After four rounds of play over five boards, the two teams at this year's Staunton Memorial are still equal to each other: England vs Holland 10-10. Both won a match twice with a 3-2 score and with very fightful chess, which unfortunately cannot be...
Besides the 5th FIDE Grand Prix, two more big events will start this upcoming weekend. Tomorrow already is the first round of the Staunton Memorial - this year a Scheveningen-style match between England and Holland and a second, category 9 all-pla...
At the moment he's playing a tough tournament in San Sebasti?°n but before that, former World Champion Anatoly Karpov played his role as ambassador for chess in Syria, where he was invited recently for some promotional activities. The Europe-Echec...
This year's Sparkassen Chess Meeting continues to disappoint the chess fans as two out of three games in round 6 (Kramnik-Leko and Bacrot-Naiditsch) were quick and uneventful draws. Jakovenko-Carlsen, also drawn, was quite an interesting fight, in...
U.S. President Barack Obama visited Moscow this week to meet with Russian leaders Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin, but also with the opposition, including Garry Kasparov. The former world champion is mainly active in politics these days, but in...
Big, exclusive interview with the winner of the 2009 M-Tel Masters Last Thursday night, Alexei Shirov was in Hamburg, Germany where he showed his games of the 2009 M-Tel Masters at the Hamburg Chess Club. ChessVibes was present, and we recorded a ...
A remarkable item appeared on eBay several times in the past few years: a collection of valuables and belongings of Bobby Fischer. It was always mysteriously removed again within a couple of days, but currently a very similar item can be found at ...
If you have kids, you've probably thought hard about how to name your child. Should you choose a 'special' kind of name, or rather a very trendy or well-known one? Popularity is an important aspect when it comes to choosing virtually anything. The...
This week ChessBase published translations of two interesting interviews, with FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov and with UEP President Joseph Resch, about the 2008 Anand-Kramnik match, the 2010-2011 World Championship cycle and the failed negotia...
GM Arun Prasad Subramanian has already introduced himself to chess.com readers through a dozen excellent opening articles along with friend and GM colleague Magesh; nevertheless I am belatedly providing some introduction to his chess life and game...
The hot debate around the K-factor that was going on last week attracted many interesting responses. Well-known rating experts such as Jeff Sonas, Ken Thompson and Hans Arild Runde all contributed with insightful points. The discussion ended with ...
Since FIDE announced her own concerns about the planned increase of the K-factor, there is suddenly a hot debate around the subject. It seems as if supporters like GM Bartlomiej Macieja and opponents like GM John Nunn both have strong arguments. T...
This week FIDE expressed her concerns about the effects of the new K-Factor which will be in order as from July 1st, and decided to publish two parallel rating lists for a year and then review the results of the different K-factors in effect. GM B...
Surprisingly, this has nothing to do with FIDE, for once.The 2nd Barcza Memorial Tournament in Budapest was scheduled to run from 6-17 April and had a pretty decent line-up of strong players, including Zoltan Almasi (Elo 2685) and Ivan Sokolov (pi...
This is not a review of an actual chess book that was recently published. However, the article was inspired by a book, and I really wish someone would write this book with a view to chess. I'm talking about The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas...
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...
A few days ago, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov sent us a new letter in which he strengthened his accusations to Russian GM Igor Kurnosov, who according to the Azerbaijani was cheating during the Aeroflot tournament in Moscow. We decided not to publish the ...
Last week, ChessBase was apparently 'forced to cease Internet broadcasting of the Topalov-Kamsky match'. As we noted in our report on the first match game, live broadcasting of the chess moves in this match without permission was prohibited by the...
After three rounds of the extremely strong Aeroflot Open tournament, the sole leader on 3/3 is the Russian, Igor Kurnosov (pictured) . The 22 year-old Kurnosov recently won the 2008/9 Hastings Masters, and is currently rated at 2602 Elo. It's st...
In a great fighting game, Veselin Topalov and Gata Kamsky have started their Challenger's Match with a draw. In a Grünfeld-Indian, Topalov sacrificed a pawn for some attacking chances but Kamsky comfortably held his own and even took over the init...
Kotronias Leads After Round Four After four rounds, we have a sole leader - 44-year-old Greek grandmaster Vassilios Kotronias, who has had the perfect start with four straight wins.Vassilios likes Gibraltar - he was joint winner of our ...
The Corus Chess Tournament awaits an exciting weekend with no less than four players sharing the lead after eleven rounds: Aronian, Dominguez, Movsesian and Radjabov. In the C Group, 14-year-old Anish Giri achieved his 3rd GM norm and with a ratin...
As far as can be judged from the comments, most of our readers agreed with my critical "review" of Chessbase's interview with Vladimir Kramnik. However, as Alexei Shirov yesterday pointed out in a comment, we've been missing a few details, which h...
In the first week of 2009, both Henrik Carlsen (representing his son Magnus) and Vladimir Kramnik (since December 28 the proud father of a baby girl) have expressed their thoughts on the current world championship cycle as well as their ideas for ...
