2/7/2022 – The final round (ten) of the Battle of the Sexes match-tournament, held at Gibraltar, saw the men’s team win by 6½-3½ to finish overall winners by 53-47. The winners on the final day were Bobby Cheng, who beat Jovi Houska; Ravi Haria, who beat Olga Girya; and Bilel Bellahcene, who defeated Marie Sebag (her only loss of the event). Balazs Csonka drew his game with Marsel Efroimski and this was enough to secure his second grandmaster norm.

2/3/2022 – In the final round the men's team needed four points to be sure of overall success. They managed to go undefeated as three of their number won their games to reach a score of 6½. The winners on the final day were Bobby Cheng, who beat Jovi Houska; Ravi Haria, who beat Olga Girya; and Bilel Bellahcene, who defeated Marie Sebag (her only loss of the event). Balazs Csonka drew his game with Marsel Efroimski and this was enough to secure his second grandmaster norm. Interim report and photos by John Saunders.

2/3/2022 – Round nine of the #GibChess Battle of Sexes, held at Gibraltar’s Garrison Library saw a turnaround in fortunes as the women’s team ran out 6-4 winners on the day. This still leaves them three points behind the men’s team going into the final round (in which they will have the black pieces) requiring a 6½-3½ score to force a tie-break or a 7-3 score to win the match outright. Report and photos by John Saunders.

2/2/2022 – Round eight of the #GibChess Battle of Sexes, held at Gibraltar’s Garrison Library on Tuesday 1 February, resulted in a 5½-4½ victory for Team Sabino with the White pieces, increasing their overall score to 42½-37½ – a lead of five points for the men’s team with two rounds to go. The battle is now well and truly joined, with various chances coming and going, but the men’s team lead is starting to look hard to overturn. Report and photos by John Saunders.

2/1/2022 – Round seven of the #GibChess Battle of Sexes, held at Gibraltar’s Garrison Library on Monday 31 January, resulted in a 6-4 victory for Team Sabino with the black pieces, increasing their overall score to 37-33 – a lead of four points. But, once again, it could have been very different if Team Pia had taken all the chances offered in what was a particularly tense and hard-fought round. | Photo: Sir David Steel, Governor of Gibraltar, by John Saunders.

1/31/2022 – Round six of the #GibChess Battle of Sexes, held at Gibraltar’s Garrison Library on Sunday 30 January, saw the men’s team win by 6½-3½ on the day and, for the first time, move into the lead in the overall match by 31 points to 29. It was round of missed chances and swings of fortune as players became tired and the tension increased. For the first time since our arrival the sun shone outdoors, but not indoors on the women’s games as they didn’t get their fair share of whatever luck was going. Four rounds remain, and now it is the women’s team who need to fight back if they are to share the top prize of £75,000. Report and photos: John Saunders

1/29/2022 – The #GibChess Battle of the Sexes reached its halfway point at Gibraltar’s Garrison Library on Friday 28 January with a tense 5-5 draw in round five, with the women having White on all boards. The women thus still lead the men by a single point, with 25½ points to the men’s 24½. The match is beautifully poised for a tense second half when play resumes on Sunday | Report and photos by John Saunders

1/28/2022 – The fourth round of the #GibChess Battle of the Sexes at Gibraltar’s Garrison Library, ended in a narrow victory for the men’s team by 5½-4½, wielding the white pieces for the second time. This was Team Sabino’s second successive victory, following the women’s double success in the first two rounds but of course only game points are relevant and Team Pia remain in the lead by a single point. The score is thus 20½ to the women, 19½ to the men. John Saunders reports. | Photos: John Saunders | Photo: Steven Linares, Gibraltar Minister for Housing, Employment, Youth and Sport, makes the opening move for Eric Rosen against Olga Girya

1/27/2022 – After two tough rounds in which they were heavily defeated, the men’s team fought back with a vengeance in round three of the #GibChess Battle of the Sexes Tournament and won by the impressive margin of 7-3 in this men versus women classical chess event, played at Gibraltar’s Garrison Library on Wednesday 26 January. The match score is thus now 16-14 in favour of the women but with the men close behind with a long way to go. | Report and photos by John Saunders

