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...
This may be old news by now, but I'll post it anyway for those pawn jockeys that missed it. http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1815747_1815707_1815674,00.html
Ha, nice video with Anand! http://www.chess.com/video/view/anand-closes-deal-with-amd I suppose it is a good deal for him since AMD is the second-largest global supplier of microprocessors. WaldemarChessedelic.com, mind boggling chess blogging...
Vladimir Kramnik (pictured) was born on 25 June 1975 in Tuapse, on the shores of the Black Sea in Russia. His father was Boris, a renowned sculptor and his mother was Irina, a music teacher. He learnt to play chess at the age of 5 and ...
Hi all, Magnus Carlsen has just finished another fantastic tournament in Foros, Ukraine. He managed to remain undefeated and chalked up five wins. In this field that means a 2877 performance rating. Now, virtually he is the number 2 in the world w...
There was very sad news today as the young Armenian GM Karen Asrian (pictured) died suddenly and unexpectedly. Early reports say that Asrian, who was just 28 years old, felt ill whilst driving in Verevan, the Armenian capital, and pulled ove...
Gentleman Spassky charms Hay-on-Wye Individuals who achieve greatness and fame in sports are normally remembered for their sublime skills and dramatic triumphs. It is Boris Spassky's tragedy to be forever remembered as the man who lost the Worl...
Chess fans in the UK will have the chance to see two giants of the game at the Hay Festival in Wales later this month. Boris Spassky (pictured) is giving a simultaneous exhibition (fully booked - I tried! ) and is also being interviewed by Ronan B...
