The 5th Annual Golden State Open was held over the Martin Luther King weekend from January 17-20, 2013, at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, 45 John Glenn Dr., Concord, California. The event had 6 sections: Open, Under 2200, Under 1900, Under 1600, Under 1300 and Under 1000. The tournament format was 7-round Swiss, 40/110, SD/30, d10. [...]

This year, as well as last year, we are focusing on the young people before and during the tournament. We have now started with chess lessons for young pupils in our region. It is clear that the interest in chess is rising in Norway in all age groups, and we are excited about the commitment [...]

Στο Δ.Σ. της Ε.Σ.Σ.Π. σε έκτακτη συνάντησή του για τον μήνα Ιανουάριο έλαβε τις παρακάτω αποφάσεις…

Από την Τοπική Επιτροπή Διαιτησίας λάβαμε την παρακάτω ενημέρωση που αφορά στους διαιτητές που θέλουν να συμπεριληφθούν στους πίνακες ορισμού διαιτητών και / ή να προαχθούν

Daily Grandmaster analysis of the games

I’ve been having a student study the classic game collection anthology by Irving Chernev, “Logical Chess: Move by Move”. Although there are flaws in this anthology, I still believe it is very instructive, if supplemented with close discussion and correction where appropriate: in fact, many times my student has asked good questions that provide an […]

Tuesday's round(s) at Wijk aan Zee were remarkable. Combining the two tournaments, there were 13 games in total, three of which ended in a draw, while the other 10 games were all won by White. In the Masters Group (Group A, in the old parlance) the only draw was in the game Anish Giri - Levon Aronian. Giri had the leader under some pressure, but Aronian's play in the rook ending was a model of...

News is that Viswanathan Anand has made the pragmatic decision to play in the Candidates after all. A wise decision, as I argued earlier, and now at last the field is set. Here are the contestants for the 2014 Candidates tournament, the winner of which will play Magnus Carlsen for the world championship this coming November: Levon Aronian 2824 (using the live list) Vladimir Kramnik 2787 Veselin...

Ignatius Leong, member of Kirsan Ilyumzhinov’s team for many years, made a surprise move by switching to Garry Kasparov’s camp for the upcoming 2014 FIDE elections. The move was announced at the 84th FIDE congress in Tallinn and despite the large surprise of the switch, no light has been shed on the details or the [...]

Eirik T. Gullaksen of Bergensjakk.no stated for Chessdom that six players have been confirmed for the super-tournament Norway Chess 2014. World Champion Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, WCC Candidates Levon Aronian, Veselin Topalov, Sergey Karjakin and Peter Svidler are part of the 10-player field. The remaining four names will be announced later. The dates are 2-13th [...]

The 2014 Armenian Chess Championships were held on 11-21st January in Yerevan. Both men’s and women’s events were 10-player round robins. Grandmaster Tigran Kotanjian emerged surprising winner of the 74th Armenian Championship for men after edging the 2011-Champion Robert Hovhannisyan on tie-break. Kotanjian, the lowest rated player at the start of the competition, performed...

The 46th Annual Liberty Bell Open was held over the Martin Luther King weekend from January 17-20, 2014, at the Sonesta Hotel, 1800 Market St, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. GM Alexander Fishbein finished in sole 1st place thanks to a last round victory over FM Trung Nguyen. Fishbein concluded the event with 6/7, collecting $2,092 for his [...]

Δημοσιεύονται συμπληρωματικές προκηρύξεις για τα πρωταθλήματα ΠΟΑ Εθνικής ΕΣΣΠ 2014 και ΠΟΒ Εθνικής ΕΣΣΠ 2014

Tomorrow/today (Wednesday) is a rest and travel day for the Masters Group (the Challengers tournament will be on), so I'll fill in the exciting details on round 8 tomorrow; for now, it's time to rest!

For kids, I must say that parent’s role is more important than that of the coaches. I will try to explain what they should and shouldn’t do. I am not going to name any names, but whatever I am writing is what I have observed very closely. Sometimes kids like to play chess when it […]