Parham Maghsoodloo kept his lead at the FIDE Grand Swiss, drawing with Arjun Erigaisi to stay half a point clear on 5/6 going into the rest day. Nihal Sarin defeated Szymon Gumularz, while Anish Giri overcame Marc’Andria Maurizzi to join the five-player pack of pursuers. Reigning world champion Gukesh Dommaraju suffered a second consecutive defeat, […]
Monthly Archives: September 2025
At the Louisiana State Championship, a surprise guest stole the spotlight: none other than Hikaru Nakamura. The superstar streamer was looking to secure qualification for the Candidates Tournament and needed a few rated games to do so. That set the stage for some wildly lopsided encounters – none more striking than his matchup against Nahum […]
Computers continue to shape the way chess is played, studied and understood, but they also present challenges for humans trying to assert their creativity at the board. This month’s column highlights two recent encounters where human ingenuity met silicon precision: Wesley So’s victory over world champion Gukesh Dommaraju at the Sinquefield Cup (pictured), and Ian […]
History was made in round five of the FIDE Grand Swiss as 16-year-old Abhimanyu Mishra defeated world champion Gukesh Dommaraju, becoming the youngest player ever to beat a sitting champion in classical chess. The day also saw top seed Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu fall to Matthias Bluebaum and Vincent Keymer lose to Marc’Andria Maurizzi, while leader Parham […]
The rule that a pawn reaching the eighth or the first rank can be promoted into another piece of the same color is one of the most beautiful in chess. It makes the game dynamic and has already led to many brilliant combinations and exciting games. One of these was played recently in round 6 […]
Round four of the FIDE Grand Swiss produced no more perfect scores, yet Parham Maghsoodloo remains out in front in the open section after drawing his game with white against Nodirbek Abdusattorov. The pack of pursuers swelled to thirteen, highlighted by the victories of young talents Yagiz Erdogmus (pictured) and Marc’Andria Maurizzi, both overcoming higher-rated […]
FIDE has approved a pilot project introducing “fast classic” tournaments with shorter time controls that will still count toward the standard rating list. Three events – the Qatar Cup, the QCA Training Center September Tournament, and the Women’s World Team Championship – will be played at 45 minutes plus 30 seconds per move. While no […]
The third day of play in Samarkand produced sole leaders in both tournaments of the FIDE Grand Swiss. Decisive results on all the top four boards in the open section left Parham Maghsoodloo, the 21st seed, alone at the top with a perfect 3/3. In the women’s event, defending champion Vaishali Rameshbabu continued her perfect […]
ChessBase 18 is amazingly versatile and often surprisingly user-friendly — as the first 29 parts of this tutorial series have already shown! One particularly important feature in this context is the “Folders” window, which lets you quickly locate anything you want to use within your storage directories. In this episode, we’ll show you how to […]
After two rounds of the FIDE Grand Swiss, only five players remain on perfect scores out of 172 participants, underlining the strength of both tournaments. In the open, Alireza Firouzja, Parham Maghsoodloo and Anton Demchenko (pictured) lead with 2/2, while Vaishali Rameshbabu and Olga Badelka top the women’s standings. Thirty players chase the leaders in […]