeps me coming back to chess? It's the battle for truth. At a high level, each grandmaster has their "truth" about the game, and a game between two strong players is often not really about ability ...
When we were preparing for the 2018 FIDE World Championship, Chess.com compiled a list of the most exciting world championship matches ever. But what were the best ones? Now that the 2021 FIDE World Chess Championship between GM Magnus Carl...
This guide contains all the information about the 2021 FIDE World Chess Championship: details on Carlsen, Nepomniachtchi, schedule, results, and more. GM Magnus Carlsen won four games in the match and drew seven for a final match score of 7.5-3....
What is the best game of chess you've ever played? Do you remember where you were: Was it on Chess.com, or over the board? Was it a tournament game, or a more casual affair? Well, imagine playing a great game on the biggest stage, the FIDE World...
These days only a lazy person doesn't speculate about the year when GM Alireza Firouzja will become the World Champion. Indeed, it is very difficult for me to imagine what kind of an event could prevent the current world #4 (he actually hit the #3...
Just as with everything else—hopefully—we learn more and more about chess as the years go by. Opening theory gets consistently deeper, tablebases have solved endgames with up to seven pieces on the board, and computers teach us more th...
Only 22 players in the history of chess have held the official title of world champion, 18 of which held the "classical" title. With rare exceptions, the classical champion has been decided in a match between the sitting champion and a challenger....
Written by Brad Ashlock Making art is like making a chess move. An artist starts with the available resources and looks at the composition/position from the general to the specific. My resources for digital collage begins not with searching for...
