The American Qualification tournament for the FIDE World Cup 2021 will take place 22 May – 30 May. As an American Continental Championship, the event consists of two hybrid format stages: preliminary and knock-out. The preliminary stage took place 7-9 May with participation of 107 players rated under 2500. Top ranked players qualified for the […]

The Azerbaijan Chess Championship 2021 took place on May 4-14 in Nakhchivan. In a strong 12 players field, GM Vasif Durarbayli became National Champion for the first time in his chess career and also earned qualification for the World Chess Cup 2021. 4 top placed players from the round-robin part of the Azerbaijan Championship qualified for the […]

FIDE Women’s World Cup 2021 will take place 10 July – 4 August 2021 in Sochi, Russia, simultaneously with the FIDE Open World Chess Cup. The 2021 FIDE Women’s World Cup will be played in 7 rounds, knock-out system, with 103 players and a prize pool of 676,000 dollars. Most of the participants are already known […]

The European Individual Chess Championship 2021 will take place 26 August – 5 September in Reykjavik, Iceland. The event will be held in a historic venue at Hotel Natura. Hotel Natura has a rich history of chess events, hosting several previous editions of the Reykjavik Open. The hotel accommodated Bobby Fischer during the 1972 World […]

FTX Crypto Chess Cup 2021 is going to start this week. The Meltwater Champions Chess Tour delivers a world first for its next event – an elite-level bitcoin chess tournament. The star-studded FTX Crypto Cup offers a record prize pot for an online tournament of $320,000 (variable, depending on the bitcoin current price) FTX Crypto Cup […]

BBC World Service ran a video segment presenting the life of chess streamers and the recent explosion of interest in chess video broadcasts. BBC correctly taps into the shifting fortunes – nowadays young WGM/WIM/FM players are the avant-garde of chess. The reason: “Queen’s Gambit” by Netflix. See also: The Queens Gambit – with WIM Lara […]

The famous chess youtuber Agadmator continues his previews on the Nepo – Carlsen 2021 match. The first video of the series was titled “Does Nepo stand a chance against Magnus”, Agadmator analyzed a key game in Nepo’s career vs Peter Leko. Now Agadmator looks at another Nepo game, this time from the Chess24 Banter Blitz.

The Philidor Defence traditionally began with the moves 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d6, but times have changed considerably. With this move order it was found that if Black plays 3…Nd7 to strongpoint e5, then after 4.Bc4 he finds it difficult to continue his development without making some concession. As an example 4…Ngf6 is met by 5.dxe5 … Continue reading "Punch ’em with the...

The African Individual Chess Championship 2021 is going to take place 17-28 May in Lilongwe, Malawi. The event has separate sections for men and women. Both tournaments will be 9 rounds Swiss. Round 1 of the event was played in Lilongwe today. Everyone expected the live games form there to be broadcasted, but round start time delay […]

Bitcoin, invented in 2008 by “Satoshi Nakamoto” and first released as open-source software in 2009, is the first decentralized cryptocurrency. Without a central bank or single administrator, it can be sent from user to user on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network without the need for intermediaries. Transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography, eliminating the […]

Just a day after the announcement of the FTX Crypto Chess Cup 2021 by the Play Magnus group, Chess.com launches its crypto related chess event – CryptoChamps Chess by Coinbase. CryptoChamps announcement Chess.com is excited to announce the upcoming CryptoChamps tournament powered by Coinbase, an event featuring star personalities from the world of cryptocurrencies. The...

The 1st Online Workshop “Equal Opportunities” takes place 16-19 May 2021. Today’s session of the Workshop includes speeches by the FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich, the ECU President Zurab Azmaiparashvili, the ECU Vice President Dana Reizniece-Ozola, the FIDE Planning and Development Commission Chairperson Sonja Johnson and other special guests. More information: The main aim of the...

The European Hybrid Qualification Tournament 2021 for the FIDE World Chess Cup 2021 will take place from 22nd-30th May through Tornelo online platform. The games start on May 24 and the total prize fund for the event is 32 000 eur. The pairing tree for all rounds was announced yesterday by the Chief Arbiter Panagiotis Nikolopoulos and the Pairing […]

“All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.” Sun Tzu Playing correspondence chess with the help of engines is hard. It gets harder and harder as the engines improve. You can ask what is the pleasure of getting into it? … Continue reading "Planning for Victory (2)" The post Planning for Victory (2)...