In preliminary discussions on voting rights of the members of the African Chess Confederation (ACC), in complete disregard of current Statutes the Kasparov camp tried to force the Continental Assembly to give voting rights to the federations of Tanzania and Burkina Faso. Tanzania and Burkina Faso are provisional members of FIDE and are therefore not entitled to vote in FIDE or Continental...

The 22nd Canakkale Troya International Open Chess Tournament is taking place on 11-18th August in Canakkale, a town and seaport in Turkey on the southern (Asian) coast of the Dardanelles. The event is organized by the Turkish Chess Federation and Canakkale 1915 Chess Club in a 9-round Swiss Open format with a time control 90′ + [...]

The 22nd Canakkale Troya International Open Chess Tournament is taking place on 11-18th August in Canakkale, a town and seaport in Turkey on the southern (Asian) coast of the Dardanelles. The event is a 9-round Swiss Open with a time control 90′ + 30″ consisting of 139 players from 15 different countries, including 5 GMs, [...]

404 international players from 60 clubs and 31 European federations have registered to compete at the European Chess Club Cup, which will take place in Bilbao from 14 to 20 September 2014. The so-called Champions League of chess will be held simultaneously with the 7th Grand Slam Masters Final at the Euskalduna Conference Centre at [...]

The FIDE General Assembly will start on Monday 11th August at 9am. Already in the first session FIDE elections will take place, as a culmination of the campaign that started in Tallinn last year. In the last day before the elections, both campaigns have issued open letters that address the election procedures. Garry Kasparov on [...]

If you had asked me before round 7 what players were having a really outstanding tournament, I would have given you four names: Magnus Carlsen, who has been playing like the world champion he is; Hou Yifan, about whom I would only change the pronoun; Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, who has been successfully leading the first place team; and Rustam Kasimdzhanov, who has defeated Arkadij Naiditsch, Vassily...

We saw last week that most children will only be able to play ‘real chess’ at secondary school age. (For readers from other countries, children in the UK usually attend primary schools up to the age of 11, at which point they transfer to a secondary school.) Our experience at Richmond Junior Club, and, yes, […]

The 24th FIDE World Senior Chess Championships are scheduled to take place from 23rd October to 5th November at the conference center of the 5-star hotel “Mediterranean Village” in Katerini, Greece. The World Senior Chess Championships are open to all players, regardless of rating and title, who have reached the age of 50 and represent [...]

The 23rd Open International Tournament of Kavala took place on 2-9th August 2014 at the Foyer of Kavala Prefecture Amphitheater in Kavala, a city in northern Greece. The event was a 9-round Swiss, organized by Kavala Chess Club and East Macedonia and Thrace Chess Union. IM Antonios Pavlidis (Greece) and GM Andrey Sumets (Ukraine) share first [...]

The Fidefirst campaign team has published in one of its daily bulletins a shocking letter by the ECU Executive Director. The Bulletin #2 revealed the letter that Vladimir Sakotic, ECU Executive Director and close aly of Silvio Danailov, has sent to the Slovenia Chess Federation in an attempt to manipulate their vote in the ECU [...]

100+ games with GM commentary by the end of 2014!

A parent of one of my new students asked me the question “what’s up with that Paul Morphy guy?” For some reason I found this question delightful in its vagueness. Many times, parents will ask very specific questions that are designed to make them look like they know something about chess, such as “which variation […]

The Olympiad is in an especially fun stage for fans. It's far enough in that lots of top teams are battling with each other, but still early enough that a few semi-outsiders are still hanging on to their medal hopes. The Serbs and the Romanians are in the tie for the 3rd-12th places, and Bosnia, Canada and Qatar are among the teams giving the favorites a consistently hard time. Overall though...

Here is a game from the first international event that I played on the ICCF server. Both of us had provisional ratings of 1800 points at the start of this. Now, my established rating on ICCF is 2027. My opponent’s established rating is now 2192.  The opening that I played is known as both the Modern […]

Continuing our recent series of posts on Garry Kasparov... I was looking through one of Kasparov's recent autobiographical volumes, and when describing his activities in 1985 between his two world championship matches against Anatoly Karpov that year he mentions a 10-board blindfold simul. He doesn't give any of the games but mentions with some pride a victory over a computer with sacrifices and...