The biennial Fide World Cup underway in Goa is a feast for chess fans. Lasting nearly a month, more than 200 participants are whittled down to a single winner through a series of knockout matches, starting with two games of classical chess, followed by rapid and blitz tiebreaks if necessary. Stakes are high, with a
The world’s top players prepare their openings in astonishing detail. Powerful chess computers, accessed via the cloud and thus available to everyone, make the process of analysis vastly more efficient than it used to be. Positions which once would have taken days to analyse ‘by hand’ can be explored exhaustively in an hour or two.
Magnus Carlsen headed the field at the Clutch Chess Champions Showdown, a quadrangular rapid tournament held at the St Louis Chess Club last month. The Norwegian, who became a father in September, always seems motivated playing at fast time limits and his opposition in St Louis was of the highest calibre – Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru
Tributes have poured in for Daniel Naroditsky, the American grandmaster who has died suddenly at the age of 29. Those who knew him best told of his kindness and humility. He once noted that his favourite saying about chess was this: ‘At the end of the game, both the king and the pawn go into
I felt a flush of optimism as England began our final game at the European Team Championships, held in Batumi earlier in October. The previous evening, my teammate Gawain Maroroa Jones had escaped with a draw in a marathon six-hour game, tying the match against a strong Dutch team. That left us paired against the
Thirty years have passed since the 1995 world championship match at the World Trade Center in which Garry Kasparov defeated his challenger Viswanathan Anand 10.5-7.5. Anand went on to become the undisputed world champion in 2007, and defeated Kramnik, Topalov and Gelfand in match play, before losing the title to Carlsen in 2013. ‘Clutch Chess:
The momentum augured badly for Fabiano Caruana in the final match of the Grand Chess Tour, held in Sao Paulo earlier this month. In the first classical game against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave he blew a chance to take a commanding lead in the match, since wins in those slow games were weighted more than the subsequent
The boy they call the ‘Messi of Chess’ achieved a milestone result at the ‘Legends and Prodigies’ tournament, held in Madrid last month. Eleven-year-old Faustino Oro, from Argentina, won the tournament with 7.5/9, thereby achieving his first grandmaster-level performance. The requirement is for three such results before the title is awarded. But in Madrid he
‘When you play professional chess… you have to always believe in miracles. Especially if you are a player like me who’s not really good.’ A couple of rounds before the end of the Fide Grand Swiss, held in Samarkand in early September, Anish Giri gave a typically modest assessment of his chances of taking one
Halfway through the Fide Grand Swiss, held in Samarkand earlier in September, Magnus Carlsen picked out 14-year-old Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus as the player who had impressed him the most. The Turkish teenager, a grandmaster since last year and already established in the world’s top 100, looked utterly undaunted by the elite opposition he faced there.
Here we go again! By the end of this year, eight players will have qualified for the 2026 Candidates’ Tournament, whose winner earns the right to challenge Gukesh Dommaraju for the World Championship title. One player, Fabiano Caruana, is qualified already, thanks to strong results in 2024. Fide, the international federation, also holds two major
Patience is the companion of wisdom, declared St Augustine. That wisdom was manifest in Wesley So’s victory at the Sinquefield Cup last month, one of the strongest classical events in the calendar, with a $350,000 prize fund. So grabbed his first win as late as round seven, against world champion Gukesh; going into the last
In one sense, everything went right for Nodirbek Yakubboev at the Rubinstein Memorial, held in Poland earlier this month. The 23-year-old grandmaster, who was part of Uzbekistan’s gold medal winning squad at the Chennai Olympiad in 2022, scored a convincing tournament victory with four wins and five draws and pushed into the world’s top 50.
The life cycle of Drosophila melanogaster lasts a couple of weeks, so the humble fruit fly is far more useful than a giant tortoise to a geneticist with a hypothesis and a deadline. Similarly, for AI researchers, chess has long been a useful testbed because it has clear rules but unfathomable depth. And yet there
The final round of the British Championships, held at the St George’s Hall in Liverpool, promised plenty of drama. Six players shared the lead, and knowing the butterflies that swarm before critical games, it was a safe bet that at least one of the top three boards would see a winner. Top seed Nikita Vitiugov,
They say chess is an art, a science and a sport. Now it’s an e-sport too. The Esports World Cup, held in Riyadh, is an annual international tournament for major computer games such as Dota 2, this year with $38 million in prizes across the 25 events. For the first time, chess took its place
Michael Adams took first place in a strongly contested English Championship, held in Kenilworth in July. The veteran elite grandmaster defeated Nikita Vitiugov in a tense playoff, after the two tied for first place with five wins and two draws each. Vitiugov, a former Russian champion, now lives in the UK and has represented England
Levon Aronian took the $200,000 first prize at the latest leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam, held in Las Vegas earlier this month. The fifth event of the tour’s debut year, scheduled for Delhi in September, has been cancelled due to a lack of sponsors, but Carlsen tops the leaderboard ahead of the final, which
Before the SuperUnited Rapid & Blitz tournament, held in Zagreb earlier this month, Magnus Carlsen spoke frankly: ‘Gukesh hasn’t done anything to indicate he’s going to do well in such a tournament.’ That was, in a sense, true. Granted, 19-year old Gukesh Dommaraju has been world champion since December, when he defeated the reigning champion
The team of young talents from Uzbekistan, who sensationally won gold at the Chennai Olympiad in 2022, continue to develop apace. The strongest, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, is in the world top 10, and Javokhir Sindarov is at no. 25. They tied for first at the strong UzChess Cup, held in Tashkent in June, competing against elite