Today is the 75th birthday of the legendary Bent Larsen, the strongest Danish grandmaster in history and together with Bobby Fischer the "Best of the West", before this title went to Jan Timman. We're congratulating with unique photos from the pas...
The 2010 Reykjavik Open ended in a four-way tie between Abhijeet Gupta, Yuriy Kuzubov, Ivan Sokolov and Hannes Stefansson. The four grandmasters all ended on 7/9; Dutchman Sokolov had the best tiebreak.The Reykjavik Open took place February 24 - M...
The women's world chess champion Alexandra Kosteniuk (pictured) has become a 'Champion For Peace', joining many other high-profile sportsmen and women to promote peace through sporting initiatives all around the world. 'Champions For Peace' is an...
New: Wojo's Weapons, Winning with White - Vol.1. The late Aleksander Wojtkiewicz was one of the most feared players in the U.S. tournament circuit. Wojo's Weapons is the definitive "how-to" manual for learning Wojo's repertoire with White after ...
The 11th European Individual Chess Championships start soon in Rijeka, Croatia. This annual event was established in the year 2000 under the auspices of the European Chess Union. The format of the event is an 11-round Swiss, with the first round...
He watched Max Euwe become World Champion. He chatted with Emanuel Lasker, and saved dozens of Jewish babies during the Second World War. Last night I had the privilege to play a club game against 99-year-old Professor Dr Johan van Hulst. I couldn...
My first reaction when I learned about the book Improve Your Chess at any Age was one of sheer jealousy: some club player writing a book about chess improvement?! How unfair! There must be thousands of club players around the world who'd want the ...
Anatoly Karpov will put forward his candidacy to become FIDE President, according to reporters of Russian news agency SarInform. "It is necessary to restore order," the 12th World Champion reportedly said yesterday.Sunday night Anatoli Karpov land...
Just a few days ago Veselin Topalov won the Linares tournament and narrowed the gap with Magnus Carlsen on the live rating list to just one point. On the March 1st FIDE rating list the Norwegian leads with a personal record of 2813 and is still 8 ...
Results from the recent Linares tournament were apparently too late for inclusion in the latest edition of the official bi-monthly FIDE rating list. While it's perhaps understandable that FIDE needs to have a cut off point for the inclusion of th...
In what was probably the strongest Bundesliga match ever, OSC Baden-Baden Saturday lost for the first time in more than three years, against their biggest rival Werder Bremen. The two teams are leading the standings, together with SG Solingen, wit...
To the uninitiated, watching a chess match must seem only marginally preferable to watching paint dry. Unlike casual spectators at a tennis match or football game who can understand and enjoy the action at least at a basic level, following a ches...
This weekend the 10th and 11th round of the Schachbundesliga are being played. On board one of the top match between Baden-Baden and Werder Bremen, Vugar Gashimov (Werder Bremen), who travelled from Linares to Heidelberg, plays the World Champ, Vi...
Just in from our printers: Chess Opening Essentials 4.The final volume of the Chess Opening Essentials series focuses on 1.c4 / 1.Nf3 / Other First Moves. It gives a flavour of how every opening works and explains the similarities with other openi...
National chess leagues can easily be overlooked among the high profile supertournaments and other GM matches that grace our computer screens. However, the German chess league, the Schachbundesliga, is among the most powerful in the world, featuri...
In our last video from Linares we speak with Veselin Topalov, just after he won his first Linares. He talks about the game against Gelfand and several other topics, and it includes a brief comment by Grischuk as well as footage from the closing ce...
Well I guess you know the outcome of the fourth and final regulation game. GM Judit Polgar won to even the score between the players at 2 as well as skunking Black for the match. Kaidanov was playing the Scheveningen Sicilian and as in the previou...
Spiderman star Tobey Maguire (pictured) could be set to take on the role of Bobby Fischer in a planned biopic of the controversial American chess genius. Firstshowing.net reports that the project, called Pawn Sacrifice, is written by Steven Knigh...
Complicated tiebreak rules made all kinds of scenarios possible, but in the end it couldn't be more clear. By beating Boris Gelfand in a tense game, Veselin Topalov won the 2010 Linares tournament outright as Alexander Grischuk drew with Francisco...
     Round three of this Sicilian themed chess match and the score is White 3, Black 0. Will we see a break for the second player in tomorrows fourth and final game? Only the chess gods can tell.      Today's game found GM Judit Polgar with bl...
In our second video from Linares we give the mic to Alexander Grischuk, who gave his view on his victory over Topalov. "I didn't understand why people thought I had no chance against him."
Now available: Boris Avrukh's long-awaited Grandmaster Repertoire 2 -1.d4 volume 2.On the 616 pages of this latest volume of the outstanding Grandmaster Repertoire series, Boris Avrukh covers the King's Indian, Dutch, Grunfeld, various Benonis, Be...
An enthralling last round at Linares 2010 saw Veselin Topalov (pictured) take the title with a last round victory against Boris Gelfand. Topalov tried hard to create chances against Gelfand's Petroff defence, but the Israeli seemed to have good c...
This year the Linares tournament has seen a lot of draws, despite the newly introduced rule that draws are in principle not allowed under move 40. Yesterday we spoke with Gashimov, Vallejo, Gelfand and Aronian about their draws and this rule. Vide...
