The year was 1985 and I was playing a tournament where I had an opportunity to get my first master norm. At that time, tournaments with master norms were very scarce in the Soviet Union. In fact, we had only one such tournament per year in my ho...
HOW TO START OUT I get many, many players (rated 800 to 1200) asking me what their style is, why do they lose when they had a better game, are their opponents cheating, how to get good fast, or simply how to get a higher rating. All thes...
Looking for a great way to kick off your school's chess club in the fall? The Fourth "Hour of Chess Week" is the first time we will host the event outside of the spring! This back-to-school edition still gives you a chance to win 500 gold m...
Petrov's Defense is not a common opening in club tournaments. It almost doesn't exist in scholastic tournaments, either. The reason is the opening is not very exciting, and in most lines leads to slow, positional play. Therefore, as Wikipedia pu...
The 2018 Chess.com Speed Chess Championship will feature 16 of the world's best chess players in an innovative eSports bracket tournament and a guaranteed prize pool of $55,000. See the round two results here. NEXT MATCH: Speed ...
The next match of the Speed Chess Championship quarterfinals is Thursday as Hikaru Nakamura (@hikaru) faces Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (@lyonbeast). The match winner will play Levon Aronian in the Speed Chess final f...
It's "only" a quarterfinal, but it's a matchup worthy of much more. On Thursday, October 11 at 10 a.m. Pacific (1 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Central Europe) Hikaru Nakamura and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave will go toe-to-toe to decide the last semifina...
The next match of the Speed Chess Championship quarterfinals is Tuesday as Wesley So (@gmwso) faces Vidit Gujrathi(@viditchess). The match winner will play the Polish prodigy Jan-Krzysztof Duda in the Speed Chess final fou...
The Global Chess Festival Online invites chess players around the world to celebrate chess by playing in a 24-hour 5|0 arena on Chess.com. Play will begin , concluding 24 hours later on the 13th. The event is part of the Global Chess Festival On...
We've had the Candidates and the Olympiad, but the biggest event of 2018 is yet to come. In 32 days, the World Championship match between Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana will start in London. Let's start early and provide you with all the infor...
I love reading member comments to my articles! It is a pleasure to see how smart and intelligent our chess community is. Unlike commenters in many internet forums, Chess.com members are polite and helpful. Take for example one of my most re...
Judit Polgar (@JuditPolgar), unarguably the greatest female player of all time and one of the greatest attacking players of all time, will play 20 fortunate opponents on Chess.com as part of the Global Chess Festival Online. This simultaneous disp...
"All the leaves are brown and the sky is gray..." Serendipity: As you look for one thing, you often find all sorts of interesting items in the process. I had been searching through California newspaper a...
The regular readers of my column know that I hate political correctness. In my old article I explained it is probably the biggest threat to Western civilization. Very soon people will stop expressing their true beliefs out of fear that the...
Over 20 years ago, World Champion Garry Kasparov took on IBM and the super-computer Deep Blue in the ultimate battle of man versus machine. This was a monumental moment in chess history and was followed closely around the world. This match ap...
Grab your popcorn for this article! We are going to take a look at chess in the movies. Chess fans everywhere have their favorite chess movies. Here are our top seven picks. Make sure to share your favorite chess films in the comments! Searchi...
Most amateurs run into the same problems: undefended pieces, being unaware of their opponents' best moves, falling victim to simple tactics, etc. Those things are common. However, once in a while you’ll see a player making one specific ...
I think it was GM Tartakower who once said "the wise chess player learns from someone else’s mistakes, the smart one learns from his own mistakes, and the stupid chess players never learn." So, let's be wise and learn from the games of th...
Here you'll find updated standings and leaderboard information for the Arena Kings Streamers Championship Season 2. Season 2 press release and announcement. Standings as of October 18 Rank Player Points Twitch Channel Name / Title ...
The next match of the Speed Chess Championship quarterfinals is today as Anish Giri (@anishgiri) faces Levon Aronian (@levonaronian). The match winner will play the winner of Hikaru Nakamura vs Maxime Vachie...
Round two of the Speed Chess Championship starts today as Alexander Grischuk (@grischuk) does battle with Jan-Krzysztof Duda (@polish_fighter3000). After breaking the brackets by defeating Sergey Karjakin in round one, can...
Chess openings have been analyzed for centuries and yet even today it is still not easy to identify the best and worst first moves. According to Fischer, 1.e4 is "best by test." From the other side, when the famous theoretician GM Ernst Gruenfel...
One of the most important things in chess is willpower (a branch of chess psychology). Most players glance at a possibility, shrug it off as too risky or just plain bad or boring, and toss out some generic move instead. This, of course, is...
Chess aficionados love to debate about the best chess player of all time. As I mentioned in my old article, this is the question that has no answer. Indeed, it is very difficult to guess who would have won the world championship match Fisc...
It's the final opening-round match of the Speed Chess Championship today as Anish Giri (@AnishGiri) faces Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (@azerichesss) for the right to advance in the Speed Chess bracket and play Levon Ar...