“Surprisingly often I watch sequences of moves in games that do not remind me of anything from my previous chess memory,” writes endgame study composer Steffen Slumstrup Nielsen. In such cases, he will rush over to his chessboard and start thinking about turning it into a study. One way to do this is to strip […]
Monthly Archives: July 2022
Vishy Anand won the last game of the semifinal to knock out Jaime Santos. Anand will face the winner of the semifinal between Boris Gelfand, another living legend who has already won the Magistral twice, and the young Russian GM Andrey Esipenko in Sunday’s final. | Photos: Official site
A group of chess stars will be flying to Florida this summer for the biggest esports chess tournament ever held on US soil. The Meltwater Champions Chess Tour will hold its second Major of the season, the FTX Crypto Cup, in Miami from August 15 to 21. But first, a thrilling battle for qualification in […]
From 28 July to 10 August the Chess Olympiad will be played in Chennai, India. 188 teams start in the Open, 162 in the Women’s Olympiad, that’s a new record of participants. However, two of the strongest federations will not come to Chennai. The Russian federation was excluded because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and […]
The Magistral de León is a traditional event, which will see its 35th edition taking place this weekend at the City Auditorium of the Northwestern Spanish city of León. The main event of the festival is the 4-player rapid-chess knockout tournament with Vishy Anand, Boris Gelfand, Andrey Esipenko and Jaime Santos.
Early this year GM Yuri Averbakh turned 100 and set a world record. He became the oldest ever grandmaster in chess history. Sadly, he passed away in May. Averbakh led a rich and extraordinary life that he narrated himself in his autobiography, “Centre-stage and Behind the Scenes”. In the series here our columnist draws on […]
The Russian rave band “Little Big” is known for provocative music videos. In June, the band released the video “Generation Cancellation”, in which it takes a critical stance on Russia’s war against Ukraine, using chess as a metaphor. | Photo: Little Big
At the Interzonal Tournament in Portoroz 1958, the then 15-year-old Bobby Fischer (pictured) finished in 6th place with 12.0/20, and narrowly qualified for the Candidates Tournament. Half a point behind, five players shared places seven to eleven with 11.5/20 each, which was not enough to qualify. One of these five players was David Bronstein, who […]
On 26th of July 2022, the chess world will be treated to a unique, one of its kind chess show – the ChessBase India Originals Death Match between Anish Giri and Vidit Gujrathi. Anish Giri is world no.10 and Dutch no.1. Vidit Gujrathi is India no.3 and world no.28. The Death match between them will […]
In the previous part of The Winning Academy, we have distinguished between four very different modes of defence: creating a fortress, playing for a counterattack, simplifying into a holdable endgame, and organizing a sabotage act. In this follow-up part, I would like to show you how important and practical this distinction actually is. When defending, […]