Barden on the longest running chess column

10/25/2014 – Recently we (once again) read and enjoyed a chess column in The Guardian, written by Leonard Barden. It was topical, entertaining, and even contained a challenging chess puzzle. And we discovered that the column had been running uninterrupted for almost sixty years! We asked Leonard for the history of his weekly and daily chess columns. He sent us this fascinating essay.

Tashkent 04: Back to Peace

10/24/2014 – Maybe looking forward to the free day tomorrow, the games somehow ended up being mostly dry in Tashkent. With every single game ending in a draw it was really only the game between Mamedyarov and Nakamura that provided any excitement to the fans. MVL is, of course, the one that is happiest with the results. Seven more rounds like this would crown him champion in Tashkent.

Centralisation is everything

10/24/2014 – "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold" is a famous and often quoted line from the poem "The Second Coming" by Irish poet and Nobel Prize winner W. B. Yeats. It pays to remember this piece of poetry when playing chess. Having a stable center keeps your position intact and safe, destroying your opponent's center often yields surprising results.

Hou Yifan wins Corsican Circuit

10/24/2014 – In spite of wishing for a grand final between Vishy Anand and Hou Yifan, the fans had to agree that the structure of the tournament was supremely democratic. Naturally there were two guest stars, but there were also no fewer than fourteen spots up for grabs, so anyone had a shot. Hou Yifan faced Sergey Fedorchuk in an exciting final. Final report with GM analysis.

Tashkent 03: Feisty third round

10/23/2014 – Most of the games today in Tashkent were interesting brawls, with quite a few decisive results. Kasimdzhanov overestimated his chances against Jobava, who took a pawn, outcalculated the Uzbek player and won. Karjakin nurtured an extra pawn into a win against Jakovenko while Mamedyarov tricked Gelfand in an endgame. The rest of the games were very long fights.

Nabokov: Poems and problems

10/23/2014 – "Chess problems demand from the composer the same virtues that characterize all worthwhile art," said Vladimir Nabokov, one of the greatest novelists of our time. He was also an avid chess player and composer of chess problems. One of his novels, Luzhin’s Defence, became a popular movie. Prof. Christian Hesse tells us the story of the greatest chess lover among writers, and vice versa.

Tashkent 02: Now with Playchess Commentary!

10/22/2014 – To fill the gap left by the lack of broadcast from Tashkent, Playchess will be providing live commentary for the second leg of the Grand Prix! Simon Williams and Daniel King have stepped up to provide chess fans from around the World an entertaining, live look at the most important tournament currently in the World. One that is currently being led by MVL, with 2.0/2.

Friendly relations: Magnus Carlsen and Donald Duck

10/22/2014 – In Norway Magnus Carlsen is a hero. TV transmissions of chess events, in which he participates, attract hundreds of thousands of viewers, and popular culture also regularly pays tribute to Carlsen. And when the World Championship match begins in November, Norwegians will see their champion in the company of an old and familiar friend: Donald Duck.

Hou Yifan and Vishy Anand in Corsica

10/22/2014 – The 2014 Corsican Circuit Rapid started and as always brings a mixture of some elite guests with opportunities for anyone to qualify for the sixteen-player knockout phase. The two guests, multiple World Champion Vishy Anand and Women World Champion Hou Yifan, were then joined by the fourteen qualifiers from the Open held before. The tournament has not been without surprises.

Martin Gardner's 100th Anniversary

10/21/2014 – "With a career spanning most of a century, Martin Gardner was the last of the polymaths," writes Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Douglas Hofstradter calls him "a major shaping force in my life" – as does Frederic Friedel, who has written a long tribute to this giant of recreational mathematics, micromagic, literature, philosophy, scientific skepticism, religion – and not to forget: chess.

Tashkent 01: Anything but boring

10/21/2014 – Whether it was the change of venue, the fact that it was the first round or because of the new players added to the field, it is clear that this round was nothing like the final rounds in Baku which were filled with relatively dull draws. Caruana fell to MVL, Jobava to Nakamura and Mamedyarov self-destructed in the endgame. However, not everything is rosy in far away Tashkent.

A king with racing boots

10/21/2014 – How fast is the king? A simple if not a silly question. After all, it can only move one square at a time. And while usually content to be well protected from enemy pawns and pieces in the first part of the game, the king likes to show its strength in the endgame. And if it fights both on the queen- and the kingside it sometimes seems to have racing boots.

