Beauty Queens and Battling Knights

9/30/2011 – Male chess players choose riskier and more aggressive chess openings when playing against attractive women compared to when playing against less attractive women, although the Elo rating and style of play are the same. The scientists who have found this out are asking our readers to participate in a one-minute survey of their own behavior. You can win $500 if you do.

São Paulo Masters – Both Carlsen and Anand lose

9/30/2011 – In terms of statistical oddities, round three ranks right up there. Not only did Carlsen, the highest ranked player, lose to Vallejo, but Anand also lost to Ivanchuk. This not only meant the top rated players in the world lost in the same round in the same tournament, but both are now the tail-enders of the event. Report on round three and rest day by Albert Silver with analysis by GM Moradiabadi.

A history of cheating in chess (1)

9/29/2011 – Hardly a month goes by without some report of cheating in international chess tournaments. The problem has become acute, but it is not new. In 2001 Frederic Friedel contributed a paper to the book "Advances in Computer Chess 9". It traces the many forms of illicit manipulations in chess and, a decade later, appears disconcertingly topical and up-to-date. We reproduce the paper in five parts.

Chinese dominate at the Malaysian Chess Festival 2011

9/29/2011 – For the eight year running the Malaysian Chess Festival was held at Mid Valley City, a one stop destination for living, business and leisure on the periphery of Kuala Lumpur City Centre. This year's edition saw patron Dato Tan, 85 years old, playing in the Senior section. In the Open we find the first six places taken by Chinese players, one of them in fact female. Big pictorial by Andrew Ooi.

CBM Blog: Breakthrough, bodycheck and cut off

9/28/2011 – When passed pawns are far advanced you must always watch out for breakthrough motifs and promotion combinations, our resident endgame expert Dr Karsten Müller tells us. He also shows us, once again with a recent example, the two themes that are most important when a rook fights against a pawn. Here's your chance to learn from the GM and improve your chess.

How to manage your mind at the board

9/28/2011 – Psychologist George Zeigler of San Diego has been playing chess for thirty years. Ten years ago he went over all his losses and discovered that well over 80% of them had little to do with being outplayed. Rather they resulted from his state of mind at the time the moves were made. This led to his studying the key skills utilized by the chess master. Here he shares his results with our readers.

Nigel Short simul and lectures at RA Chess Club

9/27/2011 – The chess club in Ottawa has a special relationship with the former World Championship challenger. GM Nigel Short, who in recent months has been on fire with a string of sterling results, turned up a second time to give a simul and a lecture – his first on the 1993 match against Garry Kasparov in London. You will find annotated highlights from the simul and lecture in this report by John Upper.

São Paulo Masters – Ivanchuk beats Vallejo and ties Aronian

9/27/2011 – Although the scoreboard is much the same as yesterday, the content was quite another story. Carlsen and Aronian drew in a hard positional struggle, while Nakamura and Anand had a complex game that ended in as sharp a finish as possible. Ivanchuk and Vallejo kept all eight pawns for seventeen moves until the Spaniard finally went astray and lost. Comments by GM Elshan Moradiabadi.

Moscow beats St. Petersburg at 100th anniversary encounter

9/26/2011 – Last week, St. Petersburg hosted the traditional and historic match between Russia`s two greatest cities: Moscow and St. Petersburg. The first such chess match was held 100 years ago – in 1911, after which 21 more meetings have taken place. After a five-year break another was finally held, promising to be an annual event thanks to the sponsorship of “Gazprom”. Report by Anna Burtasova.

São Paulo Masters – Aronian draws first blood; Anand and Carlsen draw

9/26/2011 – The Grand Slam officially started its first leg in São Paulo, with the world's elite playing. Anand-Carlsen was the foremost game on the card, but was sadly the least exciting, ending in a lackluster draw. Nakamura and Ivanchuk immediately shirked theory, but also drew, while Aronian struck first and beat Vallejo in an offbeat Slav. Round one report with analysis by GM Elshan Moradiabadi.

World Problem Solving Championship 2011 – Solutions

9/26/2011 – In his report on the competition, which was won by 19-year-old Kacper Piorun, the second-placed solver, GM Dr John Nunn, presented a selection of problems which the competitors had to face. Today he presents the solutions, in the unique explanatory style that has made his many chess books so popular. Studying his notes allows you to delve into the magical world of chess problems.

Montreal Open: a labor of love

9/25/2011 – Very few tournaments can boast a tradition going back 90 years, yet the Montreal Open, is now in its 91st edition no less. Th reason is not an exceptionally deep-rooted chess history as seen in Russia, but a community whose passion for the game seems to know no bounds. The organizers share in this love and put on an exceptionally beautiful event. Here is the colorful pictorial by Alina L'Ami.

