John Watson is one of the best chess authors around. Currently, he's writing a series of high-quality opening books, focussing (as always) on understanding and framing the opening in its proper context. I will take a look at the latest volume in h...
Every Saturday we present you an endgame study selected by IM Yochanan Afek: player, trainer, endgame study composer and writer. A week later the solution is published. Good luck solving!Y. Bazlov 1994 White to play and win Next week the soluti...
One of chess.com's big plans for the year 2009 is to bring top players into our community, to further improve the quality of our learning materials, and to provide inspiration to all of us pursuing excellence (within the royal game and without). T...
Peter Svidler has won the Masters section of the 7th Gibtelecom Chess Festival by beating Vadim Milov 2-0 in the playoff. The two had finished on 8/10, ahead of Gashimov, Nakamura, Berg and Akobian who scored 7.5 points. Final report with lots of ...
The Pearl Spring Chess Tournament of Nanjing (China) has joined the Grand Slam 2009 next to Corus (Wijk aan Zee, The Netherlands), Ciudad de Linares (Spain), Mtel Masters (Sofia, Bulgaria) and the Masters Final (Bilbao, Spain). Representatives fro...
I feel compelled to write today about the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. I'm going to break form though and start with the ugly and end with the good! The Bad Sometimes things are outside of our control. There are weeks where everything on Chess...
Peter Svidler (pictured) has won the 7th Gibtelecom Masters, beating Vadim Milov in a tie-break decider. Svidler defeated Harikrishna in the last round and Milov overcame Avrukh with the black pieces, to take the competition into rapid (10 mins p...
Ex-World Champion Ruslan Ponomariov beat eight Basque players in a blindfold simultaneous chess exhibition that took place during the annual chess tournament organized by Eire tavern, in Gipuzkoa, Spain. Despite being totally unexperienced in this...
ChessVibes Openings #5 is out! Our latest issue of ChessVibes Openings focuses on the most important opening developments from the Corus Chess Tournament, Gibraltar and the Bundesliga, covering the Ruy Lopez Archangelsk Variation, the Sicilian Naj...
Professional chess players need to be true globetrotters to earn their keep, travelling to all parts of the world in search of the next pay-day. The Gibraltar Chess Festival, sponsored by the local telecoms provider Gibtelecom, was inaugurated in...
All successful chess players are alike; every unsuccesful chess player is unsuccessful in his own way. I was eight years old and I was excited as any eight-year-old can be. My excitement was caused not by chess, but by the arrival of a book I had ...
New In Chess 2009/1 is brand new and full of interesting stuff:-- Vladimir Kramnik: My side of the story -- exclusive annotations by Topalov, Kamsky, Aronian, Grischuk, Radjabov, Bu Xiangzhi, Gashimov, Petrosian, and many others -- Chrilly Donning...
In the first round he escaped with a draw against a much weaker opponent, but after seven games Vugar Gashimov is leading the 7th Gibtelecom Chess Festival with six points. Seven follow with 5.5 points, including Peter Svidler and Alexander Beliav...
FIDE's Grand Prix series should have been a good idea; a series of tournaments featuring the world's top players to select a challenger for the World Championship. However, changes to the rules and subsequent withdrawals by players and organisers...
In our very last Corus Chess News we cover the final, thrilling round of the Corus Chess Tournament, in which Karjakin, Caruana and So became the glorious winners. It includes interviews with the three winners as well as parts of the closing cerem...
With Sergei Karjakin we have a wonderful winner at this year's Corus Chess Tournament. While Wang Yue was close to beating Carlsen, the press conference started and Karjakin told the story of his tournament to the present media, and then he explai...
Kotronias Leads After Round Four After four rounds, we have a sole leader - 44-year-old Greek grandmaster Vassilios Kotronias, who has had the perfect start with four straight wins.Vassilios likes Gibraltar - he was joint winner of our ...
In a sensational last-round fight at Corus, all three main groups were won by youngsters: Ukrainian Sergey Karjakin (who just turned 19) ended clear first in Group A after another tough opposite-castlings fight against Leinier Dominguez. In Group ...
In a dramatic final round, Sergei Karjakin (pictured) beat Leinier Dominguez in a sharp struggle in the last round to take the crown at Corus. Magnus Carlsen pushed hard to try to find a win that would give him a share of first place, but eventua...
Before round 12 there were four leaders in the A group, and after it there were... six. In our Corus Chess News we have short clips of Karjakin and Carlsen. Enjoy!
What looked like a very easy win for Carlsen against Smeets, had many hidden ideas and nuances. The Norwegian explained it all at the press conference of round 12. Enjoy!
With just one round to go, there is a remarkable and unprecedented 6-way tie for the lead in the A Group at Corus. That's nearly half the field tying for first place on 7 points! This very unusual position should make for a fascinating last roun...
It's unique in the long history of Corus, and possibly in any big round robin event: with one round to go, no less than six players share the lead with 7 points out of 12 games: Aronian, Carlsen, Dominguez, Karjakin, Movsesian and Radjabov. In the...
Dominguez beating Aronian, Giri achieving his last GM norm... a big day at Corus, and it's all in our Corus Chess News of round 11. Enjoy!
