The 3rd Central Asia Cup for the prizes of FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov was conducted from 11th to 21st October 2013 in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. 38 players from the Central Asia countries – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan – took part in the 9-round tournament with the prize fund 25,000 USD. IM Jahongir Vakhidov from Uzbekistan [...]

The 51st National Challengers (National ‘B’) Chess Championship 2013 took place from 12th to 22nd October at the T.T.Nagar Stadium, in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. The event was organized by the Academy of Chess Education Bhopal, M.P. State Level Chess Association, Sports & Youth Welfare Dept. Govt., on behalf of All India Chess Federation. 272 players [...]

A great deal of printer’s ink has been applied to paper advising novices and intermediate players to study the games of grandmasters. By looking at them, we improvers have the opportunity to see chess at its best. One common approach is to read collections of games annotated by the greatest players, such as Alekhine, Botvinnik, […]

This claim, which is also the headline of this article (HT: Jaideep Unudurti), initially struck me as utter poppycock. The 1972 match between world champion Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union and Bobby Fischer of the U.S.A. involved the world's two super-powers, nations that were not only significant in their own right but as the representatives of two very different and radically opposed...

I'm not going to analyze the game, but today's fight between world #4 Fabiano Caruana and world #5 Hikaru Nakamura at the European Club Cup was worthy of their ratings and their rankings. (The earlier link may be supplanted, so go here for something more permanent.)

The top teams in the Open section of the European Club Cup are finally finding stronger opposition in round three. SOCAR was challenged by O.R. Padova, while Saint-Petersburg met Peristeri. Certainly the most closely contested matches were PGMB-Rostov (6th seed) – G-Team Novy Bor (5) and Clichy Echecs 92 (9) – Odlar Yurdu (8). Saint-Petersburg [...]

The third round of the 2013 European Chess Club Cup is currently ongoing at the Rodos Palace Hotel on Rhodes, Greece. All games are being broadcasted live: Open / Women Round 3 photo gallery

Η «Ακαδημία των Σπορ» προκηρύσσει ατομικά πρωταθλήματα RAPID & BLITZ στις 27/10/2013 και 28/10/2013 αντίστοιχα στο CAFÉ ΜΕΛΙ (Ν.Ε.Ο. Πατρών-Αθηνών 82). Όριο συμμετοχών 40 άτομα.

The new chess season is upon us. League chess where I live is generally played between October and April. Many adult players don’t seek out tournaments in the summer months and are probably thankful for a bit of a break. Juniors on the other hand tend to take advantage of the time and opportunities that […]

Sergey Kasparov, Steamrolling the Sicilian: Play for a Win with 5.f3! (New in Chess, 2013). 239 pp. $26.95/€23.95. Reviewed by Dennis Monokroussos. First, a word of clarification. Contrary to the title and the book's front cover (Black: 1...c5 is on the board; White: a steamroller covering the first four ranks of the board), it is only the Sicilian with 2...d6 that will be smashed into...

One statistician (not much of a sample size, is it?) - or rather, one economist in training, with some background in statistics - argues that the odds for the classical part of the upcoming Carlsen-Anand match are very heavily in the challenger's favor. On his (Matthew Wilson's) most generous interpretation, Carlsen has a 77.2% chance of winning the match before the tiebreaks, Anand a mere 10.3%...

The top seeded teams continued with crushing the lower rated opposition in the 2nd round of the Open section in 2013 European Chess Club Cup. SOCAR allowed only one draw to the Swedish team Limhamns SK as IM Bjorn Ahlander held Teimour Radjabov on the first board. Russian teams Malachite and Saint-Petersburg had no mercy [...]

Valeri Bronznik & Anatoli Terekhin, Techniques of Positional Play: 45 Practical Methods to Gain the Upper Hand in Chess (New in Chess, 2013). 254 pp. $29.95/€24.95. Reviewed by Dennis Monokroussos. FM Anatoli Terekhin wrote an earlier version of this work in Russian, which IM Valeri Bronznik refined, expanded and translated into German in 2005. Thanks to one Ian Adams, the work is...

Το «Άρωμα» ήταν το πρώτο βιβλίο του Πάτρικ Ζίσκιντ και είχε κάνει πάταγο, σ' όλη την Ευρώπη, αν όχι και στην Αμερική. Από τότε ο σκοτεινός και παράξενος αυτός γερμανόφωνος συγγραφέας κυκλοφόρησε δύο ακόμα πετυχημένα...

Chess Informant 118 will soon be on the market. You can pre-order it at the Chessdom shop with a present (Chess Queens – Combinations) and worldwide FREE shipping with DHL. Chess Informant 118 is the Cobra edition including special English language columns by Garry Kasparov, Mihail Marin, Sarunas Sulskis, John Bartholomew, Suat Atalik, European champion [...]