This has been a very intense year chess-wise, with very high-quality games and really exciting tournaments. It is not easy to make a selection of the best games. The problem with this sort of article is that there's always someone who thinks that ...
By now you've heard about the new kid on the chess-engine block, AlphaZero, and its crushing match win vs Stockfish, the strongest open-source chess engine. The reactions from the chess community to this match ranged from admiration to utter dis...
Garry Kasparov's book My Great Predecessors is one of the best ever written about chess. If I had to take just one chess book with me on a proverbial desert island, that would be my pick. Well, actually I would take all five volumes of the book....
Who will face Magnus Carlsen in the finals of the 2017 Speed Chess Championship? Two of the world's best players face off Saturday for that privilege as the 2016 world championship challenger Sergey Karjakin will take on the online che...
Several years ago I was at a coffee shop in Pasadena, California, and started a conversation with a few young (mid-twenties) Taiwanese people. After we chatted about Taiwan, our talk took a turn into various kinds of pop music. I made it clear tha...
Never in Speed Chess Championship history, or really in any of Chess.com's head-to-head matches, have two GMs approached their face-off so soon after an over-the-board meeting. A scant five days after playing a classical game against each other ...
It's a chess book like no other, a visual tribute to the royal game. The book is 208 pages of Fedrigoni paper filled with tension in the eyes of silent protagonists. Club players, Olympic members, world champions. All focused, deep in thought, ...
Even beginners know that castling is a very important part of an opening strategy since it moves your king away from the center into a comfortable home created by a rook and three pawns. But what if the new king's house is not so cozy, since the...
Records inspire us all to strive for greatness. The long legacy of chess has birthed some records which have stood for decades, and some that may well stand for centuries. Here are seven of the most amazing chess records ever etched into history...
The Chess.com member Animaul7 (his real name is Anthony Maulucci) wrote: I’m a 16-year-old who has been stuck at an expert rating for some time now, which I know is pretty normal. One question I have for you is what juniors like myself can...
Your favorite annual chess quiz tradition is back for the holidays. Chess.com is proud to celebrate the season with an all-new puzzler for 2017—So enjoy this year's fun (and tricky) edition. Play the puzzler here. The 10...
The games played by Jose Raul Capablanca have been analyzed in countless chess books, magazines and videos. Today, I want to show you two of his less famous games. Both were played against the strong American master Alexander Kevitz, and both de...
The expression "Dean of American Chess" officially refers to specific individuals whose contribution to American Chess deserves special recognition and, as such, the title is considered the highest honor the national organizat...
Chess is a game of dramatic possibility. Within a few moves, the number of potential positions is in the millions. Soon, there are more permutations than a human could count in a lifetime. This is well known; you sometimes hear that there are mo...
The Wall Street Journal is not the publication you want to read looking for a good laugh, unless you find such terms like GDP, P/E ratio or volatility index particularly funny. Yet, I couldn't stop smiling reading through their recent article abou...
The Chess.com member LittlePawn988 wrote: Something really bugs me. I often hear players, of every level, talking about the strength of masters of the past and sometimes I find them really arrogant and disrespectful. Even lower-rated players sa...
"Nobody knows, even roughly, how many people play chess, and nobody should pretend to know." -- Edward Winter1 Is chess the most popular game in the world? While no one can say for certain, here are some estimates of the numbers of chess playe...
The 2017 Speed Chess Championship is down to its final four combatants, and today the semifinals begin with a matchup of two decorated champions. The world chess champion, Magnus Carlsen, will take on the three-time world blitz c...
In last week's article we learned some of the favorite chess patterns of super-GM Ding Liren. As you probably remember, he loves to play for domination when his opponent's pieces can barely move. His most common recipe to get this kind of a p...
GM Magnus Carlsen has been beating anything with a heartbeat in November. First he won by the largest margin in the Champions Showdown with a day to spare, then he scored the most game points ever in a Speed Chess Championship match. You can throw...
The Chess.com member grepschrop wrote: “Some players told me that it’s not important to know the names of mating patterns. My experience with kids is contrary. What is your opinion?” SILMAN: Though one might think this is easy ...
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Superfinal Results Superfinal Crosstable # Name Rtg Perf 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 1 Stockfish 051117 3400 3424 ½ ½ ½ ½ 1 0 ½ ½ ...
Holiday shopping season is here, and there's no better time to pick up some over-the-board chess gear for anyone on your list (or even yourself). The holidays are a great time to get together and play some chess, so make sure you stock up ...
In one of my recent articles we analyzed the games of Rudolf Pitschak. As one of the readers correctly pointed out, he wasn't the best player in the world. Actually quite far from that! And yet we could learn something from his games. Now imagin...
