Beth Harmon, the main character of "The Queen's Gambit," not only inspired millions of viewers to pick up the game of chess. Many fans like her not just for her winning moves on the chessboard, but also for her wardrobe. The huge effect that "Th...
Any experienced player knows that chess is all about pattern recognition. At least this is true of chess played by humans. In this article, I argued that one of the biggest competitive advantages World Champion Magnus Carlsen has is his unique mem...
In the past few years, I wrote a biography of the seventh world champion, Vasily Smyslov. The first volume, focused on the beginning of his chess career, is now available. I have analyzed hundreds of Smyslov’s games and tracked every step ...
Thanks to the critically acclaimed and insanely popular Netflix series, The Queen's Gambit, based upon Walter Tevis' 1983 book of the same title, Beth Harmon has become a household name. In interviews Tevis talked about his own troubled childhoo...
Chess.com is thrilled to host PogChamps 3 presented by GRIP6, which is set to begin on February 14. Expected to be one of the most viewed chess tournaments in history, PogChamps 3 will have a $100,000 prize fund. Among the participants of this lan...
Voting is now closed as of 9 a.m. PT 12/31. Each year, Chess.com looks back on some of the best games, moves, and events from the prior 365 days. This year, Chess.com is thrilled to formalize this process and announce the 2020 Chess.com Awards. ...
In April 2016, the GM Blitz Battle Championship kicked off on Chess.com with seven of the world's top blitz players plus one qualifier open to grandmasters and international masters with FIDE ratings of 2500+. I started closely tracking the r...
Ho, ho, ho! 'Tis the season to play chess! Santa's in town, and he's ready to play! Whether you've been naughty or nice, there are five brand new holiday bots that you can challenge here on Chess.com. Play them before they have to go back to the N...
The first Capablanca book that I read was "My Chess Career." In the very first pages, I could see that it was completely different from any chess book that I read before. It was almost like an advertisement where every single sentence was screamin...
Hey, chess lovers! The end of the year is almost upon us, and as if that isn't enough reason to celebrate, we still have to look back at the penultimate month of the year—and review all the interesting things that happened around the site in...
Registration is open for the 2021 Chess.com Daily Chess Championship, which is set to begin at 12 a.m. Pacific on January 1. Each year, the Chess.com Daily Chess Championship has set a new record for the largest tournament we've ever held. ...
There's no doubt about it: "The Queen's Gambit" is a huge hit. With incredible performances by the actors, beautiful sets, and a well-constructed plot, it's no wonder the miniseries is so successful. With 68 million households watching the show in...
GM Hikaru Nakamura has broken all manner of chess barriers in 2020. According to the man himself, he's now a professional streamer, focused on his groundbreaking content on Twitch and YouTube, streaming for thousands of hours and becoming both the...
For an average beginner, the road to a rating in the range of 1400-1600 is pretty straightforward. Learn as many tactical patterns as possible, get yourself familiar with some basic opening principles, and you are there! Notice, I said that the ro...
Your favorite annual chess quiz tradition is back for the 2020 holidays. Enjoy this year's quiz, and see if you can win one of our prizes for a top score. Play the puzzler here. [Jan. 5, 2021 update: click here to see the correct answe...
Stockfish made huge waves earlier this year when the release of Stockfish 12 pushed computer chess to new Elo heights. Stockfish remains the premier chess engine on the planet on this update, topping all rating lists—bullet, blitz, and rapid...
The Bullet Open Championship will kick off on December 19-20, with the winner clinching a spot in next year's Bullet Chess Championship. With a $10,000 prize fund on the line, this event will feature a 1|0 time control, open to all ...
Today, World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen turns 30 years old! The Norwegian super-talent is well on his way to being nearly universally deemed the greatest chess player of all time. He is considered so by many already. Carlsen is renowned for h...
Endgames. The word, alone, may conjure up feelings of happiness, dread, or even despair for many chess players. Some adore the endgame while others despise it. There is a grain of truth in the old Soviet saying that amateur chess players "play t...
There are lots of “chess firsts.” In nearly every category we can think of there are those who achieved something for the first time or who were considered premier in some way. This puzzle looks at some “chess firsts.” They...
There was a study published last month by PNAS titled "Life Cycle Patterns of Cognitive Performance over the Long Run" which looked at chess as a way to measure cognitive performance. The study looked at the move-by-move performance of top profess...
Ask a dozen chess players what their favorite square is, and quite likely you'll get a dozen of different answers. I suspect all four central squares (d4, d5, e4, and e5) will be on the list. While it is difficult to dispute the importance of...
Hey, chess lovers!... What's new!? That's what we're here to find out! October 2020 was a fun & busy month, as the crazy-popular Netflix series The Queen's Gambit inspired many people to give chess a try—or rekindled a passion for...
Let's face it. As chess players, we don't have the best rep regarding social skills. No one has ever said, "You know what this party needs? More chess players!" I get it. There's a certain stereotype attached to people like us. On the bright sid...
