Chess Grandmaster, 5-time US Champion, journalist and popular chess columnist Larry Evans has died of post-operative complications following gall-bladder surgery in Reno, Nevada. He was 78 years old. Evans was born in New York in 1932 and develo...
When FIDE recently moved from quarterly rating lists to an increased frequency of every two months it presumably hoped that this would help the ratings stay more current. Unfortunately for them, the calendar of elite chess events, such as it exis...
Russian news sources are reporting that the former world champion, Boris Vasilievich Spassky is seriously ill, having been hospitalized after suffering a stroke. Spassky, now 73 years old, fully recovered from a previous stroke in 2006, but the t...
Danish Chess legend Bent Larsen has passed away aged 75 after a short illness. Larsen was a hugely successful tournament player with a uniquely creative and combative style. He championed unfashionable opening variations such as 1.f4 (Bird's Ope...
Magnus Carlsen still stands comfortably above his rivals on the latest official FIDE rating list. In fact, due to inactivity during the last two months, the ratings of the top three are unchanged. World #1, and part time fashion model (!) Carlse...
It's a distasteful story, but too significant to ignore. Controversial former world chess champion Bobby Fischer died on 17 January 2008, and was buried in Iceland. Now, competing claims to his estate have led the Icelandic authorities to author...
The world's oldest grandmaster, the legendary Hungarian GM Andor Lilienthal has died aged 99. Lilienthal had a long and illustrious career, beating many world champions. Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Euwe, Botvinnik and Smyslov all fell victim to...
PRESS RELEASE: SAINT LOUIS, April 27, 2010--Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura, the reigning U.S. Champion and the highest-rated American player, announced today he will be moving to Saint Louis following the U.S. Championship, which is scheduled f...
Very sad news from Moscow, where the seventh world chess champion, Vasily Vasilievich Smyslov has died. He had celebrated his 89th birthday just a few days ago. Vasily Smyslov was born in Moscow on March 24, 1921 and learned to play chess at the...
The young American chess player, Ray Robson (pictured), has just achieved his third and final GM-norm result, and therefore qualifies as a Grandmaster at just 14 years, 11 months and 16 days! It's a close run thing, but it looks like Robson might...
Do not adjust your set...it's not three months since the last list was published, but today marks the start of FIDE's new bi-monthly rating lists. Since the advent of the unofficial live rating list for players over 2700 Elo, there has been pres...
US Chess prodigy IM Ray Robson earned his second GM norm at the recent 23rd North American FIDE Invitational. The 14 year-old Robson from Florida won the event with a score of 7/9. His exciting round 7 game against Benjamin Finegold is shown be...
Shocking and sad news from a recent tournament in Greece, where local amateur player Nikolaos Karapanos played a brilliant game against Israeli IM Dan Zoler in the first round, but collapsed and died following a time scramble at the end. By remar...
Ukrainian chess has great strength in depth at the top levels of chess, with four players rated over 2700 Elo (Ponomariov, Karjakin, Eljanov and Ivanchuk), and another 12 over 2600 Elo. However, 19 year-old Sergey Karjakin will henceforth be play...
No, it's not a badly timed April fool's joke. Reliable reports state that retired former World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov (pictured) is to play a 12-game match against his great rival Anatoly Karpov. Before we get over-excited, it should be n...
No, this has nothing to do with the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences. Anand's acting skills are not going to make Tom Hanks worry (see advert below), but his chess skill is worthy of recognition. The Chess Oscar is an award given by Ru...
An interesting interview with Vishy Anand is available at the Chess Classic Mainz website. In August, Anand wil be defending his 'Rapid World Championship' title that he won in the German city last year. A snippet: Q. Next year, 2010, you will...
Alexandra Kosteniuk is the current Women's World Chess Champion - a title she won in September 2008, beating Hou Yifan in the final match. Kosteniuk was born in Perm, Russia on 23 April 1984 and was taught to play chess by her father when she was...
In this interview with Alisa Maric, she talks about managing sports as well as academics career, chess in schools, Judith Polgar, role of glamour in chess etc. In the end she has a special message for Indians! Alisa Maric was introduced to chess...
Today (March 18th) is Vassily Ivanchuk's 40th birthday. Ivanchuk has been one of the best chess players in the world since the late 1980's. 'Chucky' as he is affectionately known, was born in Ukraine and earned the title of Grandmaster in 1988. ...
Azeri Grandmaster Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (pictured) has repeated his serious accusations of cheating against GM Igor Kurnosov, relating to the recent Aeroflot tournament. Previous news items are here and here. A translation of his letter to an Az...
At the recent FIDE Presidential Board meeting held in Istanbul, new chess titles were awarded to the players achieving the necessary results. The new Grandmasters included Scotland's top female player, Ketevan Arakhamia-Grant (originally from Geo...
Japan Shogi Association unveiled the list of top 20 shogi professional player list regarding their annual earnings from professional shogi tournaments for 2008(in Japanese). I'm picking up the top 10 from that here. The amount of each player is ob...
It is a great pleasure to welcome Grandmaster Gregory Serper as chess.com's Sunday columnist.Gregory is a strong Grandmaster, and the most experienced among our current staff of columnists. His experience extends not only to tournament play, but a...
