The 78th edition of the Tata Steel Chess Tournament was officially opened today in the Dudok Huis, a building part of the Tata Steel headquarters in Velsen-Noord, The Netherlands. The tournament was opened by Theo Henrar, Chairman of the Bo...
Once again the chess year starts off with one of the most interesting events year-round: the 78th Tata Steel Chess Tournament, held January 15-31 in Wijk aan Zee, Utrecht and Amsterdam. This historical event offers great excitement as it pair...
GM Ivan Bukavshin has died at the very young age of 20 years old. The cause of death was a stroke, according to the Russian Chess Federation. Two-and-a-half years after the death of Igor Kurnosov and two years after the death of Vugar ...
The 2016 Reykjavik Open (March 8-16) will again be held in Harpa and has secured itself of creative chess. The European Team Championship was just two months ago, but chess-minded Iceland is already preparing its next event: the 2016 R...
Not Peter Svidler, Boris Gelfand, nor Pavel Eljanov. The winner of the Keres Memorial rapid tournament, held last weekend in Tallinn, was won by Igor Kovalenko. The Keres Memorial was held 8-10 January in the Park Inn by Radisson ...
For the last Chess.com Death Match, the two competitors, Hikaru Nakamura and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, combined for more than 5500 Elo points. You might think that's about as high as things can go, but you'd be wrong. How does 10,000 poi...
It was the battles of the Alamo, Thermopylae, and Hoth all rolled into one, and the result was the same — valiant resistance but ultimate and seemingly inescapable defeat. Chess.com's Man vs. Machine contest pitted U.S. number-on...
Lots of chess events always take place during the Christmas and New Year holidays. This report sums up the major ones. Naiditsch Repeats Swiss Double In December 2014 he did it with a German flag at his board, and last month he repeated his su...
Both Titled Tuesday tournaments on January 5 saw two clear winners: Dmitry Andreikin and Nijat Abasov. Andreikin only just missed out on the $500 "Fischer Prize" bonus. The year has now also started for our Titled Tuesday events, with anoth...
Norway Chess has decided to step out of the Grand Chess Tour. For 2016, the tournament couldn't reach an agreement with the other two events in the tour: the Sinquefield Cup and the London Chess Classic. Shortly after its inaugural yea...
Chess engines may not really need warmups, but the strongest chess engine of all time, Komodo (currently rated 3368) found time in its busy schedule for just that. Komodo successfully defeated GM Victor Mikhalevski 5-1 in an odds ma...
Less than four years after losing its top 10 players to transfers, Texas Tech's top chess team has won the 2015 Pan-Am Intercollegiate Championship, the most prestigious university event in the Western Hemisphere. The tournament took pla...
With a score of 8.0/9 Wang Hao became the convincing winner of the Al Ain Chess Classic in the United Arab Emirates. The Chinese player finished 1.5 points ahead of the pack. Wang Hao victorious in Al Ain. | Photo WGM Emkhtuul Altan Ul...
The FIDE Ethics Commission has banned Gaioz Nigalidze from playing chess for a period of three years. The Georgian player, who was caught cheating at the 2015 Dubai Open, also lost his grandmaster title. This was reported by FIDE. Nigalidze...
Magnus Carlsen starts the new year with a 43-point rating lead over Vladimir Kramnik. For the first time in his career Anish Giri reached third place in the January FIDE ratings. With the London Chess Classic and the Qatar Masters just behind us...
For those looking for 24/7 live chess action this week, on the opposite side of the Qatar Masters was the 25th North American Open, held at Bally's Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada from December 26-30. This yearly event, organized b...
The "Kings" — led by GM Boris Gelfand —emerged victorious over the "Princes" in the inter-generational match festively titled The Nutcracker. The match, held December 19-26 in Moscow, Russia, was organized by the Russian Chess Federati...
Yesterday, spectators logging in to watch the games from the Qatar Masters were shocked to find World Champion Magnus Carlsen already in possession of a full point — today belated spectators were surprised by how quickly Carlsen achieve...
It's about to get Rial in Qatar. How real? Tomorrow's top two boards will decide who goes home with 100,000 Qatari Rial -- $27,000 USD. Magnus said he wanted to play Vladimir. Vladimir said he wanted to play Magnus. Tomorrow, they both get their...
You can throw out the old book on GM Anish Giri. He's writing a new one here at the 2015 Qatar Masters Open. "So far here with Black I'm playing like I like as White," Giri said after the game between the top two players in the world. (Photo r...
Some parts of Qatar received up to 25mm of rainfall on Friday's rest day, but that didn't lead to many storms on the top boards when action resumed at the 2015 Qatar Masters Open. After a draw between GM Wesley So and tournament leader GM M...
We're often told chess is a war game, so it was only a matter of time before a seminal book on warfare became intertwined with chess. In addition to the discussion of this new text, part two of this month's "In Other News" also discusses Indian ...
If the opening rounds of the 2015 Qatar Masters Open resembled cat-and-mouse with lower-rated opposition, so too did the beginning of World Champion GM Magnus Carlsen's fifth-round game. He waited and waited for ...Be6, then pounced with Nf4 ...
Soft desert sand has a way of preventing runaway trains, and chess players are not immune to the laws of physics. In round four of the 2015 Qatar Masters, GM Li Chao drew GM Anish Giri, ending the Dutchman's 12-game drawless streak in his t...
