Last weekend I managed to pop over to Gib to visit Ga (Nils & Erik too).  It was roughly a smooth 3 hour flight from Heathrow and lands on the peninsula itself. It was forecast to be a beautiful day and seeing the Atlas Mountains and the Rock itself from my seat on the plane […]

Nobody can deny the fact that chess players as a whole are a somewhat eccentric bunch. It needs a special kind of mind to devote vast swathes of time to a board game that is so intense and so abstract, most ‘normal’ people just don’t get it. I don’t know of any studies on the […]

The Norway Chess 2016, sponsored by Altibox, is scheduled to take place in Stavanger from April 18-30. It is going to be a ten player single round robin event. Six of the players have been announced and they include the World Champion Magnus Carlsen (Norway), the ex world champions Vladimir Kramnik (Russia) and Veselin Topalov [...]

(φωτ. σκάκι στον βράχο Πρεϊκεστόλεν, λίγο έξω από το Σταβάνγκερ. Σημαίνει «ο βράχος της προσευχής» ή ο «άμβωνας του κήρυκα», ορθώνεται στα 604 μέτρα από την επιφάνεια της θάλασσας και η κορυφή του είναι επίπεδη και σχεδόν...

  Το πρόγραμμα των μαθημάτων για την σχολική περίοδο 2015-2016 είναι το εξής: Ενηλίκων               Τρίτη 20:30 – 22:30      Διδάσκων: WFM Στεφανίδη Μαρία-Άννα Προχωρημένοι        Σάββατο 16:30-19:30    Διδάσκων: WFM Στεφανίδη...

The Chess in School Conference will be held in Brussels, Belgium, on 24 February, 2016. The Conference will take place from 4.30 to 6.30 pm in the A1E1 Hall. The organizers of the Conference are the Educational Committee of the European Parliament, along with the European Chess Union. The Conference will have 8 lecturers presenting [...]

Russian Chess Federation has the honour to invite young and ambitious players from all over the world to take part in the final stage of prestigious chess competition among secondary school teams White Rook, which will be held in Hotel Dagomys 4* (Sochi, Krasnodar Region) on June 1-9, 2016. White Rook national school team tournament [...]

Thus far, we have seen successful examples where Black manages to exchange light-squared bishops early, which usually favours him. Against an accurate white move-order, this is not possible, but Black is still not without counterplay. A piece attack on the kingside is his main weapon. The following game sees this work very well against slow […]

The 1st Lviv Chess Tradition Tournament 2016 was a 12-player IM-group round robin tournament, which took place from January 25-31, at the Hotel Nton, in the splendid city of Lviv, situated in western Ukraine. The event was a second category closed tournament, valid for FIDE rating and norms. Ukrainian IM Artur Frolov emerged a solo winner with 8/11 points, leaving [...]

The 6th Ferdowsi Open Tournament 2016 is taking place from January 28th to February 5th, in the city of Mashdad, Iran. The event is organized by the Khorasan Chess Association in a 9-round Swiss format with time control 90′ + 30″. A total of 18 players from 18 different federation take part in the tournament, [...]

The FIDE Arbiters’ Commission, in cooperation with the FIDE Anti Cheating Committee, will organize a lecture, in order to present the Anti cheating regulations and the Anti cheating guidelines for Arbiters that are in effect from 1 January 2014. The lecture will be held on Internet, on 10th February 2016 from 17.30-20.30 Eastern European Time [...]

Συνεργασία του Θέμη Αργυρακόπουλου Τις τελευταίες ημέρες, οι αναγνώστες στο skakistiko δείχνουν αυξημένο ενδιαφέρον για δημιουργίες του καλλιτεχνικού σκακιού. Εκτός από το να λύνουν προβλήματα, ίσως ήρθε η ώρα να...

Κλικ στη φωτογραφία για μεγέθυνση. Την εικόνα έσκαψε και βρήκε ο Βασίλης Τσαρουχάς. Το 1978, ο Επίκουρος Πολίχνης έπαιξε σε φιλική συνάντηση με τη Σλάβια Σόφιας. Τους φιλοξένησαν στη Σόφια και τον επόμενο χρόνο η...

This week’s problem illustrates the type of miracles that can happen on a chessboard, even in very simple positions. White’s King cannot stop a pawn from queening. If White takes a Black pawn, the other pawn jumps two squares and races down the board for a touchdown. The Black King needs only two moves to […]