The Minsk International Open Tournament 2015 took place from July 15-23, in Minsk, the capital city of Belarus. The event was a 9-round Swiss open with tempo of play 90′ + 30″, that gathered 128 players from 4 different countries. Grandmasters Aleksej Aleksandrov (2613) and Vladislav Kovalev (2416) from Belarus shared the first place with 7.5/9 points. Aleksandrov [...]

This is another correspondence chess game from the 1978 Golden Knights Postal Championship, Round 1. It seems that I had three periods in my chess career in which I was experimenting with irregular openings. My first one was in 1978. My second one was during the 1980’s while I was stationed in Germany and the […]

The 38th International Eastman Open 2015 took place from July 18-22, at the Barbara College in Ghent, Belgium. The event was a 9-round Swiss tournament, sponsored by Eastman –  a global specialty chemical company that produces a broad range of products found in items people use every day. 1,800 Euro will be distributed to the winner. Russian GM Gavrilov edged [...]

The 2015 Guam International Open Chess Tournament took place on 18-22nd July, 2015, at the Guam Reef Hotel, Tumon, Guam. The event was a 9-round Swiss FIDE tournament with tempo of play 90′/40 + 30′ + 30″ and prize fund in total of US$ 8,000. Filipino star GM Eugenio Torre and his countryman GM Darwin Laylo tied for the [...]

The 2015 Guam International Open Chess Tournament took place on July 18-22, 2015, at the Guam Reef Hotel, Tumon, Guam. The event was a 9-round Swiss FIDE tournament with tempo of play 90′/40 + 30′ + 30″ and prize fund in total of US$ 8,000. 23 players from 6 different countries take part in the event, including 2 GMs [...]

The 2015 “Yin Zhou” Cup China – Russia was held from July 14 through July 21, in the Chinese city of Ningbo. The friendly match between the men and women teams of Russia and China finished convincingly 29:21, in favor of the hosts. Russia’s men lost 14:11, while the women team of China defeated the [...]

Stockholms Schacksällskap, one of the world’s oldest chess clubs, celebrates its 150 years jubilee with a grand tournament at the venerable Scandic Hotel Hasselbacken**** in the heart of The Royal Djurgården in Stockholm, Sweden.The Hasselbacken Chess Open 2016 will be held from April 30 through May 8, 2016 and prize fund in total of 300 000 SEK (nearly 32,000 €) will be...

My performance is markedly irregular. I go through periods when I am totally engaged, and then I have days, weeks or months where my mind simply won’t conduct chess.  It’s not a matter of making mistakes, rather, it’s a complete absence of the detachment necessary to enter into the symbolic language space, making chess merely […]

A FIDE Arbiters’ Seminar is going to be organized from 3 to 8 August 2015 in Maputo, Mozambique, by the Mozambican Chess Federation and under the auspices of FIDE. The venue of the Seminar will be the SPIROS Hotel in Maputo. The Lecturer will be IA Carlos Dias (POR), FIDE Lecturer. The language of the [...]

A FIDE Arbiters’ Seminar is going to be organized from 26 to 30 July 2015 in Luanda, Angola, by the Angola Chess Federation and under the auspices of FIDE. The Lecturer will be IA Carlos Dias (POR), FIDE Lecturer. The language of the Seminar will be Portuguese. The Seminar will give norms and titles of [...]

The 17th Sant Marti Open 2015 took place from July 13-21, in the hall of Centre Civic Sant Marti, Barcelona, Spain. The event was a 9-round Swiss open tournament with time control 90′ + 30″ and an average Elo rating of 2156. GM Kidambi Sundararajan from India edged Armenian GM Karen Grigoryan on a better tie-break score [...]

The 7th round of the  FIDE Amateur World Online Blitz Championship 2015 (rating <2000) was held on July 17th at 7:00 AM UTC. 102 players represented 42 different nations in 11-round Swiss blitz championship. As usual, the first 8 players have qualified for the semifinals (October, 1 2015) and the coveted world title is getting [...]

When we talk about sacrificing some material the first thought that comes to mind is that it is for a mating or crushing attack (sac sac and mate – Fischer). However sacrifices are also possible in the endgame, but what is the fundamental basis for that? I started studying the endgame seriously when I manage […]

OPorto Open 2015 took place from 13-19th July at the Hotel Beta in Porto, Portugal. The tournament is included in the National Circuit of Classic Chess of the Portuguese Chess Federation. The 9-round Swiss event was organized by the Grupo de Xadrez do Porto, the oldest Portuguese chess club, as a celebration of its 75th anniversary and [...]

One of the useful things about playing the French is that it can be fairly easily turned into a low maintenance universal repertoire. A few years ago I made a DVD for Chessbase on this topic in which Black would combine the French with Bogo-Indian type lines, meeting 1.d4 with 1…e6 and then on 2.c4 […]