The Hungarian-American grandmaster Pal Benko has died at the age of 91. A two-time candidate for the world title, he was also an author and composer of endgame studies and chess problems. The Benko Gambit is named after him. The news of Ben...
GM Igors Rausis is under investigation for cheating after he was caught with his phone during a game at the Strasbourg Open. The 58-year-old Latvian-Czech grandmaster had raised suspicions after he increased his rating in recent years to...
Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke of his passion for chess at the opening of the Arnold Chess Classic games in Johannesburg, South Africa. “I started when I was eight with my father, I had to play with him every day. When I went to America, I star...
IM Eva Moser, Austria's first women's grandmaster, died unexpectedly at the age of 36 last weekend in Graz. The news was confirmed by the Austrian Chess Federation. Further details about the death of the player from the city of Spital ...
Top grandmasters Magnus Carlsen of Norway and Anish Giri of the Netherlands today joined forces in a video posted on Carlsen's Twitter account as part of a United Nations campaign against racism. For once, they broke the rule in chess th...
After a life in chess, the former US Chess Federation president WIM Ruth Inez Haring died Thursday, November 29. She was 63. Haring was also the current FIDE zonal president for the United States. Haring lived in Chico, California an...
Today, Ding Liren of China bested Mikhail Tal's legendary streak of 95 games played without a defeat. Ding Liren's unbeaten streak now stands at 96 and counting. Tal's mark was set between October of 1973 and October of 1974. Ding Liren'...
Now that FIDE has published its November rating list, it's official: the 2018 world championship match will be played between the world's top two players. That hasn't happened since 1990. On the new ratings list, reigning world champion Magnus C...
Several chess players have already turned to careers on the political chess board (Nigel Short and Julio Granda only last week!), and at least two more are running for higher office this fall in an attempt to join them. As has been reported prev...
Fabiano Caruana languished. Then he led. Then he was chased. Then he was caught. Then he was tied. Then he was tied, again. Then he negotiated. Then he won. And that was just August. He still has an Olympiad title defense next month, then a worl...
The South African chess talents Vusimuzi Mlahleki (17) and CM Khanya Mazibuko (17) embarked on a chess tour of Europe. The two players were chosen by GM Hikaru Nakamura, who visited South Africa last year, for some specific training in preparation...
GM Evgeni Vasiukov, a strong Russian grandmaster and a blitz specialist, died at the age of 85 Thursday morning in a Moscow hospital, the Russian Chess Federation confirmed to Chess.com. In 1958, a 15-year-old Bobby Fischer visited Moscow for th...
The world of chess is in grief as IM Nino Khurtsidze, one of the most talented players of her generation, succumbed to illness. She died yesterday at the age of 42. « Remembering Nino Khurtsidze » Phot...
If you win a game in a simul, sometimes your prize is an autograph. Or a book. Maybe even a picture with the master. One lucky South African won a summer chess tour of Europe. Although not officially a prize, CM Khanya Mazibuko's victo...
Garry Kasparov had a busy spring and summer of 2017 in which he recorded his MasterClass and then participated, after a 12-year absence from competitive chess, in the Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz tournament. While he's been on television much rec...
Many years ago I was lucky to work at the press room of the Super Tournament of Linares, helping my good friend IM Bjarke Sahl make the bulletin of that fantastic event of the 64 squares that many people ended up calling "the Wimbledon of chess". ...
[Note: Updated with extensive thoughts from Lombardy's only son Raymond and a personal reflection from Bruce Pandolfini.] GM William Lombardy, an American former world junior champion also made famous for being GM Bobby Fischer's second, died Fr...
The 2018 Candidates' Tournament, scheduled for 9-28 March 2018, will be held at the Kühlhaus Berlin in the German capital. This was announced by Agon/World Chess, the organizer of events in the FIDE World Championship cycle. Like in re...
FIDE has confirmed Awonder Liang's grandmaster title by written resolution. This makes the 14-year-old American the 10th youngest grandmaster of all time and the youngest in the world today. Headline photo from the Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Fest...
Garry Kasparov, the 13th world chess champion and one of the game's all-time greats, will give online chess lessons to students on the MasterClass platform, the company announced today. The course will be Kasparov's first-ever chess lesson onlin...
Garry Kasparov is currently touring to promote his latest book, "Deep Thinking," in which he not only looks back at the famous match(es) with Deep Blue in the 1990s, but also discusses at length the role of artificial intelligence in the modern er...
Last week the Iranian Chess Federation removed two players from being able to represent their national team, or playing future events inside Iran. IM Dorsa Derakhshani, the number-two female in Iran, and her younger brother FM Borna Dera...
World Champion GM Magnus Carlsen is an avid connoisseur of pop culture. Now, he's part of it. Yesterday his long-awaited cameo on the American animated program "The Simpsons" finally aired on the FOX Network. Hard to believe, but the series prem...
In January 2017, Magnus Carlsen tops the FIDE rating list, like he has done since July 2011. His lead over #2, Fabiano Caruana, however is only 13 points. A new year is here, and so is a new FIDE rating list. Carlsen's lead ...
Magnus Carlsen was "calm and confident" going into the tiebreak session on Wednesday, in which he retained his world title. The day after his victory in New York, Carlsen sat down with a small number of media to answer some question...