After twitter rumours led to much speculation and an apparent confirmation from FIDE President Kirsan Illyumzhinov, London has now been officially confirmed as the venue for the 2012 Candidates Tournament by an AGON press release which was re-publ...
In Woody Allen’s recent movie Midnight in Paris (2011), a young Hollywood writer named Gil Pender (played by Owen Wilson) is brought back to Paris of the 1920’s. There, to his delight, he meets his heroes Hemmingway and Fitzgerald as w...
Achim Illner surprised everyone by winning the 4th Batavia tournament with a round to spare. In the 8th round the German FM beat English grandmaster Mark Hebden to reach 6.5/8, one and a half points more than the rest of the field. This was also e...
The 28th edition of the traditional Capelle-la-Grande tournament is underway in France. This strong event runs from 3-10 March and features 14 players rated over 2600 Elo. The format is a nine round Swiss Open with a huge field of nearly 500 comp...
The European Women's Individual Chess Championships is underway in Gaziantep, Turkey. Over 100 women from 25 countries are taking part from 1-14 March. Immediately following the competition there will be a rapid championship (15-16 March) and ...
Despite growing protests in his country, tomorrow Vladimir Putin will most probably be re-elected as President of Russia. Garry Kasparov is still active in the opposition movement and was interviewed for CNBC. Don't worry, we won't turn th...
Yesterday the first round of the Europen Women's Championship was played in Gaziantep, Turkey. The first prize is impressive: € 20,500 - for the first time in history higher than the first prize at the European Individual Championship, wh...
The Arizona State Championships are starting this very evening at 5 pm pacific/ 8 pm eastern. The top seed in the round-robin competition is IM Mackenzie Molner (pictured). This is the first year that the event will be an invitational round-robin,...
The 20-year jubilee Sigeman Tournament will be bigger and stronger than in previous years. The tournament, an 8-player round robin, will take place May 9-16, 2012 in Malmö, Sweden. We just received a press release from the organizers of the a...
The Russian Federation has opened a poll to decide on the invitation of one player for this year's Tal Memorial. Visitors to the RCF website can cast their vote and pick one from thirteen pre-selected players. The player with the most votes wi...
The 2012 Tal Memorial will be held from 7-19 June in Moscow, and the six confirmed players so far are: Magnus Carlsen, Vladimir Kramnik, Lev Aronian, Teimour Radjabov, Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana. Another four places have to be filled, bu...
For the first time in his career, Fabiano Caruana (Italy) entered the world's top 10. On the March 1 FIDE rating list, the 19-year-old Italian grandmaster occupies the 7th spot with a 2767 rating. Hikaru Nakamura (USA) re-entered the top ...
The World Chess Hall of Fame in St. Louis, USA will open its doors on a new exhibit starting March 9, 2012: Bobby Fischer: Icon Among Icons, Photographs by Harry Benson CBE. Benson was the only person to have private access to Bobby Fischer d...
FIDE have published the official March 2012 rating list, confirming Magnus Carlsen as the world #1 with an unchanged rating of 2835 Elo. Levon Aronian improved his rating, but not his ranking. He consolidated his #2 spot, halving the gap to Carls...
Our weekly PDF & PGN magazines ChessVibes Openings and ChessVibes Training complement each other wonderfully. CVO helps your understanding of openings and keeps your repertoire up to date, while CVT provides instructive middlegame and endgame ...
They have survived a number of tricky positions, but GMs Sipke Ernst and Mark Hebden are sharing the lead after four rounds at the Batavia Tournament in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Both grandmasters have scored 3/4. In sole third place we find Dut...
International Master Greg Shahade won the second chess.com Death-Match in convincing fashion, acquitting himself well in all three time controls in the new format, 5 1, 3 1, and 1 1. The USCL commissioner faced off against USCL vice-commissioner F...
The organizers of the Grand Slam Masters Final have sent an official request to FIDE to reconsider the dates for the Candidates Tournament. The letter, which is addressed to FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, is backed by both Magnus Carlsen and V...
For the first time this season Anatoly Karpov played a game for his club SV Hockenheim, on Sunday in the Schachbundesliga. The former World Champion drew against IM Martin Krämer in 78 moves. OSC Baden Baden maintained the lead in the competi...
The 2012 Polish Chess Championships were held from 18-26 February in Warsaw. Grandmasters Mateusz Bartel and Bartlomiej Macieja both finished the 9-round Swiss event with a score of 7 points, but Bartel (pictured) won his third consecutive nation...
Silvio Danailov has reacted strongly to the recent developments around FIDE and the World Championship cycle. The President of the European Chess Union threatened to take FIDE to court for the way they treated the Bulgarian bid to host the 2012 Ca...
The German chess league - the Schachbundesliga - has been described as the best chess that almost no-one sees. It's the strongest chess league in the world, with top international grandmasters competing in a competition spread over many weekends ...
PRESS RELEASE: The Chess in Schools and Communities Campaign (CSC) is working with the Kasparov Chess Foundation Europe on a political campaign to garner support for chess to be introduced to schools Europe-wide. The focus of the campaign is a w...
Via Twitter our attention was brought to a chess poem, published on February 21st, 2012 at strange bOUnce. In their own words, this site "a 'strange’ brew of fiction, satire and verse, with a dash of sport, all coming from...
