As many of you may know, one of the coming non-chess highlights of the Tromso Olympiad is the FIDE Presidential Election (on August 11, I think, but I may be wrong about this), pitting former world champion Garry Kasparov against the 19-year-incumbent Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. Those interested can find so much material to read that the election will be over before they can finish reading it, so I'll...

The documentary film Chess: A State of Mind came out in 1986 and was written by British IM William Hartston. This (almost) 30-minute piece offers a recap of the world championship from Paul Morphy (not an official champion) through the beginning of the Garry Kasparov era. It goes from Morphy through Boris Spassky pretty quickly, and then takes its time with Bobby Fischer and Anatoly Karpov...

Russian newswire ITAR-TASS reports that Andrey Filatov, President of the Russian Chess Federation, has made a statement noting that FIDE presidential candidate Garry Kasparov’s comment that the Russian women’s national team should have been banned from the World Chess Olympiad appears both insensitive and inappropriate. “The 13th World Champion Garry Kasparov held a campaign-trail press...

World #2 Levon Aronian headlined as the lead instructor for the 2014 Metropolitan & ACA Summer Chess Camp, held in Glendale, California from July 9th-13th. This was the first joint effort between Metropolitan Chess and American Chess Academy, a local educational organization based in Los Angeles. Over 100 students participated in the camp, which was [...]

When one first begins learning about “positional chess”, one quickly learns concepts such as “weaknesses”, such as weak square in your territory (a square you don’t have much control over, especially if you cannot protect it with one of your own Pawns) backward Pawn (a Pawn that is behind its neighbor Pawn(s) and therefore cannot […]

All three teams entering round 5 with a 4-0 score drew their matches, and a bunch of others caught them at the top. Right now seven teams have 4.5/5 (or rather, 9/10, since the official scoring uses 2-1-0 rather than 1-.5-0); in tiebreak order they are Azerbaijan, Serbia, Kazakhstan, Bulgaria, Cuba, Uzbekistan and Georgia. No less than 17 other teams are right behind them at 4/5 (or 8/10)...

Participation in the quizzes is free

της  Μαριέττας Μουρούτη Παίρνεις σκακιέρες, ρολόγια, πλατάνια, λίμνες, καταρράκτες και ποτάμια, μυρωδιές από βότανα, πετρόχτιστα σπίτια, στενά λουλουδιασμένα σοκάκια, μπόλικη ρακή, βουνό, θάλασσα και όσο περισσότερους...

Handling a crisis in business and over the chess board are quite different because of external factors, but there are also some unique similarities. Whether it is chess or business, we have to deal with three common elements. These are: a) Threats b) Element of surprise those are hidden counter threats c) Short decision making […]

The presence of Azerbaijan atop the leaderboard isn't so surprising, and they certainly earned their place by defeating the fabulous French team 2.5-1.5 in round 4. The key game was on board 1, between Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov. Mamedyarov played great early on, achieving a winning position with Black, but as the game grew increasingly complicated Vachier-Lagrave worked his...

The 16th Lake Sevan International Chess Tournament was held from 26th July to 4th August 2014 in Martuni, a town in the Gegharkunik Province of Armenia, located on the southern shores of Lake Sevan. Indian Grandmaster Vidit Santosh Gujrathi emerged victorious with 6,0 points from nine games, leaving the local GM Hrant Melkumyan and Russian [...]

The Chess Federation of Montenegro has filed a criminal complaint against the Executive Director of the ECU and its former President Vladimir Šakotić. Press release below: Dear friends of chess, We wish to inform you that on 5th August 2014 the Chess Federation of Montenegro filed a criminal complaint against the Executive Director of the [...]

The 115th Annual United States Open Chess Championship took place from 26th July to 3rd August at the Rosen Centre Hotel, 9840 International Dr, Orlando, Florida 32819. The tournament format was 9-round Swiss one section with Class prizes and time control 40/120, SD/60 d5. Top US player not otherwise qualified will be seeded in the [...]

The tragedies began in round 3 of the Olympics, by which I mean that the U.S. team lost its first match! Hikaru Nakamura got nothing with White against Anish Giri and drew quickly by repetition, but when Alexander Onischuk beat Loek van Wely things were looking up for the Americans. Alas, the Dutch won on the other two boards, with Erwin L'Ami and Robin van Kampen defeating Gata Kamsky and...

Many players see chess as a winter pursuit, packing up in June and then resuming in September. But in doing so they leave themselves very rusty for when the next season starts and also miss out on a golden opportunity. By staying in practice they could exploit the rust of other players and get off […]