Ο Άγγλος αποκρυφιστής Aleister Crowley και ο Πορτογάλος λογοτέχνης Fernando Pessoa παίζουν σκάκι. Όταν πέθανε ο Pessoa, ανακαλύφθηκε, μεταξύ άλλων, και η αλληλογραφία του με τον διάσημο αποκρυφιστή. Ευχαριστώ την Composition Doll για την...

            Όπως συμβαίνει σε όλα, έτσι και στο σκάκι, η νέα γενιά έρχεται να ξεπεράσει την προηγούμενη. Νέες ιδέες, νέες αντιλήψεις και νέες τεχνικές έρχονται στο προσκήνιο για να ανανεώσουν ή...

Time after time I see widespread confusion about what it means to be good at chess. The question is relative of course, good compared to what? But views on chess strength tend to be very confused, with concepts such as Grandmaster being plucked out of the air. Yet compared with many other fields of endeavour, [...]

The ACP Golden Classic was won by Vassily Ivanchuk with a score of 5/6 undefeated. He beat Anna Muzychuk who nevertheless finished on 50% for an excellent result. Gata Kamsky beat the luckless Jobava Baadur and Le Quang Liem drew with Emil Sutovsky in an excellent final round. Nice photos below from Frits Agterdenbos The games of the event weren't rated. The event saw adjournments at move 40 for...

The ACP Golden Classic was won by Vassily Ivanchuk with a score of 5/6 undefeated. He beat Anna Muzychuk who nevertheless finished on 50% for an excellent result. Gata Kamsky beat the luckless Jobava Baadur and Le Quang Liem drew with Emil Sutovsky in an excellent final round. Nice photos below from Frits Agterdenbos The games of the event weren't rated. The event saw adjournments at move 40 for...

Soletron founder & CEO A.J. Steigman has challenged billionaire & Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel to a $1 million Series A chess match. Both Steigman & Thiel are chess masters that were childhood prodigies. They are currently in the top 1% of all U.S. players. Steigman has always been a fan of Mr. Thiel’s chess and [...]

The 2012 Sparkassen Chess-Meeting took place on 13th-22nd July 2012, in Dortmund, Germany. Ten players competed in the round robin tournament. The top of the crosstable was crowded as five players entered the last round with equal 5 points. Fabiano Caruana (20 years old) and Sergey Karjakin (22 years), succeeded in winning in the 9th [...]

The Exhibition Blitz Tournament, celebrating the 45 years of the Biel Chess Festival, was held on Sunday 22nd July, 14.00 pm, as a knockout event with 8 invited Grandmasters. Playing System: Two games with 5‘+ 2‘‘/move. If 1-1, one Armageddon game with 5’ for white (has to win) and 4’ for black. Magnus Carlsen was [...]

The Turkish Isbank Chess League took place from July 10th to July 22nd, 2012, at the Konya Rixos Hotel. The Turkish Team Championship was inaugurated in 1995. In 2004, it changed the name to Super League, but after the Turkish Isbank assumed sponsorship in 2006, the name was changed once again to the present Turkish [...]

Just what the audience wanted: the double round robin event in Biel kicks off with a Magnus Carlsen - Hikaru Nakamura pairing! The other games are Wang Hao vs. Etienne Bacrot and Alexander Morozevich vs. Anish Giri. Action kicks off at 2 p.m. (1400) local time/8 a.m. ET.

You can read it if you like, but this one copies most of the other 64 thousand already out there. The one interesting bit is this, which is why Jaideep Unudurti passed it along: You may have to defend your world title against Levon Aronian or Magnus Carlsen. Are you looking forward to it?That, to me, is a very exciting prospect. To play these amazingly talented players would be a huge challenge...

And so another edition of Dortmund comes to a close, and for a change Vladimir Kramnik was not the winner. (He came close and had his chances, but for now he's "stuck" at 10 wins there.) Officially, the title goes to Fabiano Caruana for having more wins than Sergey Karjakin (I'm not sure why that should be a tiebreaker - it's far from obvious that it's intrinsically better to have a win and a...

Vassily Ivanchuk put a nice exclamation point on a very successful outing in Amsterdam, defeating Anna Muzychuk (impressively, with Black) to win the ACP Golden Classic. His score of 5/6 was good for a 2967 TPR - alas, the tournament wasn't rated. Still, it was a nice performance for the "old" guy, and hopefully he can continue fighting the good fight for the 40+ set. Gata Kamsky also played...

The "real" Biel tournament starts tomorrow, but the organizers prefaced the event with an exhibition blitz competition. Not all the players from the classical event were in the blitz (or vice-versa), so it's not like the Tal Memorial, which used a blitz tournament to determine the pairing numbers. This was just for fun (and perhaps some money), and looked likely to finish in a showdown between...

Last weekend I noted regular reader Jaideep Unudurti's big interview with Viswanathan Anand, or at least part 1 of that interview. Part 2 is out now, and as this has material that does seem to be new compared to the 500 other interviews I've seen of Anand since his match, it's certainly worth a look. And there's still part 3 to wait for!