Studying chess never came easily to me. The bulk of what I have learnt has come from practice, practice and more practice, rather than study. Having said that, there have been occasional times, particularly when I first started to get into chess, when I could easily spend hours reading chess books. I did a lot […]

The 10th Copenhagen Chess Challenge is scheduled to take place on 14-18th May at the premises of chess club “BMS Skak” in Ballerup, near Copenhagen. The tournament will be a 9-round Swiss event, intended to provide norm opportunities and targeted primarily towards players with ELO, young chess players, and title holders. Prizes: (DKK) 4000/3000/2000/1000/1000 Danish [...]

Live games with computer analysis

The Estonian Sports Association Kalev organized the 23rd Paul Keres Memorial on 10-12h January in Tallinn, Estonia. The Preliminary 7-round Swiss tournament with the time control 15′+5” was held on Friday and Saturday. 78 players competed. Top five finishers qualified for the Main tournament which was played on Sunday. The Main tournament was 10-player round [...]

The 2014 Australian Chess Championships were held at Springvale Town Hall, Springvale, Victoria from 2nd to 11th January 2014. The Australian Chess Championship is the most prestigious event on the Australian Chess calendar, which features many of the country’s strongest competitors, striving for the title of national champion. The 2014 Championships was comprised of 4 [...]

The game of the round was Levon Aronian's win over Fabiano Caruana. Aronian obtained an advantage with White in a Symmetrical English of sorts (maybe it's better classified as a sort of Gruenfeld), and Caruana gave up a pawn to release the bind. It started out as an extra d-pawn, but turned into an extra a-pawn at the end of the first time control. In due course that pawn made it to a7, and with...

In a previous article I posted a game that I played against Mike Hoffer and included his notes about his “chicken bone” thing. In that game I played the Modern Defense. In this game I played the Pirc Defense in order to throw him off a little and avoid his “chicken bone”. This time I got […]

I’m writing these lines on 6th January, the feast of Epiphany in the Christian Church, where believers celebrate the visit of the Magi, the Wise Men, to the infant Jesus. One of the most interesting suggestions made at the recent Chess and Education Conference was that chess courses for young children should be written by […]

The latest edition of the annual tournament in Wijk aan Zee (currently sponsored by Tata Steel) is underway, and although it's missing the world champion and his predecessors, the A-group (now renamed the Masters Group) is still immensely strong. World #2 Levon Aronian and #3 Hikaru Nakamura are both playing, along with #6 Fabiano Caruana, #8 Boris Gelfand and a host of other elite...

Sad news comes today of the passing of Azeri grandmaster Vugar Gashimov, who died yesterday (Friday - January 10). He had been in the hospital for a year and a half, and had been suffering from brain problems for a long time. From page 266 of the Reggio Emilia 2007/2008 tournament book by Mihail Marin and Yuri Garrett: Vugar's talent was clear from the start. With the help of IMs Rauf Gadjily...

Παρακαλούμε να επανασταλεί  το fax KAI ηλεκτρονικά από τον αριθμό 210 4677415 (Σάββατο 10/1 23:00 )

So now we are back in the UK. We arrived at Heathrow on Thursday afternoon then we had a day to rest before coming up to Hinckley Island for the 4NCL. Am I looking forward to playing? I think so, but let’s see how I get on in my games. Yesterday at 2pm I was […]

A fantastic person and great chess player has left this world

I’ve become keenly interested in poker playing lately and one area within the game of poker that fascinates me is the “tell.” The “tell,” is a physical reaction, such as a sudden frown or facial twitch, that tells other players that the person frowning or twitching may not have a good hand of cards. The […]

The Nordic Semiconductor hosted a simul with the World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen at CES 2014, the world’s largest tradeshow for consumer technology and America’s largest annual tradeshow of any kind. The simul on 20 boards was held on 9th January at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Carlsen won all the games. Nordic Semiconductor provided [...]