Round 7 of Reggio Emilia was very strange. After three straight rounds with three decisive games, two of today's games (Morozevich-Giri and Caruana-Nakamura) were drawn by move 21! The third game could and probably should have been a relatively quick draw as well, but Vassily Ivanchuk hallucinated something or other against Nikita Vitiugov and lost a piece and, therefore, his third consecutive...

The 7th round of the 54th Reggio Emilia tournament saw two short draws from the top two players and a terrible blunder from Vassily Ivanchuk. Hikaru Nakamura repeated Peter Svidler's shock idea in the Sicilian Kan from the Tal Memorial and equalised quickly with black against Fabiano Caruana. Alexander Morozevich quickly called off aggressive intentions against Anish Giri and allowed a draw by...

David Howell and Andrei Istratescu were the only players who reached 3/3 at the Hastings Masters. The pair drew in round four as Istratescu played carefully with white and they were joined on 3.5/4 by top seed Wang Yue and Simon Williams. Williams scored a somewhat fortuitous and chaotic victory over Sam Franklin.

2ο ΦΥΛΗκό Ατομικό Νεανικό Τουρνουά15/1/2012 – 19/2/20121. Προκήρυξη:Η Σκακιστική Πολιτιστική Κίνηση Φυλής προκηρύσσει το 2ο ΦΥΛΗκό Ατομικό Νεανικό Τουρνουά. Το τουρνουά θα διεξαχθεί στο εντευκτήριο του συλλόγου, Κοίμησης...

Τα δυνατά του έχει βάλει ο Μάγκνους Κάρλσεν να σπάσει όλα τα ρεκόρ του μέντορά του Γ. Κασπάροβ. Είναι ο πιο ταλαντούχος και ίσος ο πιο ισχυρός παίχτης της εποχής μας. Μπορεί να παίξει εξίσου καλά όλους τους τύπους των...

Το Σάββατο 7 Ιανουαρίου 2012 αρχίζει το 121ο Όπεν Αμπελοκήπων με διεθνή αξιολόγηση έλο. Το τουρνουά είναι ελβετικό 7 γύρων, με χρόνο σκέψης 2 ώρες + 30’’ και θα διεξάγεται κάθε Σάββατο και Τετάρτη, από 7 – 28/1/2012...

Although I recommended it earlier I’m having second thoughts about the suitability of Du Mont’s 200 Miniature Games for improvement purposes. The problem is that too many of the games seem to be ‘pretty’ mates springing from rather random sequences of moves. So I’ve been scouring Megabase 2011 for miniatures with a consistent strategic theme [...]

The 6th round of the 54th Reggio Emilia tournament saw Hikaru Nakamura extend his lead to 4 points. Nakamura got a long term advantage against Nikita Vitiugov which he converted in 66 moves. Anish Giri too emerged with a big positional advantage against Vassily Ivanchuk in a game where he exploited superior pieces and pawns in an instructive way. Alexander Morozevich remains in second place but...

There was a problem with the audio of the ChessVideos show I recorded late last week. It's fixed now, and ready for viewing here. By way of reminder, it's the first of two shows covering the Open Ruy with 9.Nbd2. Have a look - it's free (free registration required) and will be available on-demand for the next month or so.

Round 6 of Reggio Emilia turned out as well as possible for Hikaru Nakamura. Nakamura entered the round in first, and he won his game while his closest competitors both lost theirs. With four rounds to go it's far too soon to hand him the tournament, but he's in great shape with a four point lead (on 3-1-0 scoring) over the second-placed Alexander Morozevich and a six point margin over Vassily...

Welcome to this year’s first GOTM! This was a tricky one to choose as so many tournaments are being played currently. I was also not very up to date as had not been online for ten days or so over Christmas. However I found the following very interesting. Before we move on to the game [...]

Σκακιστική σκηνή από το υπερεπιτυχημένο εμπορικά «Pretty Woman» (1990), με τη Τζούλια Ρόμπερτς και τον Ρίτσαρντ Γκιρ. 18 χρόνια μετά την επιτυχία που είχε η ταινία «Pretty Woman», οι παραγωγοί σκέφτηκαν να γυρίσουν τη συνέχειά της...

Τα Πανελλήνια Ατομικά Νεανικά Πρωταθλήματα Σκακιού 2012 (κάτω των 18 και κάτω των 20 ετών) θα διεξαχθούν από 3 μέχρι 9 Ιανουαρίου 2012. Δείτε τις ΣΥΜΜΕΤΟΧΕΣ (Σημειώνεται ότι οι καταστάσεις συμμετεχόντων είναι προσωρινές και...

IM Malcolm Pein reports on the start of the Hastings Masters 2011-12 and annotates Alexander Morozevich's win against Anish Giri in Round 2 of the Reggio Emilia tournament.

Whilst I’m a great believer in getting a chess set out and moving the pieces around a database program can be a really useful tool for improving your chess. In the bad old days we used to have to collect games we were interested in from various books, for example by photocopying the appropriate page. [...]