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
For a chess player, delivering a check to the king always feels like asking a question, as if to say, ‘What are you going to do about that?’ And I was instructed as a child: ‘Don’t answer a question with a question!’ So naturally, I get an impish thrill from those rare occasions where a
Right before the end of my game against Alexei Shirov at the World Rapid Team Championships earlier in June, I had the better side of a drawn position and a full 20 seconds to make a move. Not too bad: Shirov is a former member of the world elite, whose brilliant games I had revered
It was a treat to see so many of the world’s top players in London for the World Rapid and Blitz Team Championships last week. Now in its third edition, the event has an unusual format, in which teams of six must include one female player and one rated below 2000 (roughly, a strong club
Magnus Carlsen slammed the table with such force that the pieces jumped from the board. Immediately, he resigned his game against teenage world champion Gukesh Dommaraju, who thereby achieved his first victory in a classical (slow) game against the world no 1. His comment on Carlsen’s pique was typically gracious: ‘I’ve also banged a lot
The final weekend of the Four Nations Chess League (4NCL) took place on the early May bank holiday, and promised a close race between the defending champions Wood Green and the strong Manx Liberty team, who began the weekend a couple of match points in front. The league looked likely to be decided in a
Anyone who plays chess will know the feeling of reaching a winning position, only to screw it up and to lose the game instead. So far so normal, and the cliché about ‘snatching defeat from the jaws of victory’ can apply to any sport. But chess offers a far more piquant anguish, unavailable in most
A ‘Fair Play violation’ got the YouTube streamer DrLupo booted out of the most recent series of PogChamps, Chess.com’s online invitational tournament for streamers and athletes, which has a $100,000 prize fund. DrLupo’s transgression was not particularly subtle. In elementary fashion, he blundered his queen for two minor pieces at move 11, only to comprehensively
The other day, a top computer chess engine demolished the world no. 2 Hikaru Nakamura in a series of online blitz games by a 14-2 margin. Nothing unusual in that; computers have played at superhuman levels for decades now, to the point where scoring two points out of 16 counts as an achievement. But those
Vasyl Ivanchuk was at the centre of a heart-rending scene during the tenth round of the World Blitz Championship in New York in December. The former world no. 2 could certainly have won his dramatic game against Daniel Naroditsky, but he lost on time after his nerves let him down at the critical moment. Overcome
Magnus Carlsen’s run of nine straight wins at the Grenke Freestyle Open was, even by his own standards, extraordinary. The world no. 1 is a zealous advocate for freestyle chess, in which the pieces on the first rank are placed in one of 960 possible configurations at the start of the game. The format has
Women’s world champion Ju Wenjun has scored a convincing 6.5-2.5 victory over her challenger Tan Zhongyi in the Women’s World Championship match, held in China earlier this month. Tan took an early lead by grinding out a minuscule advantage in the second game, but Ju levelled the scores with an equally patient win in the
Good, but why now? Did they only just notice? Those were my thoughts when Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. I’m similarly pleased and bemused by the new BBC series Chess Masters: The Endgame. I recall evenings after school more than 30 years ago, watching the Kasparov-Short world championship match in