NM Jeremy Kane is the Instructional Content Manager for Chess.com, and the author of several courses in the Starting Out series, Queen’s Gambit Accepted, Trompowsky, and Tarrasch.
GMs Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Oleksandr Bortnyk and IM Renato Terry all continued their recent strong blitz form with wins in 3 0 Thursday tournaments on April 30. For Duda, winning the first event was a nice complement to his victory in Titled Tuesday ...
GMs Amin Tabatabaei, Haik Martirosyan, and Oleksandr Bortnyk won 3 0 Thursday tournaments on April 23. No one had a smooth run to the title as GM Jose Martinez, one of the top Thursday performers this year, made the podium in each event, but could...
In the fall 2025 season, the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) team fell just short, losing in the finals 8.5-7.5 against St. Louis University (SLU). They fought their way back in the spring 2026 season, claiming the title 9.5-6.5 against SRM In...
IMs Renato Terry and Karina Ambartsumova extended their records for 3 0 Thursday tournament victories on Thursday, April 16. Terry won a record 11th victory in the third tournament of the day, advancing ahead of GM Jose Martinez for the most wins ...
GM Hans Niemann decisively beat fellow American 2700 GM Awonder Liang in a 12-game match in Paris, France. Niemann went undefeated throughout the fast-classical match, winning three games and securing a final 7.5-4.5 victory. The players competed ...
St. Louis University (SLU) and the University of Missouri-Columbia (Mizzou) have combined to win the last seven Collegiate Chess League championships, but the spring 2026 season will crown a new champion. The SRM Institute of Science and Technolog...
GM Nihal Sarin won the Menorca Open Masters, scoring two wins against World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju along the way. Nihal's 6/10 score was enough for clear first place, half a point ahead of GMs Ruslan Ponomariov and Richard Rapport. Gukesh had t...
GMs Fabiano Caruana and Matthias Bluebaum have fallen out of contention in the ongoing FIDE Candidates Tournament. That didn't stop them from trying their luck in 3 0 Thursday after completing their game in the Candidates. Both players played well...
Just as collegiate basketball players compete in March Madness, college chess players are about to begin their own playoff bracket in the Collegiate Chess League (CCL). The eight Division One teams have just completed the seven-week round-robin se...
Since GM Jose Martinez won the inaugural 3 0 Thursday tournament in November, GM Fabiano Caruana has been the only player to win more than one of the three weekly events on the same day. Martinez joined him in impressive fashion on Thursday, March...
Some weeks, a score of nine out of eleven is enough to win 3 0 Thursday, but on March 19, all three tournament winners won at least ten games, leaving little doubt regarding the best performance in each event. GM Aravindh Chithambaram won the firs...
IM Renato Terry won a 3 0 Thursday tournament for the third week in a row, setting a new record with nine victories in the event. GM Oleksandr Bortnyk joined him, winning his third title, as did GM Benjamin Bok, winning for the first time. Th...
The University Of Texas At Dallas (UTD) was the top team in the Fall 2025 regular season of the Collegiate Chess League (CCL). However, in the playoffs, they fell just short, losing to St. Louis University (SLU) in the finals, 8.5-7.5. In the spri...
GM Sina Movahed defeated GM Yagiz Erdogmus, in the 2026 ChessKid Youth Championship U16 finals. The two teenage GMs tied for first place in the A Group in the preliminary round robin tournament, before defeating the top finishers in the B group, d...
IM Reza Mahdavi followed up his win in the final 3 0 Thursday the previous week by winning the opening 3 0 Thursday on February 26. Not to be outdone, IM Renato Terry won the second tournament of the day with his record seventh title overall. GM A...
GM Fabiano Caruana followed up on his Titled Tuesday victory this week by becoming the first-ever winner of two 3 0 Thursday tournaments on the same day. He won the first tournament on tiebreaks over GM Matthias Bluebaum. He kept up his form by wi...
On February 14, 15-year-old American GM Andy Woodward broke the Chess.com bullet rating record, previously held by GM Hikaru Nakamura. Nakamura set the previous record of 3570 on November 11, 2020, meaning that it stood for more than five years. W...
They didn't make the Finals last season, but the University of Missouri-Columbia (Mizzou) has added a new player and appears ready to regain the championship form that they displayed in 2024. IM Amilal Munkhdalai came from Mongolia to join the sch...
Twelve-year-old IM Faustino Oro nearly claimed his first victory in 3 0 Thursday on February 12. He led with nine points out of 11 games in the final minute of the tournament, but GM Matthias Bluebaum scored a come-from-behind victory in his own g...
Current and former NFL players gathered before the Super Bowl for the second annual BlitzChamps Live tournament and festivities in San Francisco, California, on February 6. At the end of the celebration of football and chess, Will Davis, a former ...
It was a day for "M" names in 3 0 Thursday on February 5, as GMs Parham Maghsoodloo, Haik Martirosyan, and Jose Martinez took the top spots. It was Martinez's fifth victory in the tournament, Maghsoodloo's second, and Martirosyan's first. The wome...
GM Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus was recently described by GM Magnus Carlsen as the strongest 14-year-old in the history of the game. He's demonstrated his ability in recent months, and gained more points than anyone else among the world's top-100 players i...
GM Hikaru Nakamura won his first six games in the opening 3 0 Thursday tournament on January 29, bringing his Chess.com blitz rating to a record 3454. Nakamura slowed down after that and the tournament winners of the day were GMs Sina Movahed, Mag...
The Prague International Chess Festival is an annual tournament which has been held in the Czech capital since 2019. This year's edition will take place in the Don Giovanni Hotel from February 25 to March 6, and the organizers recently announced a...
The tournament leaders going into the final round of all three 3 0 Thursday tournaments on January 22 all lost their games and their leads. The chaotic day ended with GM Alexey Sarana winning a tournament for the third straight week, GM Hikaru Nak...
