Sharjah 03: Two at the Top

8/27/2014 – With round three over two early leaders have emerged. Harika keeps good pace by drawing Hou Yifan, though to be fair she should have pressed harder in the final position. Ju Wenjun had a lot of patience and defeated Zhao Xue in a long opposite colored bishop endgame. The other boards saw some nice fights, especially Tatiana Kosintseva's sacrificial win against Alina l'Ami.

Trouble brewing for World Championship 2014

8/27/2014 – The match between Magnus Carlsen and Viswanathan Anand is scheduled to start in a little more than ten weeks from today. The champion is unhappy with the venue and the financial arrangements and has requested a postponement – which FIDE has rejected. Now he has until Sunday to sign the contract, otherwise we may just see a title match between Anand and Karjakin.

Chess in the digital age

8/27/2014 – Using a single software package, Former US Correspondence Champion Edwards tells us, he is now able to accomplish in an hour more than he did as a chess youngster in ten. He should know: he has just published an ultimate guide to the program ChessBase, 356 pages long and illustrated with hundreds of screen shots. Don't miss it: this is the ultimate guide to ChessBase.

2014 Sinquefield Cup starts today

8/27/2014 – It is billed as the strongest chess tournament in history: the world's numbers 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 and 9 are playing a double round robin in Chess Club and Scholastic Center, Saint Louis, USA. Their average rating is 2801, making it a Category XXIII event. Total prize fund: US $315,000. The first round starts at 2 p.m. local time today. Playchess has live coverage and commentary.

Sharjah 02: Distances appear

8/26/2014 – Already after round two it is clear that some players are fighting to win the tournament and others are fighting to stay afloat. All of the Chinese players (the ones that still play for China, at least) are on 1.5/2, a strong score shared by Tuvshintugs and Ushenina. The race is being led by Harika with 2/2, and she faces an important game tomorrow against Hou Yifan.

15-year-old leads Abu Dhabi Masters

8/26/2014 – The Abu Dhabi Chess Festival is now in its 21st edition, and shows no sign of losing steam, with great conditions. The festival is comprised of a wide variety of tournaments for all strengths and groups, including tournaments for the military and police, or Media and Journalists. After six rounds, 15-year-old IM Murali leads over 32 grandmasters. Report, pictures and videos.

Good knight, bad bishop

8/26/2014 – Every week ChessBase magazine author and renowned endgame expert Karsten Müller presents a remarkable or particularly instructive endgame in his blog. This week he chose the game Halkias-Tate. A click on the diagram opens a larger board. Test your endgame skills, improve and have fun!

Last women's GP under way

8/26/2014 – The final Grand Prix in the 2013-14 series is now under way in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. The tournament is a strong round robin and two players come into the tournament with chances of winning the series: Koneru Humpy and Hou Yifan. It will all come down to who scores more points in this tournament to determine who wins the series, and a very, very nice trophy.

Spanish Blitz in the streets

8/25/2014 – In the small, and picturesque village of Sabiote, Spain, the 2014 Spanish Blitz Championship was held... in the streets. Indeed, with a small population of 4300 inhabitants, counting on spectators to come and see the chess made little sense, so instead the organizers brought the chess to the people, and it was a great success. Rising star David Anton Guijarra took first. An illustrated report.

Hrant Melkumyan wins in Riga

8/24/2014 – GM Hrant Melkumyan started the strong Technical University Open in Riga with 6 out of 6. Then the European Blitz Champion of 2011 decided to slow down and finished the tournament with three draws. Enough to win the tournament, but only because he had half a tie-break point more than Hungarian opening iconoclast Richard Rapport. Report and Games...

89th French Championship gets started

8/23/2014 – In its 89th edition, the French Championship starts in Nimes with all the stars present. Among the more than 700 participants playing in the championship event and six opens is the local legend Roger Ferry who is playing his 55th consecutive championship! Leading the men's event is Laurent Fressinet and in the women Maisuradze and Safranska. It has seen over two thirds decisive games!

Stalemate: the long and the Short of it (2)

8/23/2014 – Recently English GM Nigel Short expressed the view that we should abandon the "stupid rule" of stalemate, where the attacking side has completely immobilized the enemy but does not win the game. Paul Lillebo believes that the possibility of stalemate adds a valuable dimension to chess, leading to complex theory that is not mechanical. He illustrates this with some interesting examples.

