The Acropolis Open 2009 was won by Borki Predojevic on tiebreak after a 4-way tie with Hristos, Banikas, Ioannis Papaioannou and Atanas Kolev, who all finished on 6.5/9. However, the tournament will mostly be remembered for a tragedy in the first ...
In the last three weeks our IMs Merijn van Delft and Robert Ris noted that many top GM games starting with 1.e4 e5 are played quite dynamically: Aronian's 3...Nge7 in the Ruy Lopez, Nepomniachtchi's 2.d4 or Short's Two Knights are only three examp...
The 2009 NH 'Rising Stars v Experience' Tournament in the Netherlands runs from 21-30 August. This event will pit a team of young talents against a team of more experienced players. It's an interesting idea for a team tournament, but last year t...
Shocking and sad news from a recent tournament in Greece, where local amateur player Nikolaos Karapanos played a brilliant game against Israeli IM Dan Zoler in the first round, but collapsed and died following a time scramble at the end. By remar...
Again, only one game was decided in the 9th round in Jermuk, Armenia: Kasimdzhanov beat Cheparinov. With 6/9 the Uzbek grandmaster joined Ivanchuk and Leko at the top of the standings. Wednesday is a rest day.The 5th tournament in the FIDE Grand P...
Next Thursday the new edition of the NH Chess Tournament starts in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Last year the Experience Team led by Viktor Kortchnoi got beaten terribly by the Rising Stars, with especially Wang Yue performing strongly. The organiz...
The British Team have defeated the Netherlands at the Howard Staunton Memorial tournament in London. Or perhaps one could say that Nigel "Nosher" Short (pictured) defeated the Dutch team since he scored a remarkable 8/10, achieving a performance ...
After 8 rounds the score was still even, but eventually England beat Holland 26.5-23.5 yesterday at the Staunton Memorial in London. Nigel Short scored an amazing 8 out of 10 (a 2862 performance), virtually overtaking Michael Adams on the rating l...
He needed all his endgame experience, creativity and 98 moves, but Ivanchuk defeated Gelfand in the only decisive game of round 8 in Jermuk. He joined Leko in the lead; the Hungarian successfully defended a difficult ending against Jakovenko.The 5...
GM Morteza Mahjoob broke the Guinness Simultaneous Chess World Record. He played against 500 chess players in the biggest simul ever, held in Tehran, which started at 10.00 AM on Thursday, August 13 and finished at 04.00 AM of the next day. Mahjoo...
In another exciting round with six decisive games, Peter Leko grabbed sole lead at the Grand Prix in Jermuk. The Hungarian beat Cheparinov with the black pieces while Aronian suffered his second loss, with Black against Eljanov. The other leaders,...
GMs Alexander Areshchenko and Boris Avrukh were leading after 8 rounds and both won their last-round game on Saturday to share first prize at the Zurich Jubilee Open. Next weekend will be very exciting, with Anand, Karpov, Kasparov, Khalifman, Kor...
Peter Leko (pictured) leads the Jermuk Grand Prix after seven rounds with a score of 5/7. This powerful event has been enormously entertaining with lots of great games and decisive results. A selection of some of the most entertaining games is b...
After the rest day the Jermuk Grand Prix resumed Saturday with the sixth round, in which Aronian struck back with a win against Gelfand. He joined Leko and Ivanchuk (who was about to lose against Kamsky when he claimed the draw due to the 50-move ...
For over a decade, I have been ridiculed by chess friends for playing the Centre Game, an opening with a respectable history which nevertheless has a very bad image in modern opening theory. In Mainz, I witnessed Ian Nepomniachtchi and Levon Aroni...
At the Jubilee Open in Zurich the situation at the top of the standings is getting very tense, with two more rounds to go. Only Boris Avrukh from Israel managed to collect 6 points out of 7 rounds, and he's chased by 11 GMs with half a point less,...
With five decisive games, today's round of the Grand Prix tournament in Jermuk was even more spectacular than yesterday's, but a bad one for the local fans. Both Aronian and Akopian lost, while Ivanchuk won his second game in a row, against Chepar...
After a 10-day break from competitive chess, I rejoined the group of chess lovers who are playing as many as possible Greek Opens. The real addicts continued their tour in Paleohora (ultimate south of Crete) before travelling to far in the north l...
Aronian and Leko are leading the Jermuk Grand Prix with 3/4 after a great fourth round, in which they both won their White games, against Kamsky and Karjakin respectively. Ivanchuk moved to shared third place thanks to a wonderful attacking game a...
Play Chess on Your Google Homepage!Launch of Chess.com gadget on iGoogle Leveraging OpenSocial As of August 12th, users of the iGoogle homepage can now play chess with their friends with a new chess gadget. Chess.com is one of the first companie...
After four rounds of play over five boards, the two teams at this year's Staunton Memorial are still equal to each other: England vs Holland 10-10. Both won a match twice with a 3-2 score and with very fightful chess, which unfortunately cannot be...
Evgeny Alekseev was the only winner in the 3rd round in Jermuk - the Russian GM beat his compatriot Ernesto Inarkiev. The standings of the 5th Grand Prix tournament didn't change much: Aronian, Cheparinov and Leko lead with 2/3. Full, pictorial re...
The Portuguese team championships ended on Sunday in a clear and convincing victory for the defending champions and the hosting team from Gaia - with grandmasters Tivakov, Korneev, Hoffman, Ftacnik, rising Spanish star Ivan Lopez Salgado and the P...
We have received a brand new DVD from Hamburg: The f4 Sicilian.The Grand Prix Attack was popularized by Bent Larsen back in the sixties and today it is still the favourite Sicilian of countless club players.GM Emil Sutovsky has recently proven the...
