Almost all of the top ten have been in action lately, so here's what the current top ten looks like on the Live Chess Ratings list. (The parenthetical numbers tell how many games they've played since the last official rating list.) 1. Magnus Carlsen 2835 (0)2. Levon Aronian 2824.9 (3)3. Vladimir Kramnik 2801 (0)4. Viswanathan Anand 2791 (4)5. Teimour Radjabov 2784 (0)6. Sergey Karjakin 2778.6...

The Bangkok Chess Club Open is nearing the finish, and British GM Nigel Short has the sole lead with 7.5/8 with a round to go. He drew with the untitled Sander Severino (2344) in round three, but has an otherwise clean score that includes wins over GMs Farrukh Amonatov and Hou Yifan. He leads the Vietnamese duo of Duc Hoa Nguyen and Van Huy Nguyen by a point, and so would clinch clear first with...

He hasn't broken into the 2700 club yet, but Ding Liren is showing himself to be a force in Chinese chess. His impressive 8-3 score left him a point ahead of Yu Yangyi, a point and a half ahead of Ni Hua and two full points above Wang Yue in the 2012 Chinese Championship. Hou Yifan also participated, but finished with a disappointing 5-6 score. (TWIC coverage here.)

In other news, dogs bite humans and attractive people are more popular. Anyway, one place where things went off-script over the final Bundesliga was when Sergei Tiviakov outplayed world champion Viswanathan Anand as if it was just a matter of routine - have a look. Bundesliga homepage here.

Two noteworthy U.S. events recently finished, the St. Louis Invitational and the Philadelphia Open. The former ended in a three-way tie for first with GM Elshan Moradiabadi and IMs Marc Arnold and Darwin Yang tying for first with 6-3 scores. That was a round robin; the Philadelphia Open was an Open Swiss won by Magesh Panchanathan with a 7-2 score, half a point better than Varuzhan Akobian...

The Russian Team Championship was a very strong event, including such stars as Sergey Karjakin, Alexander Morozevich, Peter Svidler and newly-crowned European champion Dmitry Jakovenko. There were lots of high-level games, naturally, and I've included some highlights here.

Several readers inquired about coaching, but a couple left email addresses that seemed to be mistaken. I think I successfully figured one of them out, but I'm not having any luck with the other. If you wrote in but haven't received a reply yet (and want one), please leave me another message via the contact link on the right sidebar, and double-check the email address before sending it. Thanks.

Live games with Grandmaster analysis

A bunch of people have sent me this story, but as I was coaching other kids and we didn't win, it would be difficult for me to care less about it than I already do. Nevertheless, bowing to the wishes of all the readers who sent it in, here you go.

Με επιτυχία διεξάγεται και φέτος το παραδοσιακό ετήσιοσκακιστικό Camp προπόνησηςμε τον οκτώ (8) φορές πρωταθλητή Ελλάδας κ. Χ. Μπανίκα και με τον μέτρ κ. Β.Παργινό.             Αυτή είναιμια...

Round 3 video from Dubai by Vijay Kumar, interviews with GM Chanda Sandeepan (currently among the leaders with 3,0/3), IM Anup, GM Lalith Babu, etc. <iframe src=”http://cdn.playwire.com/11098/embed/73164.html” width=”540″ height=”455″ scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>

After the 2nd round of the 2012 FIDE World Amateur Championship, that is currently under way in Porto Carras, there are 19 players in the joint lead with 2 points each. It is still difficult to predict who will single out on the top among 130 participants. Results / Standings In the 2nd round of [...]

The International Chess Federation (FIDE) within the framework of its “Chess Composition” special project and in co-operation with the Turkish Chess Federation announce an Olympic chess composing tourney in 8 sections, dedicated to the World Chess Olympiad 2012 in Istanbul. The tournament is co-ordinated with the WFCC Presidium and is a part of the joint [...]

Metropolitan Chess, Inc. hosted an International Master norm round robin tournament from April 11th to April 15th, 2012. This tournament was the 18th in its series and was held in Suite C1002 of the California Market Center on 110 East 9th Street, Los Angeles 90079. The tournament was organized by Ankit Gupta, FA, IO and [...]

It became apparent this evening that my son is every bit as bad a winner as his father! I’ve always found it difficult to suppress a certain triumphalism after a win though I think I’ve got better at it over the years. Of course a real test would be if I were to win against [...]