1/26/2022 – Round two on Tuesday 25 January of the #GibChess "Battle of the Sexes" in Gibraltar, a ten-round Scheveningen match between ten male and ten female players, proved to be an exact repeat of the medicine dished out by the women to the men in round one - a 6½-3½ drubbing for the male sex. John Saunders reports, with a description of the games and interesting video interviews with the players. | Photos: John Saunders

1/25/2022 – Round one of the #GibChess Battle of the Sexes Tournament, held at the Gibraltar Garrison Library on Monday 24 January, got off to a pulsating start as the team of women’s players, dubbed "Team Pia" after their captain, GM Pia Cramling, scored a big win over "Team Sabino", as the men’s team is now known, with four of the ten women’s players scoring wins against their male adversaries, with only one male player able to win in reply. The first player to win a game was Olga Girya (pictured) who defeated Joe Gallagher in a King's Indian. | Photos: John Saunders

1/24/2022 – The opening ceremony of the #GibChess Battle of Sexes Chess Match-Tournament, to be held at the Garrison Library, 24 January to 3 February 2022, took place at the Garrison Library at 6pm on Sunday 23 January 2022 in the presence of the Hon. Dr John Cortes, Minister for the Environment, Sustainability, Climate Change and Education, and Dr Jennifer Ballantine, Director of the Gibraltar Garrison Library, which is hosting the event.

12/16/2021 – For the past eighteen years the Gibraltar International Chess Festival has been held in the Caleta Hotel. But the organisers have found an ideal replacement: Gibraltar’s historic Garrison Library. The 2022 event, #GibChess, is entitled "Battle of the Sexes Match-Tournament" and takes place from Monday 24 January until Thursday 3 February 2022.

12/6/2021 – At the halfway mark in the 1969 World Championship between Petrosian and Spassky, the match score was level. Petrosian only needed to draw the match to retain his title, and with his super-solid Petroff it looked like he was going to wrap things up. But in game 17 and 19 Petrosian suddenly switched to Sicilian, losing calamitously. John Saunders retraces the course of the match that decided who would defend the title against Fischer three years later.

11/28/2019 – In his latest opinion piece, published in the December issue of CHESS Magazine, associate editor John Saunders reflects on the changing face of top-level competition chess as we enter the third decade of the 21st century, with particular emphasis on the way world champions such as Botvinnik, Kasparov and Carlsen have influenced competition formats. Official recognition of the Fischer-Random chess variant and the demographic of the next Wijk ann Zee A tournament — with not a single player aged in their 30s or 40s — show that this evolutionary process has never been stronger.

7/12/2017 – "Do you find yourself spending too much time on social media?" asks the columnist in the July issue of CHESS Magazine. "Me too." John describes how he keeps compulsively checking his Facebook and Twitter accounts. It uses up a lot of time, but there are plus points: you find a lot of chess puzzles, many of them quite irresistible. He shows us two examples which you can try to solve on our interactive javascript chess board. Have fun.

1/30/2017 – At the end of five rounds of play, six players led the standings with 4.5/5. After a trio of bloody battles at the top boards in the sixth round, three players are left in the lead. Early leaders Emil Sutovsky and Ju Wenjun were 'punished' by the goddess Caissa according to Nigel Short, who was also the highlight of the day as he defeated the world number two Fabiano Caruana. John Saunders reports from Gibraltar.

1/28/2017 – After four rounds of the Tradewise Gibraltar Masters 2017, we have only two players on 4.0/4: ACP President and Israeli grandmaster Emil Sutovsky and Women's World Championship Challenger Ju Wenjun. Emil beat Nikita Vitiugov in a complex Ruy Lopez Breyer, while Wenjun got the better of Sam Shankland in a Benoni. There are 14 players with a score of 3.5/4 including MVL, Adams, Nakamura and Gelfand. We have an illustrated report with photos, videos and analysis sent to us by John Saunders.