In this episode of Svitlana’s Smart Moves, Svitlana Demchenko explores how to keep complete control of a position through the classic game Petrosian vs. Unzicker. She shows how Petrosian calmly neutralized every source of counterplay, dominated the open c-file and gradually improved his pieces before creating a second weakness on the kingside. A remarkable king […]
Monthly Archives: September 2026
Thomas Paehtz was one of the leading players in East Germany, winning the East German Championship twice and the German Championship once. He later worked as a chess coach. His most successful pupil was his own daughter Elisabeth, who for decades was Germany’s leading female chess player. One of his current pupils is Christian Gloeckler. […]
Club Ajedrez Solvay completed a perfect campaign at the Spanish “Primera División” in Linares, winning all seven matches to secure the title and promotion to the “División de Honor”. Andreu Paterna finished second to claim the other promotion place, while Platja d’Aro took third. Vasyl Ivanchuk led the champions on board one, scoring 5/7 and […]
I have been generally investigating AI’s ability to appreciate humour. Do AI clients catch the point in jokes and cartoons, and do they interpret them correctly? Do they consider the jokes funny, or do they merely know what humans find funny? After doing some general research on these questions, I turned to chess. I showed […]
The Opening Encyclopaedia 2026 presents you with a wealth of new ideas for your opening repertoire. From May 2025 to March 2026, 62 new repertoire suggestions and 46 new videos have been added to the Opening Encyclopaedia! In total, you have access to 1586 opening articles, 100 videos and 8274 surveys covering a period of […]
ChessCare.com, a new player management agency dedicated to professional chess players, has been launched by grandmaster Sebastian Siebrecht and marketing expert Oliver von Wersch. The agency will offer services covering career planning, contracts, travel logistics, sponsorship, communications and talent development. Its stated aim is to support players as the chess world becomes increasingly professional, allowing […]
The Tirol Open 2026 featured eight days of high-level chess in Innsbruck. In the A Open, GM Harshit Raja successfully defended his title from the previous year, albeit only on tiebreaks ahead of FM Tobias Kolb, who finished level on points with the two-time champion. Philipp Schlosser, Timur Kocharin and Cedric Chassard ensured that three […]
The year 1926 was a major one for chess tournaments. Among the many outstanding events was the anniversary tournament of the Hannover Chess Club, which had already enjoyed a remarkable history and was now celebrating its 50th anniversary. The battle for first place developed into a close contest between the two favourites, Aron Nimzowitsch (pictured) […]
The second edition of Legends & Prodigies will take place in Madrid from 7 to 12 September, with Faustino Oro (pictured) returning to the event he won last year. The Argentine teenager will face David Antón, José Martínez, Ivan Sokolov, Diego Flores and José “Pepe” Cuenca in a six-player double round-robin. | Photo: Mar Melero
FIDE and World Chess have submitted an application to ICANN for .chess, a proposed top-level domain intended to provide the chess community with a dedicated and verified online space. Filed as a community application on behalf of FIDE, the project would give federations, clubs, organisers, platforms, media and players recognisable chess-specific domains if approved. Registration […]