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...
PogChamps 6 is just around the corner! Starting April 29, 12 celebrities will compete in the world's most exciting and hilarious amateur competition. But with so many star participants, it's hard to pick just one to root for. That's why we...
Chess and swimming may seem like an unusual combination, but for CM Michal Mazurkiewicz from Poland, it is the perfect blend of mental and physical endurance. The 34-year-old has made waves by earning a well-deserved spot in the Guinness World of ...
Figuring out your preferred "time control," how long each player has to move, is the first step toward playing a chess game. Each time control leads to slightly different decision-making processes for the players and affects how the game will like...
Chess only continues to grow, and this year, the game will reach perhaps its largest audience ever when it appears at the 2025 Esports World Cup in Riyadh from July 31 to August 3, with a prize fund of $1.5 million. Lest you thought esports only m...
Does GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave think he’s a genius? Can he reclaim a spot among the world’s elite? And does he feel blitz and rapid chess are as important as classical? In a new episode of Chess.com's popular Lie Detector Chess serie...
Credit for this article goes to Torsten Blass, a professional data analyst who runs The Data Digest, a YouTube channel. You can visit his channel at https://www.youtube.com/@TheDataDigest. Titled Tuesday is always a popular event, and that...
The 2024 prize money figures are in, and it was another big year for the world's best chess players. Just in tournament winnings alone, two players won over a million dollars, six made $400,000—more than the President of the United States!&m...
Which players stood out in 2024? Who delivered the best performances, played the most games, or gained the most rating points? Which events captured chess fans worldwide, and what moments dominated the headlines and on social media? It's time to r...
Your favorite annual chess quiz tradition is back for the 2024 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 6, with answers and winners: ...
The FIDE World Championship is halfway over and the score is all tied up between World Champion Ding Liren and challenger GM Gukesh Dommaraju. It’s been an exciting match full of risks taken and chances missed. Haven’t seen a game live...
Let me set the scene. You meet somebody new. The topic of hobbies comes up. You tell them you're a chess player. Suddenly, you're met with a deep, unsettling feeling... regret. You know it all too well. You and I both know what's coming. The Inevi...
