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...
GM Benjamin Bok won Freestyle Friday on March 20, becoming the 25th different player to win the event. He also became the fifth different winner in the first five weeks of the Freestyle Friday Championship. Bok's 9.5 points out of 11 were enough t...
GM Koneru Humpy has said she is likely to withdraw from the upcoming FIDE Women's Candidates Tournament, scheduled to take place in Paphos, Cyprus, from March 29 to April 16, following safety concerns. The International Chess Federation (FIDE) has...
Global soccer superstar Erling Haaland has entered the chess world as an investor in Norway Chess, backing the launch of the ambitious new Total Chess World Championship Tour—an elite circuit expected to feature GM Magnus Carlsen. "Chess i...
Sixteen-year-old IM Alice Lee is the first female player to cross the 3000 rating mark on Chess.com in any time control—whether in bullet, blitz, or rapid. On March 17, she reached a bullet rating of 3002. Lee started a 43-game s...
GMs Pranesh M and Yu Yangyi qualified for the 2026 Chess.com Open Playoffs through Play-In 2 on Wednesday. Pranesh advanced directly by having better tiebreaks than GM Wesley So, the only other player to finish on 7.5/9. Yu, who finished the ...
Titled Tuesday on March 17 was decided on the clock, as GM Nihal Sarin took home the victory with a final-round win over GM Nils Grandelius, with just 0.7 seconds remaining when Grandelius' time expired in a drawn rook ending. Nihal started 8/8 an...
The State of Chess show returns on March 24, when Chief Chess Officer IM Danny Rensch will once again share updates on Chess.com and the broader chess world. The show is also where you can ask us questions directly and get answers live during the ...
Arsenal and England playmaker Eberechi Eze goes head-to-head against none other than GM Magnus Carlsen in a new ad for clothing brand New Balance. In a surprise twist, the world number-one gets checkmated! The campaign, promoting New Balance&rsq...
GMs Ian Nepomniachtchi and Nodirbek Abdusattorov qualified for the 2026 Chess.com Open Playoffs through Play-In 1 on Monday. Nepomniachtchi won the tournament outright, while Abdusattorov finished second and secured his spot by defeating third-pla...
GM Awonder Liang beat GM Hikaru Nakamura 6-4 in the Hikaru vs. Awonder Candidates Training Match held in the Saint Louis Chess Club on March 13-15, 2026. The players made two draws in classical chess, then Liang won 3-1 in rapid, before the final ...
GM Oleksandr Bortnyk entered the Bullet Brawl ring and emerged victorious for the second week in a row on Saturday after storming home and posting a score of 161 points, pocketing the $400 first prize for the 16th time. In second place was GM Ar...
GM Pranav Venkatesh won his first Freestyle Friday of the new Freestyle Friday Championship on March 13, taking it outright with 9.5/11, as four different players have now won the first four tournaments of the new stakes (qualification for the 202...
Netflix has released the teaser for its upcoming documentary, Untold: Chess Mates, sparking widespread reactions across the chess world less than a month before its full release. The 71-second clip, released on March 10, gives a first preview of...
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...
Chess.com returned to the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston last weekend and hosted a packed program that explored chess, AI, and the connection between mental and physical performance. The annual gathering of leading sports execut...
Sixteen-year-old IM Alice Lee is once again the champion of The Women's American Cup 2026 for the third year in a row. In the Grand Final Reset against IM Carissa Yip, Lee won the first rapid game and drew the second to secure the match. GM Wesl...
GM Wesley So won his maiden title in The American Cup 2026 on Wednesday. After winning the first game against GM Levon Aronian the previous day, he held the necessary draw in game two to secure the match. He makes $75,000 plus another $15,000 bonu...
GM Wesley So has taken the lead in his match against GM Levon Aronian in The American Cup 2026 Grand Final. It was an Italian Opening gone wrong for the Armenian-American, and So won a remarkably smooth game. Aronian must win the next game on...
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...
Eleven-year-old WIM Bodhana Sivanandan has added another milestone to her rapidly growing chess career, surpassing the 2300 rating barrier for the first time to secure the FM title. The British prodigy is now rated higher at the same age as GM Jud...
GM Sina Movahed, the 15-year-old Iranian grandmaster coming off of victory in the Under-16 ChessKid Youth Championship, became the first player to score 10.5 points in a Titled Tuesday in 2026 on March 10, going to wire-to-wire to win the tourname...
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...
GM Levon Aronian lost the first rapid game of The American Cup 2026 Elimination Final, but came back in the second game to even the score against GM Fabiano Caruana. He then won the match in blitz tiebreaks and will face GM Wesley So in the Grand ...
Andrey Volgin defeated Henry Michael through the Final Reset route to win the eight-player final of the Chess.com Atomic Chess Championship 2026. Michael defeated Volgin in a fight between the two untitled players in the Winners Final of the doubl...
