World champion Magnus Carlsen has taken first prize in the Norway tournament at Stavanger which finished last month. Carlsen had dominated proceedings but was briefly derailed by a loss to the triple Olympiad gold medallist Levon Aronian of Armenia, who eventually emerged as the runner-up. As so often, Carlsen pulled a rabbit out of the
Last week we saw the reigning world champion Magnus Carlsen taking a leaf from Alekhine’s book to destroy eccentric opening play by the Swedish grandmaster Nils Grandelius. This week we see Alekhine himself in action, launching a sacrificial maelstrom which destroys his hapless opponent. Alekhine once wrote, ‘It is especially with respect to the original
World champion Magnus Carlsen takes much inspiration from the games of the former champion Emanuel Lasker. Lasker and Carlsen share the ability to manoeuvre at length in approximately level positions, without letting the situation dry up and become devoid of winning prospects. Such a style does not always lead to attractive games, and some of
It is often asked how chess became so popular in the USSR. My answer is that most areas of creative thought were closely supervised by the state; literature, art and even music, as Shostokovich and Prokofiev found, were subject to government control. Shostokovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District was severely criticised by the Communist
The year 2016 is the anniversary of a number of significant events in the chess world. In 1946 Alexander Alekhine died in possession of the title, the only champion so to do. The following position is taken from Alekhine: Move by Move by Steve Giddins (Everyman Chess). Alekhine-Prat: Paris Simultaneous 1913 Alekhine concludes with a
Sergey Karjakin, who in 2002 became the world’s youngest-ever grandmaster at the age of 12 years and seven months, has won the Moscow Candidates tournament and has earned the right to challenge Magnus Carlsen for his world title later this year. It was thought the match would take place in New York, but given Karjakin’s
The internecine but friendly annual rivalry between the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, generously hosted last month by the Chess Circle of the Royal Automobile Club in Pall Mall, resulted in an overwhelming 6-2 victory for the light blues. Cambridge now leads the longest-running chess series in the world with 59 wins. Oxford has 53 wins,
With the proliferation of modern opening theory and advances in knowledge of the game, I wonder sometimes if the kind of coruscating brilliance and originality that Mikhail Tal possessed will ever be seen again. Tal, the ‘Wizard of Riga’, was able to summon up lightning attacks from the most unpromising-looking positions. Last week we saw
The Candidates tournament to determine the challenger later this year to world champion Magnus Carlsen is now well underway in Moscow. Early indications favoured the former champion Viswanathan Anand, the new young talent Sergei Karjakin, and Lev Aronian, Olympiad gold medallist, all of whom scored in the opening rounds. The main victim of their initial
The tournament at Bunratty is Ireland’s premier chess competition and has been for several years. This year’s event, to which I was invited as a guest to deliver the closing speech, attracted a powerful field including the former world title challenger Nigel Short and the former British champion Gawain Jones as well as grandmasters Peter
On Saturday 5 March the 134th Varsity Match between the teams from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge takes place at the Royal Automobile Club, Pall Mall. As has become traditional, the annual clash between our premier academic institutions is supported by Henry Mutkin, the doyen of the RAC chess circle. The scores so far are
Zurich has been the scene for the latest clash between the titans of chess. Over a mere four days in February, six elite grandmasters contested no fewer than three fast-time-limit all-play-all tournaments, with combined results leading to an overall victory for Hikaru Nakamura, fresh from his triumph in Gibraltar. Zurich was what might be termed
The 14th Tradewise tournament at Gibraltar ended in a triumph for the American grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura. Naka, as he is affectionately known, tied on points with the leading French representative, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, but in the obligatory playoff, the American nosed ahead to take the £20,000 first prize. Gibraltar, under the auspices of chess-loving hotelier Brian
The world champion is back on form. After winning the overall laurels in last year’s Grand Tour, and taking first prizes on tie break at both London and Qatar in December, Carlsen secured a convincing and outright triumph at the Tata Steel elite tournament in Wijk aan Zee, Holland, last month. His margin of victory
Alexander Alekhine was one of the immortals of the chessboard — world champion from 1927, when in an epic war of attrition at Buenos Aires 1927 he had wrested the championship from Capablanca, until 1935, and again from 1937 until his death in 1946. His victories at the tournaments of San Remo 1930 and Bled
This week I conclude my homage to the great Estonian grandmaster Paul Keres, who was born a century ago this month. The game I have selected to round off my tribute is an incendiary victory against the red czar of Soviet chess, Mikhail Botvinnik. In their earlier clashes Botvinnik reeled off a series of wins,
Paul Keres, the Estonian grandmaster and many times world championship contender, was born a hundred years ago this month. His record against world champions was very impressive: he defeated all nine in sequence from Capablanca to Bobby Fischer. Keres was probably the strongest player, pace Nimzowitsch, Rubinstein and Korchnoi, never to have won the world
An excellent recent article by Dominic Lawson in Standpoint magazine reminded me of the greatness of Paul Keres. The Estonian grandmaster,whose centenary falls this month, was silver medallist in no fewer than four world championship Candidates tournaments. (I will be writing about him next week.) Another illustrious player (one with the same first name) is
The London Classic, the end of the million-dollar Grand Tour, was something of a damp squib. A surfeit of draws meant the event largely boiled down to who was most effectively able to despatch the cellar dwellers Anand and Topalov. Top scores out of nine were as follows: Carlsen, Giri and Vachier-Lagrave 51/2 each, Aronian
As the new year begins, I pay a final tribute to the city financier Jim Slater, who did so much to support British chess and who was instrumental, with Henry Kissinger, in rescuing Bobby Fischer’s challenge against Boris Spassky from Reykjavik 1972. Slater offered £50,000 to increase the World Championship prize fund, created awards and prizes
