Jorge Vega Fernandez, President of FIDE America, is responsible for overseeing the 34 chess federations the continent has. The former world champion Anatoly Karpov dubbed him as “Ilyumzhinov’s best soldier” because, during his mandate, American leaders have respected his suggestions and guaranteed an extreme avalanche of votes for Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who has been FIDE president...

Από τον Χρήστο Γκορίτσα εκ μέρους της «ΣΚΑΚΙΣΤΙΚΗ ΣΥΝΕΡΓΑΣΙΑ – ΚΙΝΗΣΗ ZUGZWANG» έλαβα το ακόλουθο κείμενο Θέσεων και Προγραμματικών Δεσμεύσεων εν όψει των εκλογών της Ε.Σ.Ο. το οποίο και...

Every year for some time now in Hoogeveen, their chess festival includes a four-player double round robin event. The usual formula called for a world champion, the world junior champion, a Dutchman and a woman*. (Preferably the women's world champion or the highest-rated woman.) They got the last two, but not the first two. Top dog in this year's Unive Crown Group is Hikaru Nakamura, who may have...

Vidit Santosh Gujrathi, former under 14 world champion from Maharashtra was the cynosure of all eyes in the ninth round of the NIT Nagpur International Grandmasters Open Chess Tournament, organised by Nagpur Improvement Trust at Naivedhyam Recreation Centre, Nagpur Today. He made a quick draw with top seed Aleksandrov Aleksej of Belarus, to earn a [...]

Με δύο όμορφα σκακιστικά προβλήματα θα ασχοληθούμε σήμερα.Τα προβλήματα αυτά  δημοσιεύθηκαν στο περιοδικό British Chess Magazine υπό την επιμέλεια του Βρετανού σκακιστικού συνθέτη και σκακιστικού συγγραφέα John Beasley ο οποίος...

The Webster University SPICE Cup Open took place on 16-20th October at the Sheraton Clayton Plaza Hotel in St. Louis, USA. The SPICE Cup Open was held alongside the SPICE Cup Invitational and offered a prize pool of $ 10,000 ($ 4,000 for the winner). The tournament was a 9-round Swiss event. GM Ray Robson, [...]

The General Madariaga Chess Federation and Beaches of Atlantida Argentina are organizing the prestigious International Apart Hotel Cariló Village on 23-29th October. The tournament will a 10-player round robin with the possibility of winning GM and IM norms. The average elo is 2412 points. Participants: GM Bacallao Alonso Yusnel CUB 2580 GM Ortiz Suarez Isan [...]

It was raining the other day and at morning break two girls in Y4 asked if they could do some chess with me at lunchtime if they couldn’t play outside. As it was still wet play I went to their classroom but they no longer wanted to play chess as they were too engrossed in [...]

It was as ugly as could be, except that the final result was the right one. Notre Dame missed two field goals, committed numerous penalties - several of which were costly, committed turnovers, had a lousy kicking game in general...and still won. The key was that they played better as the game went on, and were strong enough to overcome the bad start. They won't be able to get away with this next...

Five players shared the lead with 6.5 points each, at the end of the eighth round of the NIT International Grandmasters Open Chess Tournament, organised by Nagpur Improvement Trust at Naivedhyam Recreation Centre, Nagpur today. With three more rounds remaining to be played in the next three days, the heat intensified to fight for the [...]

Nigel Freeman, FIDE Treasurer and Executive Director signed a Memo of Understanding regarding Chess in Schools on 8th October between FIDE, the Trinidad and Tobago Ministry of Education and the Trinidad and Tobago Chess Federation. This was at the end of a very successful meeting at the Ministry of Education with, the Ministry regarding chess [...]

At last, we return to the really important topic of this blog: Notre Dame football! The 6-0, 5th ranked Fighting Irish will tame the Brigham Young University Cougars (and then some) starting in about 40 minutes. Today's massacre will be televised on NBC; pre-game material can be found here.

Two events of note will start in November (maybe more, but at the moment I'm aware of these two). The first, the Kings Tournament in Romania, was originally scheduled for June before being postponed indefinitely. Now, according to Fabiano Caruana's Twitter account (HT: Chess Today), it's on again and will run from November 7 to 17. I'm not sure about the lineup, however. The tournament website...

As the last two posts mentioned goings-on in St. Louis, let's make it a hat-trick. The reason there's major chess in St. Louis is wealthy retiree Rex Sinquefield. Sinquefield, as it turns out, is also a major donor to various political candidates and causes. Whatever your wishes for his political interests, hopefully we can all join in hoping he saves enough of his fortune to keep helping...

This event, or festival, is taking place at Webster University in St. Louis, and finishes up this weekend. There are two events: an invitational, which finishes tomorrow, and an open tournament, which is finishing today and which was won by GM Ray Robson with an undefeated 7-2 score. The invitational is a 6-player double round-robin tournament. After 8 of 10 rounds, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave leads...