As the new year gets underway, it’s traditional to look both forwards and backwards. 2023 saw Magnus Carlsen abdicate his world title, Ding Liren capture the vacant crown after a nail-biting match against Ian Nepomniachtchi and Ju Wenjun retain her world title also by a narrow margin after defeating her countrywoman Lei Tingjie. Jon Speelman […]
Monthly Archives: January 2024
During his long career Viktor Kortschnoi (23 March 1931 – 6 June 2016) won against Botvinnik, Smyslov, Tal, Petrosian, Spassky, Fischer, Karpov, Kasparov and Carlsen. He never became World Champion himself, but you might think that “he could beat anyone”. But this is just a cliché. For although Kortschnoi played a total of 17 games […]
On the final day of the (really quite traumatic) year 2023 we gave you two unusual chess puzzles: one where you had to add a king and bishop to construct a mate in two, and one where you had to reconstruct the entire position. We got them from Frank Scarpa, who today provides full explanations […]
Some topics in chess strategy are more fashionable than others. This can happen for various reasons. For example, some topics may be easy to explain and understand. This is the case with the “good and bad bishop” theory. Or it might happen that some strategic phenomenon becomes a favourite topic of a famous chess writer. […]
The Masters tournament in Hastings remains exciting: after 8 of 9 rounds, 3 players are leading with 6.5/8 each: Abijheet Gupta, Brandon Jacobson and Zhang Pengxiang. Half a point behind are Deep Sengupta, Eldar Gasanov and Shreyas Royal with 6.0/8. The top pairings for round nine will be Jacobson against Gupta and Zhang against Sengupta. […]
Magnus Carlsen is missing from this year’s Tata Steel Chess, but World Champion Ding Liren has returned from his sabbatical. Otherwise, the Masters and Challengers are once again very colourful, with superstars, women and young talented players. The tournament starts in a week’s time. | Photo: Tata Steel Chess
How did you fare with the three fun-to-solve puzzles we provided on December 30? They were fairly subtle, one quite amuzing. We got them from Gauri Shankar is a FIDE Master with eight IM norms. He lives in Chicago and produces entertaining video shorts explaining problems and studies. You can watch them for the solutions […]
As expected, Magnus Carlsen has now announced on his X account that he won’t be playing in the Candidates Tournament in Toronto in April, even though he qualified by winning the World Cup 2023 and by being the world’s number one on the rating list. GM Nijat Abasov from Azerbaijan, who lost to Carlsen in […]
With new money and new sponsors pouring in, and never before seen numbers of spectators following the games, the tendency is towards faster time controls. Classical games are played with reduced times, rapid and blitz tournamenst are gaining popularity. That provides more action and excitement for chess fans. But is it really the way to […]
With the publication of FIDE’s January rating list, the participants in the Candidates Tournaments in April have been practically finalised. Alireza Firouzja and Humyp Koneru qualify thanks to their ratings while Magnus Carlsen is formally qualified, but has already stated that he does not wish to play.