Giri and Jobava imperial at Unive

10/21/2014 – The 18th Unive Chess Tournament was held from October 11-18 with two matches featured as the main attractions. In the first match, top Dutch player Anish Giri faced off against Alexei Shirov over six games played at standard time controls, while in the second, Dutch legend Jan Timman played against Baadur Jobava. Both duels saw plenty of exciting chess.

Stage set in Tashkent

10/21/2014 – The second stage of the 2014-2015 FIDE Grand Prix is taking place in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The tournament will run from October 20th to November 3rd, 2014. Some of the strongest players in the world will compete in a Round Robin event. Gelfand and Caruana currently lead the race for the Candidate's tournament, but with three more GPs everything is still anyone's qualification spot.

Dylan McClain on the NY Times chess column

10/20/2014 – We recently published a piece on the termination of the New York Times chess column (after more than fifty years). A Slate article seemed to celebrate the event and the chance to replace the most recent columnist, Dylan Loeb McClain, with a more interesting writer. McClain thinks that Slate "got it almost completely wrong" and explains to us exactly how the NYT column worked.

Lu Shanglei, Goryachkina win World Juniors 2014

10/20/2014 – In the final round of the World Juniors the world's two youngest grandmasters faced each other in an insanely complicated game, which ended in a draw. Wei Yi, who had been leading the event for many rounds, had to watch his compatriot Lu Shanglei win a nearly perfect game and take the title. Junior Girls World Champion won the title for the second year in a row. Big final report.

Strong competition: the Bundesliga

10/20/2014 – Anand, Aronian, Svidler, Adams, Bacrot, Shirov, Naiditsch and Kasimdzhanov - no, not the line-up of an international tournament but the top eight boards of the OSG Baden Baden, since nine years winner of the Bundesliga. This year the OSG is favorite to win the tenth time in a row. But after the first Bundesliga weekend another team took the lead.

A 2500 in a Millionaire Event (2/2)

10/19/2014 – The second report on Alejandro Ramirez's Las Vegas adventure. This article focuses on the second half of the tournament, shines a light on some of the organizational details of the event, and explains how one should go around to winning the big money in Las Vegas! After a stressful five days of chess, the author can only say one thing: "I can't wait for this event to happen again."

Isenegger Memorial Study Tourney (3)

10/19/2014 – The David vs. Goliath motif – pawns fight pieces – in chess studies was the speciality of the Swiss study composer Samuel Isenegger. It was also the theme of the commemorative composition tournament staged by the Dutch-Flamish endgame study society ARVES. In the final section of our report the event director Yochanan Afek shows us studied that received special commendations.

A 2500 in a Millionaire Event (1/2)

10/18/2014 – $100,000. For a grandmaster that has not breached the top 100, let alone the top 20, and besides the World Cup, when can a grandmaster compete in a tournament that has $100,000 as its first prize? GM Alejandro Ramirez took his risk of $1,000 to participate in a unique tournament in Las Vegas. He brings us his unique Millionaire Chess impressions.

World Junior 10/11: Goryachkina and Wei Yi lead

10/18/2014 – Twelve gruelling rounds, and two amazing players are set to take Gold. Alexandra Goryachkina has made it (update), while Wei Yi faces stiff resistance. In our big illustrated report from Pune, India, with five annotated games, we do not forget younger players who have gained massive amounts of rating points: 170 and 197 just in this event. The final round is on Sunday.

Isle of Man: rain and sunshine (part 2/2)

10/17/2014 – In this second part of her chronicle, Alina L'Ami shares her impressions of a place that mixes the deeply traditional with the modern at every step of the way, and that remains both part of the neighboring world, and apart in its own ways, such as a currency that can only be used there. It certainly helped that it had a friendly people and beautiful landscape.

Trashed trio

10/17/2014 – There's a simple truth about chess: tactics decide most games. Playing a stunning novelty in a popular variation of the Sicilian after hours, weeks or months of preparation is fine, but useless if you fail to see the mate in five afterwards. There's also a simple truth about tactics: the more you practice, the better you get. Oliver Reeh helps to do so.

Bust this! A philosophical opening

10/17/2014 – Think of the worst blunder in the opening that does not lead to immediate checkmate. Say, giving away your queen on the second move with 1.e4 d6 2.Qg4. It is a losing move, as every beginner will tell you. But do we really know it, or are we just making an educated guess that is impossible to demonstrate? This is the philosophical problem of chess knowledge, explained by Pedro Múrias.