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
By the time this article appears, the London Classic at Olympia and the newly created brainchild of the indefatigable Malcolm Pein, the introduction of the British Knockout Championship, will have been underway for some time. The prize fund in the Classic is $300,000, this being part of the new global Grand Chess Tour which has
The annual London Classic, inspired and organised by the indefatigable Malcolm Pein, is now underway at London’s Olympia. The website is www.londonchessclassic.com and in the stellar line-up are Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura, Veselin Topalov, Alexander Grischuk, Viswanathan Anand, Anish Giri, Lev Aronian, Michael Adams and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. This is the highest-rated tournament ever
Last week saw the death of the city financier Jim Slater. He was famous in chess circles for joining Henry Kissinger in persuading Bobby Fischer to play his 1972 World Championship match against Boris Spassky in Reykjavik. Kissinger’s contribution was a diplomatic phone call to Fischer, while Slater pumped extra cash into the prize fund
It is said that more books have been written about chess than about any other game, sport or pastime. I can well believe it. When the Chess and Bridge (shop.chess.co.uk) catalogue dropped through my letterbox last week, I counted 360 book titles, and I know that is just the tip of the iceberg. One book
I was not quite sure whether to be annoyed or relieved about the recent High Court decision not to recognise bridge as a sport. On the one hand, it’s a comfort to know that there is now little danger of British bridge and, pari passu, chess being classified alongside activities that feature perspiring individuals running
The two great Soviet world champion Russians, Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov, have almost always taken divergent paths. Karpov was the golden boy of the Soviet establishment, while Kasparov was an early supporter of glasnost and perestroika. A détente occurred when Karpov visited Kasparov in prison after he was incarcerated by the Putin regime for
Hou Yifan has won what must be considered one of the strongest, if not the strongest, all-women chess tournaments ever held. Staged in the opulent surroundings of the Casino in Monte Carlo, the organisers succeeded in arranging a line-up which could have been improved upon only if Judit Polgar had agreed to participate. Judit, after
