No country in the world has more members associated with Chess.com than the United States—about 44 million as of our last country count. Since it is the third-largest country in the world, and with the largest economy, this level of populari...
Who hasn't lost their queen or gotten checkmated in the first 10 moves of a chess game? While all of us have been on the receiving end of an opening trap, five grandmasters have linked up with Chess.com to help us turn the tables with their f...
GM Judit Polgar is considered by nearly all chess fans to be the greatest woman player in the history of the sport, and one of the very best players full stop as well. Although she retired from playing chess competitively in 2014, Polgar has remai...
In February 2022, I hit a new peak blitz rating of 2474. I had been grinding online blitz hard for several years, gradually improving from the 2100s, and finally I was ready to sniff the rare air of 2500. But just a little later, I had fallen out ...
It’s that time again. Every two years, the FIDE Candidates Tournament arrives, ready to nominate another challenger to go into the lion’s den and face off against the reigning World Champion of chess, and every two years, we have to an...
Just because you're playing in the 2026 Candidates Tournament doesn't mean you can't rank your opponents ahead of time. Seven grandmasters, including four of the candidates, recently gave their takes about the field and the tournament which begins...
The women’s world championship cycle hasn’t always looked like this, and the Women’s Candidates tournament certainly hasn’t always been held concurrently with the Open. But isn’t it way more exciting to be able to che...
If you're anything like me, then you're freaking out right now over the much-awaited 2026 Candidates Tournament. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. The question is not who will win… but who should you root for? As I’m sure you kn...
In the world of chess, a prodigy is more than just a talented kid. A chess prodigy defies their age and, while still in grade school, often topples seasoned, adult grandmasters. The four GMs Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura, Alireza Firouzja, and...
GM Judit Polgar, everyone's choice for the greatest woman chess player in history, has been making the rounds since the release of Queen of Chess, the hit Netflix documentary about her life in chess. Last week, she sat down at a board with Chess.c...
Queen of Chess, the documentary directed by Rory Kennedy about the life and career of GM Judit Polgar, has been informing and entertaining Netflix viewers since February 6. The film hit the global top 10 in its first week as viewers have gotten to...
2025 will go down as a year that showcased chess at its very best, marked by performances at the highest level and record-breaking activity online. As we have moved to 2026, it's time to look at the moments, games, and numbers that defined the pas...
GM Magnus Carlsen may have given up the world championship years ago, but he is still the best player in the world. He proved it in several ways in 2025, not the least of which was a bank account that continued to swell. A quarter-million here, an...
Your favorite annual chess quiz tradition is back for the 2025 holidays. Play the puzzler by clicking here. Enjoy this year's quiz, and see if you can win one of our prizes for a top score! Update, January 8 For answers and winners, c...
Chess.com wasn't always Chess.com, as you know it today. In the days before millions of members, before Puzzle Rush or Chessable/Courses, before you could even play a game with someone halfway across the world, there was a small chess software com...
The chess community has its own language. It's easy to tell if somebody is new to chess, because they'll ask you things like, "Hey, what's en passant?" and, "How does the horse move?" One very important part of "understanding" chess is knowing...
GM Magnus Carlsen, following in the footsteps of GMs Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu and Hikaru Nakamura, played a blindfold chess game against ChatGPT in a video published Tuesday. In less than 48 hours, it had already racked up more than 100,000 views...
"There is luck in chess. My opponent was lucky that he was playing against an idiot." - Jim Loy Last week, many of us watched the exciting Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Las Vegas tournament. The gambling capital of the world might seem li...
If I told you that a legendary chess master once lived in the Saurashtra region in the 1830s, would you believe me? A player with extraordinary abilities, capable of reciting full games from memory and calmly announcing checkmate with a soft &ldqu...
After having introduced you to Mahesh Chandra and Shyamcharan Ghatak, let's go to another personality whose brilliance inspired me to write the second part of this series: Pandit Trivengadacharya Shastri. His Sanskrit text, Vilasmanimanjiri, serve...
Chess truly is an international game. It was invented in India and then spread to the Middle East and Europe. A dozen countries, as large as the United States or India and as small as the Netherlands or Armenia, can brag about producing a world ch...
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...
Maybe you've heard of Freestyle Chess, where you shuffle the pieces before a game to create wild starting positions. We decided to test some more extreme setups: Are two rooks better than a queen? How about six rooks against three queens? Theory d...
WGM Dina Belenkaya is the latest guest to sit in the hot seat for Lie Detector Chess, the popular Chess.com series that turns up the tension with a polygraph and a panel of friends asking very personal questions. Belenkaya is a U.S.-based Russia...
In the Chess.com Classic tournament in May, GM Hikaru Nakamura, one of the best players in the world, resigned in a winning position against GM Magnus Carlsen! Watch and listen how shocked commentators GM Aman Hambleton and IM Levy Rozman are as t...
