Since the year 2000, ChessCafe, famous for its book reviews, holds a voters competition for the award of 'ChessCafe.com Book of the Year'. In the past, big chess authors such as John Nunn and John Watson have won the award. Now, little-known FM Ch...
Chess fans generally want as many decisive games as possible, but a fighting draw with strong play from both sides can be very attractive as well. There were as many as six draws in the fourth round of the Nalchik Grand Prix, but one should not co...
Gata Kamsky (pictured) won the only decisive game of the fourth round of the Nalchik Grand Prix. He defeated Peter Svidler in a tough strategic Ruy Lopez lasting 74 moves. Alexander Grischuk retains his narrow half-point lead over the chasing fi...
After a marvellous start of 2/2 Levon Aronian was held by Sergey Karjakin, who announced earlier this week that he will play for Russia in the near future. Main reason is the less reward for the big results the Ukrainian team achieved in last few ...
Concentrating on important tournaments during Easter, let’s move from the U.S. back to Europe, where from April 9 to 13 another strong tournament took place. The central location within Europe of Deizisau (Stuttgart area) attracted a lot of peop...
Everything was going so well for Aronian, who wore down his Armenian compatriot Akopian in round 2 to take the sole lead (Svidler was the only other winner, taking advantage of Ivanchuk's habitual time-trouble). However, in round 3 Aronian's perf...
Levon Aronian very patiently scored his second victory in a row against his fellow country man Vladimir Akopian and is the sole leader of the tournament after two rounds. Peter Svidler also won his game against Vassily Ivanchuk and is sharing 2nd/...
It shouldn’t have been a problem for any chess player to find a tournament during Easter. In almost every continent there was a tournament that was broadcasted worldwide. Special attention deserved the Foxwoods Open, held 8-12 April in Connectic...
Round One of the latest Grand Prix has kicked off in Nalchik, with Alexander Grischuk (pictured) and Lev Aronian winning their first round games to take share the early lead. Aronian brushed aside Mamedyarov with the black pieces when the latter ...
Many people say that FIDE is destroying chess with its chaotic handling of the World Championship cycle. The Grand Prix series in particular has been the subject of many debates. Chess politics aside, however, it’s great that these tournaments e...
The fourth FIDE Grand Prix starts in Nalchik today. Games kick off at 15.00 hours local time (12.00 GMT). The schedule for the latest FIDE Grand Prix can be found here. The full draw is here. Live games will be available here, and there is even ...
Flying via Moscow to Mineralnye Vody airport, from where I was picked up by the organisers, I arrived in Nalchik about two hours ago. Here, in the capital of the Kabardino-Balkar Republic, the 4th FIDE Grand Prix will start tomorrow. Round one pai...
The FIDE Grand Prix series of chess tournaments continues onwards, with the latest event - the fourth of a planned six - taking place from 15-29 April in Nalchik, Russia. Despite the problems with the organisation of the series so far, it continu...
Surprisingly, this has nothing to do with FIDE, for once.The 2nd Barcza Memorial Tournament in Budapest was scheduled to run from 6-17 April and had a pretty decent line-up of strong players, including Zoltan Almasi (Elo 2685) and Ivan Sokolov (pi...
In his fifth column about beauty in chess, Michael Schwerteck was inspired by the attractive style of Romanian GM Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu.In an interview with the German magazine Schach, the manager of the Bundesliga team Tegernsee, Horst Leckner, ...
They did it in 2007 and this year they did it again: Tomsk-400, the team lead by Jakovenko and Timofeev, won the Premier League of the Russian Team Cup with 11 match points and 23.5 game points out of 7 matches. Spartak won the Women's League whil...
The 'Tomsk 400' team have won the premier league of the 2009 Russian Club Cup, held in Dagomys from 4-10 April. Last year's winners, Ural finished third. The strength in depth of the event was truly remarkable, with the 61 players in the premier...
This week the very strong 2nd edition of the Gedeon Barcza Memorial, with GMs Zoltan Almasi (2685), Ivan Sokolov (2669) and GM Evgeny Postny (2648) as its favorites, was cancelled after the first round, when it became clear that the organizer didn...
With just two rounds to go (the penultimate being played at this very moment) Moscow 64 is leading the Russian Team Cup as the only team having won all matches. A report with new game fragments from yesterday and the day before.The Russian Team Cu...
I've always found it difficult to take the concept of chess as a team sport very seriously. The U.S.A., arguably the country most obsessed with team sports, didn't have a national chess team competition until 2005. Makes you wonder, doesn't? The...
The 2009 San Sebastian Open tournament is currently underway in Spain. This 9 round Swiss event runs from April 5-12 and features 36 titled players from more than 100 partcipants. The time control is 1hour 30 min, plus 30 sec per move. Top seed ...
Tomsk 400, Moscow 64 and Economist 1 are leading the Russian Team Cup after 3 of 7 rounds. Top players currently playing in Dagomys include Svidler, Grischuk, Movsesian, Ivanchuk, Jakovenko and Gelfand. The first three rounds saw many draws and a ...
Why is 3 ... Qd6 good for you? Asks Michael Melts in the brand new edition of his Scandinavian Defense.Basically, the Queen is more active on d6, says Melts, and Black can castle queenside. These factors help Black to equalize and obtain viable co...
If you're visiting Amsterdam in the near future, don't forget to drop by at Laurierstraat 76, in the Jordaan area, close to the Anne Frank House. It's currently the best place to play a friendly game of chess, with excellent background music (most...
