Does anyone want the 20 Grand Chess Tour points? The action has stagnated at the 2018 Sinquefield Cup. The only classical event on the Grand Chess Tour calendar has produced a few interesting moments over the last 48 hours, but no more wins. S...
The usually irrepressible Magnus Carlsen couldn't put away Fabiano Caruana today at the 2018 Sinquefield Cup. They drew, and the chess world will now wait 76 days until the two do it all over again, 12 more times in London. "Considering the posi...
There are about 1500 grandmasters in the world, yet Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana are separated by only one other person alphabetically. But in chess skill, they're nearly closer than ever. Today's win by Caruana at...
This year, we'll again see Garry Kasparov at the chessboard. The 13th world champion is among the players in the Champions Showdown in St. Louis next month, where the format will be matches of Chess960—which Kasparov never tried before. On...
The Russian GM Daniil Dubov won the 25th edition of the Abu Dhabi Masters Open held at the Dusit Thani Hotel in Abu Dhabi, UAE. This is the largest and strongest grandmaster open of Asia. The Abu Dhabi Masters Open was a part of the Abu Dhabi Ch...
Some of the previous rounds seemed to be going into the same direction, but now it really happened. All games in the 2018 Sinquefield Cup's fifth round ended in draws. The five-way tie is still there, going into the rest day. World championship ...
For the past two days at the 2018 Sinquefield Cup, four draws have preceded a lengthy decisive game that has gone into the dinner hour. In round four, that script seemed to be getting Xeroxed, but after a quartet of draws, Fabiano Caruana was ab...
For the second straight day at the 2018 Sinquefield Cup, the chance of an all-draws round loomed. But just like yesterday, a 6.5-hour game produced the day's only winner (yesterday, 88 moves; today, 89 moves). Alexander Grischuk used a heal...
Magnus Carlsen wanted to know what constituted a draw; he just didn't want one himself. After more than 6.5 hours of pressing, he finally edged Sergey Karjakin in the dwindling seconds of the game. Long before that, prior to the start of the sec...
Goodbye short films, hello "The Godfather." After today's transition to classical chess, the final game took 36 times as long as blitz thanks to some long, technical endings. Better get a bigger tub of popcorn. The opening round produced two ear...
Three Grand Chess Tour events are in the books, and one book just came out. A lot has happened in the last 48 hours in St. Louis since Hikaru Nakamura won his second leg of the GCT season to lead the tour standings. To wit: The Saint Louis C...
At the age of 14 years, one month, and one day, the Indian prodigy Nihal Sarin became the 12th-youngest grandmaster in chess history. He scored his third grandmaster norm at the 25th Abu Dhabi Masters held at Abu Dhabi, UAE. Nihal...
Hikaru Nakamura thought he needed 5.5/9 in today's second blitz session to clinch his first Grand Chess Tour win on home soil. He scored exactly that, winning the 2018 Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz over a still-surging Maxime Vachier-Lagrave ...
It's considered bad luck in many parts of the world to break a mirror, but for Ding Liren, even breaking his hip only barely slowed him down. Just 2.5 months after falling off a bicycle in Norway and being forced to withdraw from the tourna...
To begin day one of the St. Louis blitz, Hikaru Nakamura and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov led the field. To end day one, they were still tied for the lead. However, the day could not have been more dramatic as the lead changed hands in eight of the day's...
There's a good chance you can name a world elite sprinter, and there's some chance you can even name a marathoner. But when it comes to middle-distance runners, not many are illustrious. Ditto for chess. Classical chess ratings are scrutinized...
If chess had off-board-betting facilities, today would have ended with tickets strewn over the floor. It was that unpredictable in day two of America's chess capital. GM Fabiano Caruana still leads the 2018 Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz by two p...
It's a bit of a writers' crutch to take any winning streak by GM Fabiano Caruana and allude to his seven straight wins at the 2014 Sinquefield Cup, but sometimes the man gives us no choice. Caruana made history again today, this time at the 2018...
Get ready for another football match and penalty shootout, although unlike normal, the shootout will come first. The 2018 Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz and 2018 Sinquefield Cup opened today with a brief ceremony, and the first moves wi...
The buildup has officially begun for the 43rd Chess Olympiad in Batumi, Georgia. The lineups are posted, so the pre-event punditry can begin. For the first time since its inception, Russia is not head of the open section. From September 23 to Oc...
Over the last three weeks, the teams of FIDE presidential candidates Georgios Makropoulos and Arkady Dvorkovich have been involved in a sharp, verbal battle about transparency and federations in arrears, where even the term "fake news" made s...
The popular Chess.com blitz and bullet player IM Minh Le (@wonderfultime) achieved a convincing victory in the August Titled Tuesday, scoring 9/10 and besting many excellent speed chess players. Minh Le started off hot with a beautiful fini...
GM Alexander Grischuk showed his formidable blitz skill by defeating his compatriot GM Ian Nepomniachtchi in the most brilliant and complicated Speed Chess Championship match of the season. The match outcome was a triumph of statistics: 65 perce...
The chess news is most certainly not taking the summer off. This next edition of "In Other News" didn't take long to fill. Today there are seven more news stories about our royal game that you may have missed, from a chessic tribute to a fallen so...
