The 11th Aeroflot Open will take place from 6-17 February 2012 in the Hotel Cosmos, Moscow. The Aeroflot Open has grown into one of the biggest and strongest Open tournaments in the world, and once again in 2012 the winner will earn an invitati...
Today is the 75th birthday of 10th World Champion Boris Vasilievich Spassky. Taking over the title from Tigran Petrosian in 1969, Spassky lost his title in the famous "Match of the Century" against Bobby Fischer in 1972. Spassky is the o...
In all modesty, we're actually pretty proud of today's issue of ChessVibes Training! After sending #39 to our subscribers this morning, the editorial team agreed that it actually contains a number of classics: In Giri's Grab Bag t...
The recent 4-part defence (part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4) of the banned Rybka program, published by Chessbase and authored by Dr. Søren Riis, a computer scientist at Queen Mary University, has received a swift response from the International...
Rybka's disqualification and ban from computer chess last summer by the International Computer Games Association (ICGA) is being disputed. In a 31-page article, a computer scientist working at London's Queen Mary University,...
In June 2010 Vasik Rajlich, the author of the strongest commercial chess software program - Rybka, was sensationally accused of plagiarizing code from other programs, especially Fruit. The International Computer Games Association (ICGA) stripped ...
In two recent top level games (Kramnik-Nepomniachtchi and Nakamura-Carlsen) an opposite-coloured bishop ending appeared. Such endings are infamous, not only for their drawing tendency, but also for their hidden complexity. In ChessVibes Training i...
Luke McShane and Magnus Carlsen are sharing the lead after four rounds at the London Chess Classic. McShane, who beat his compatriot David Howell with Black on Tuesday, even has the tiebreak advantage. Carlsen drew with Vladimir Kramnik. Vishy Ana...
On Saturday all games in the 4th round of the Tal Memorial in Moscow ended in draws. However, on many boards the result could have been different. Levon Aronian, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Magnus Carlsen and Sergey Karjakin are still sharing the lead, wi...
Our most faithful readers know that (very) occasionally we pay attention to a chess publication in the Dutch (our native) language, when we feel we cannot leave it unmentioned. This is one of those moments: the publication of Dutch GM Paul van der...
From January 1st, 2012 a draw offer before move 40 will be forbidden during official ECU events, and there will be a dress code. This was the main result of the ECU General Assembly, held in Porto Carras, Greece on November 5th, 2011 on the occasi...
The Panama Chess Open took place 3-7 November, 2011 (double rounds on 4-6 November). It was the first international chess event in this Central American country since the 1970s. Top seed Sergei Tiviakov from The Netherlands joined a field of 132 p...
America's number one grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura is working with 13th World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov. Their collaboration started before the Tata Steel Tournament in Wijk aan Zee last January. This was reported in the latest issue of New ...
From the start of this website back in 2006 there has been no clear rule about which content would (should?) be published, except for: what kind of chess article would I, the editor-in-chief, find interesting to read? Five and a half years later I...
Vassily Ivanchuk is currently leading the standings at the half-way point of the Grand Slam Masters tournament in São Paulo, but as he left the hotel with his wife Oksana to take a taxi to the airport, they were robbed at gunpoint. This shocking ...
After becoming a bit depressed this week by reading such chess headlines as Billboard hero Magnus Carlsen blundering and former Soviet hero Mikhail Gorbachev having a friendly meeting with Gadaffi supporter Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, I decided to turn my...
In this year's FIDE World Cup, which concluded last Monday, the first three players qualified for the next Candidates event. But what will this event look like? What we know is that, like in Kazan in May this year, there will be eight players....
The FIDE World Cup has reached its fourth round, and six out of the eight games ended decisively: Polgar-Dominguez 0-1, Svidler-Kamsky 1-0, Gashimov-Nielsen 1-0, Radjabov-Jakovenko 1-0, Zherebukh-Navara 0-1 and Potkin-Grischuk 1-0. The games Bruzo...
According to Jeff Sonas the rate of short draws gradually climbed during the 1990's and early years of this century but they took a steep dive starting in 2006, and the rate of short draws is now at an all-time low.
The celebrations to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mikhail Botvinnik continue in Russia. A chess festival in St. Petersburg entitled "100 Years of Mikhail Botvinnik" featured a 9 round Swiss open competition which was won by Denis Kri...
One feature of our PDF & PGN magazine ChessVibes Training is that you can send in your games, and IM Thomas Willemze, talent coach for the Dutch Chess Federation, will have a look at it. Who wouldn't want that? Want to improve your chess? See ...
Several chess media published a FIDE press release earlier today with the news that the 2012 World Championship Match between Vishy Anand and Boris Gelfand has been awarded to Moscow. We were about to go live as well, when we received an intriguin...
In the last round of the Accentus GM tournament in Biel Alexander Morozevich defeated Yannick Pelletier. The Russian finished second behind Magnus Carlsen, who drew with Fabiano Caruana. The other game, between Alexei Shirov and Maxime Vachier-Lag...
With one round to go Magnus Carlsen on Thursday already secured victory at the Accentus GM tournament in Biel. The Norwegian drew with Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and saw his closest rival Alexander Morozevich losing to Fabiano Caruana. The game betwee...