CBM Blog: Counterplay counts + Banusz' Breakthrough

9/24/2011 – In rook endings a pawn up, the draw is often secured by counterplay. But how to initiate it? Our resident GM Karsten Müller gives us instruction, using a recent game Bacrot-Robson from the World Cup in Khanty-Mansiysk. And Dr Müller uses another game from two weeks ago to instruct us on the theme of counterplay. Take time to study his examples and improve your tournament results.

Akiba Rubinstein is back in town in Polanica-Zdroj

9/24/2011 – IM Aleksander Hnydiuk won the 47th Rubinstein Memorial held in Polanica-Zdroj, Poland, scoring his first GM norm with a 2608 performance. The Memorial is likely to regain its level from the past when it used to be a significant event for both top grandmasters and aspiring masters. This would be a good news given the beauty of Polanica and its surroundings. Pictorial report by Piotr Kaim.

Marginal

9/23/2011 – Following the queen check on f7 Black had taken the bull by the horn with 23...Kh6 (diagram), putting the threats ...cxb2 and ...c4+ into the balance after the possible loss of the knight e7. How is the position to be assessed now? White ...
A)... wins;
B)... achieves perpetual check; 
C)... is at a disadvantage.
The solution is here, but first ponder over it with a larger version of the diagram.

Kavalek in Huffington: Peter Svidler All the Way

9/23/2011 – It was the most amazing move of the 2011 Chess World Cup in Khanty Mansiysk, Russia, a wonderful coup de grâce you don't see every day. And it could have been enough to play it, go home and enjoy it for years to come.In his Huffington Post chess column GM Lubomir Kavalek peculates that his astonishing move didn't belong to 21st century, where such a brilliant move is not usually allowed.

Six-Star DVDs with a Wealth of Information

9/23/2011 – This month in the Chess Cafe Steven B. Dowd looks at three recently released ChessBase DVDs, one each for the opening, middlegame, and ending. "Each one is very well-done, and contain a wealth of information for the learner," he writes. "It will probably be the only time you see me giving six stars – the maximum – to each DVD." Reviews and links.

Edward Winter's Chess Explorations (69)

9/23/2011 – Many forgotten interviews with Alekhine have been reproduced over the years by the Editor of Chess Notes. We witness the great champion discussing his chess rivals and predecessors, plans, training routines, blindfold exploits, family background, education, personal lifestyle, pastimes, travel, politics and writings, including the notorious anti-Semitic articles published in the Nazi press in 1941.

ChessBase Magazine 143 – A Cornucopia of Chess

9/22/2011 – "Serious chess players will relish spending countless hours studying the information in ChessBase Magazine issues," writes Steve Goldberg. "Some players may find just the opening analysis they've been looking for, others will appreciate the impressive depth and breadth of the annotated games, too many to count, annotated by world class players." Goldberg gives it five stars in his Chess Cafe review.

Kasparov in Clichy - video analysis by IM Andrew Martin

9/22/2011 – It was a wake up call and reminder that Kasparov is not so far gone into retirement that he is no longer competitive at the top. By soundly beating Vachier-Lagrave in two highly publicized blitz games, a top talent rated over 2700, Kasparov showed he wasn't just there for the cameras, he was out for blood. IM Andrew Martin dissected the games and gave insightful commentary in his video analysis.

Grand Slam Masters Final to start in São Paulo, Brazil

9/22/2011 – The Grand Slam Masters final is set to take place, and continuing the new trend of sharing the event with a partner city, the organizers in Bilbao, Spain have chosen São Paulo this year to host the first half. The participants are World Champion Viswanathan Anand, world number one Magnus Carlsen, Levon Aronian, Hikaru Nakamura, Vasily Ivanchuk, and Francisco Vallejo Pons. Don't miss it!

First Youth Chess Tournament for Peace

9/21/2011 – This event, organised and sponsored by the Canadian Centre for Ecumenism, a St. Laurent-based company which sells an electronic score keeping device to record, store, view and webcast chess games. Twenty-one young chess players participated during the Global Conference on World’s Religions in Montréal, Canada. On this occasion the players had the pleasure to meet His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama.

Turkey vs Iran with an instructive endgame

9/21/2011 – This eight round double Scheveningen event with top GMs took place from September 8 to 16. Iran won it by ten points, the final score being 21:11. One of the lesser games contained an interesting ending which international trainer Efstratios Grivas, who is also the Turkish coach, has analysed for our readers – another opportunity for you to hone your endgame skills.

World Cup in Khanty-Mansiysk: Players in the background

9/21/2011 – The organisers of the FIDE World Cup in Khanty-Mansiysk did an extraordinary job, providing the world with live video feed in HD quality, running commentary in Russian and English, live broadcast of the games on the official site and on Playchess, professional pictures in the highest quality we have received from any chess event. Here are some of the people who made it possible.