Norwegian TV and the Chess Olympiad

8/22/2014 – With the chess explosion in Norway, and the Chess Olympiad just around the corner, NRK, the largest TV network in Norway was stuck wondering how they would approach the idea of live broadcasts for multiple boards, since what is fine in a browser might not be suitable for national TV. Solve it they did, broadcast it they did, and they published a detailed article on how they did it.

Short and sweet

8/22/2014 – Short games are often not particularly attractive. One side blunders or runs into an opening trap and the other side wins without much effort. However, some short games display many surprising ideas and tactics. The following game is an example. It was one of the shortest games from the Olympiad 2014 but contains a number of sweet tactical moments.

World University Championships underway

8/22/2014 – The World University Championships (WUC) are underway at Katowice, Poland, and have existed since 1963. Chess was introduced in 1990, and since then, it regularly attracts players from around the world, from Japan to Brazil, to participate in a unique event. With live grandmaster video commentary, multiple video promos, and so much more, it is an event that should not be missed.

Azarov wins Washington, Sevian scores norm

8/21/2014 – Among the many summer events was the The 3rd Annual Washington International that was held from August 9-14 in Rockville, MD. What made it stick out in the crowd was the presence of several US juniors in a field full of masters and grandmasters. Among them were IM Samuel Sevian and IM Akshat Chandra, both in a race to complete their third GM norm, and grab a bit of history.

FIDE announces Grand Prix 2014-2015

8/21/2014 – FIDE has announced the 2014-2015 Grand Prix series with the players invited to participate and the four tournaments that comprise it, reduced from the previous cycle's six. Two players will also qualify for the following 2014-2016 World Championship Candidates. At the top of the list of invitees are Magnus Carlsen and Vishy Anand, though the players are not confirmed yet.

Mare di Fano – 3rd Summer Chess Festival

8/20/2014 – While the Olympiad was unfolding in Tromso, several Opens in Europe offered an alternative to players missing the big action. Fano, on the Italian Mediterranean coast, held the third edition of its wonderful Summer Chess Festival, with the playing hall and official hotels only minutes from the beach. Diana Mihajlova sent us a big pictorial report on this delightful chess-and-holiday combination.

World Junior 2014 launched in Mumbai

8/20/2014 – Almost exactly 27 years ago a young Indian lad won the World Junior Chess Championship, staged in the Philippines. He was present to inaugerate this year's World Junior, which will be held from 5th to 20th October in the western Indian metropolis of Pune. The host country has a few hot candidated for the medals. They received some personal advice from Anand.

The geometry of expertise

8/19/2014 – Chess is a widely used model of human expertise. Chess experts can quickly recognize candidate moves and correctly recall a chess position much better than novices: they “see” the board differently. Two Argentinian scientists, Maria Juliana Leone and Mariano Sigman, have hypothesized that the internal representation of the board depends on the chess skill. Academic report.

The Trojan Horse

8/19/2014 – Everybody has an idea what a "Trojan Horse" is but the Wikipedia has the following to say: "Metaphorically a 'Trojan Horse' has come to mean any trick or stratagem that causes a target to allow a foe into a securely protected bastion or space." Karsten Müller shows why you should check whether a knight is not a Trojan horse, revealing hidden forces.

Grigoryan wins Badalona Open

8/19/2014 – The Badalona Open 2014 was held from 2nd to 10th August 2014. It was a fairly strong tournament with an average rating of 2160. There were 85 participants and among them six GMs and 15 IMs. It was won by GM Karen Grigoryan (2595) from Armenia, who took home his prize money and a beautiful painting. Big pictorial report by Sagar Shah from his last tournament in the Catalan circuit.

China Wins Gold at Chess Olympiad in Norway

8/18/2014 – For the third time in this century the Russian men's team did not win any medals at the Olympiad – and for the first time, ever, two Asian teams did. The young Chinese team – average age 21! – won Gold in the open section and Silver in the women's. In his Olympiad wrap-up Huffington Post chess columnist GM Lubomir Kavalek annotates a very exciting and instructive game from Tromsø.

Stephen Moss: Why chess is an extreme sport

8/17/2014 – Yesterday we reported that two participants of the Chess Olympiad in Tromsø had died, on the final day, within hours of each other. The chess world was stunned, but should they be? Stephen Moss muses in The Guardian: "There were almost 2,000 players taking part in the event, quite a few of them getting on in years, unfit, sedentary. Healthwise, they were high risk." Interesting article.