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...
I am very pleased to announce a new columnist for chess.com, Grandmaster Vinay Bhat. I have a very special personal relation to Vinay: he's one of the two individuals who are in the running for having beaten me the most times in USCF tournament ...
Julio Becerra is the #6 ranked active player in the U.S. and hungry to become #5.Julio grew up in Cuba, where he did not learn chess until the ripe age of 13. He fell in love with the game immediately and, playing constantly, made up for the lost ...
One of chess.com's big plans for the year 2009 is to bring top players into our community, to further improve the quality of our learning materials, and to provide inspiration to all of us pursuing excellence (within the royal game and without). T...
The FIDE Doping Hearing Panel has unanimously decided that Vassily Ivanchuk will not face a ban as a result of his failure to take a drugs test at the end of the Dresden Olympiad. The announcement in full: Decision of the FIDE Doping Panel Wijk...
Imagine yourself in this situation: You're playing in an big Open tournament and are paired against a GM rated nearly 600 Elo points higher than you. After 19 moves your illustrious opponent seems to hang a rook for no reason whatsoever. Would ...
Slovenian grandmaster Albin Planinc died 11.12.2008, forgoten. http://www.mladina.si/tednik/200901/v_pozabi_umrli_genij
The American Grandmaster Walter Browne is 60 years old today. Browne was born in Sydney to his Australian mother, but his father was American and the family settled in New York when Walter was just 3 years old. Browne represented both Australia ...
World Chess Champion, Vishy Anand is 39 years old today. Happy birthday Vishy! He won the title of International Master at 15, was World Junior Champion at 17 and became a Grandmaster in 1988 at the age of 18. After losing a World Championship ...
This is a translation of a one-hour radio feature about Mikhail Tal, aired on the radio "Echo Moskvy" on November 30th.Mikhail Tal, the great Soviet chess player, wasn't a "classical" chess prodigy like Jose Raul Capablanca, who, as the legend say...
Bob Wade (pictured) was far more than a chess player - he was also a chess writer, coach, director, arbiter and friend to many generations of chess players. Robert Graham Wade was born in New Zealand in 1921, but settled in England in 1950 where ...
Viswanathan Anand has moved to top place in the live world rankings. Fifth in the ranking published on October 1, Anand has so far collected 13.8 rating points from the six games in the world chess championship in Bonn and has taken his aggregate ...
Calling all chess fans in the Big Apple! On Friday September 26th at 5pm former World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov (pictured) will be signing copies of his book How Life Imitates Chess at the Penn Station Borders store in New York. If you ask ni...
Part one of this interview can be found here. Q. You are an experienced chess coach. Can you tell us what level of students you train and how you conduct lessons? Do you have a particular pedagogical approach that you think works best? &nb...
Judit Polgar is comfortably the strongest female chess player in the history of the game. Born on 23 July 1976, she has been successfully playing the top male chess players on equal terms for over a decade. She achieved the Grandmast...
Pal Benko (pictured) turned 80 years of age on 14th July 2008. He was raised amongst poverty in Hungary and emigrated to the US in 1958 by defecting when attending a chess tournament in Iceland. He went on to finish first, or shared first, i...
Wesley So (pictured) isn't a 'household' name in the chess world - yet, but this young Filipino player is making waves with his attacking play and strong results. In December 2007, he became the 7th youngest Grandmaster i...
Vishy Anand still number 1 FIDE have published the latest official rating list and despite some early misleading reports from FIDE, the Aerosvit tournament was deemed (correctly, according to the rules) to be too late for the results to be include...
