Alireza Firouzja beat Ian Nepomniachtchi in play-offs to win the ninth edition of the Sinquefield Cup. Firouzja also grabbed an extra $100,000 for winning this year’s Grand Chess Tour. The youngster came from winning the Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz Tournament a couple of weeks ago. This was Firouzja’s first trip to Saint Louis, one […]
Monthly Archives: September 2022
Some endgames crop up more often than others as will be seen in this article. In this excellent taster, you will see classics such as Vancura’s Draw, as well as a Knight Hunt set forth by Wojtaszek against his opponent. Finally there is a powerful 1-2 punch that breaks down the final barrier to victory.
Max Euwe was the first of the twelve World Chess Champions whom Frederic met in the late before and during his involvement with ChessBase. In our new weekly series he tells us how he met and befriended the top players, and the adventures they experienced together. Frederic has written a new book, together with Professor […]
A remarkable penultimate round at the Sinquefield Cup saw Ian Nepomniachtchi, Fabiano Caruana and Alireza Firouzja scoring full points to climb to shared first place with 4½ points each. For Caruana, however, it is all but impossible to win the event, as he will not play in Sunday’s final round, when he was supposed to […]
On Friday last week, Croatian grandmaster Miso Cebalo passed away in Zagreb. In his younger years, Cebalo was one of Yugoslavia’s best bridge players. He was also a linguistic genius. Cebalo was a national player for Yugoslavia, then Croatia, and in later years was active as an author, commentator and coach. Miso Cebalo was 77 […]
Four theory-heavy draws were seen in round 7 of the Sinquefield Cup. Wesley So did not play on Friday — he was paired up against Magnus Carlsen — but kept the sole lead nonetheless. With two rounds to go, Alireza Firouzja and Ian Nepomniachtchi are the leader’s closest chasers. So is set to face Firouzja […]
Now, jumping on the bandwagon, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the richest and arguably most successful innovator on the surface of the planet, has weighed on the conspiracy theory surrounding the cheating allegations in Saint Louis. In a recent interview, Hans Niemann said that in order to prove himself innocent, he was prepared to play naked. […]
That is the question, as it were. Put simply, it is the automated extraction of creative characteristics or ‘elements’ from one domain for application into another. Human brains do this all the time. Dr. Azlan Iqbal, computer scientist from Malaysia, with research interests in computational aesthetics and creativity in games, uses his problem composing software […]
Wesley So is the only player with a +2 score at the Sinquefield Cup after his win over Hans Niemann in Thursday’s sixth round. With three rounds to go, two players stand close behind on +1: Ian Nepomniachtchi and Alireza Firouzja. While Nepo drew Fabiano Caruana in round 6, Firouzja got a rather quick, albeit […]
In the last few days the chess world has been in enormous upheaval after the World Champion Magnus Carlsen withdrew from the Sinquefield Cup in protest after three rounds, with an unspoken accusation of cheating of the player who had defeated him, US rising star Hans Niemann. Lines were drawn, accusations made and defenses stated. […]