9/5/2024 – Surya Shekhar Ganguly defeated Sam Shankland in their 8-game online match with the unique scoring system devised by Venceslav Rutar - which changes the scoring of draws into three categories based on the material disparity. Surya won the match by a 26-11 score, after grabbing 5 wins. Shankland collected 1 win, and 3 games ended in 'equal draws'. While there were no 'favoured' nor 'unfavoured' draws in the match, the format advocated for fighting chess as we got to see so many interesting games.

9/2/2024 – Venceslav Rutar from Slovenia is organising a match between GM Sam Shankland and GM Surya Sekhar Ganguly on 2-3 September. What's so special about this event? As Venceslav says, "Draws are not the problem, the problem is how we score them!" A unique scoring system will be used in this match. The traditional system with 1 point (to the winner), ½ point (to both the players) and 0 points (to the loser) will be replaced by five possibilities: win, favoured draw, equal draw, disfavoured draw and loss. Live transmission of the first game starts at 8.30 pm IST (17.00 CEST, 11.00 EDT). | Photos: Austin Fuller & Lennart Ootes / Saint Louis Chess Club

5/21/2024 – Round 7 of the Sharjah Masters saw former sole leader Aravindh Chithambaram losing his game with white against Iranian GM Bardiya Daneshvar, the 50th seed in the event. Daneshvar thus leapfrogged Aravindh in the standings, as he is now sharing the lead with Sam Shankland. Shankland defeated his compatriot Hans Niemann after the latter misplayed a king and pawn endgame. | Photo: Aditya Sur Roy

6/30/2023 – World Championship Match 2023: All seven decided games annotated by Anish Giri, Hou Yifan, Sam Shankland and Wesley So - TePe Sigeman Tournament: Analyses by Peter Svidler, Boris Gelfand, Nils Grandelius, Abhimanyu Mishra and Jorden van Foreest - All-rounder Boris Spassky: "Special" with 27 top-class encounters from the period 1949 to 1989 + articles on strategy (Marin) and endgame (Mueller) – Is Scandinavian with 3...Qa5 busted? Martin Lorenzini thinks so - and recommends 1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Qxd5 3.Nc3 Qa5 4.d4 Nf6 5.Nf3 Bf5 6.Bd2 e6 7.Ne5! – “How I became U14 World Champion”: Ilamparthi presents the decisive moments together with Sagar Shah – “Practical tips for the tournament player”: Why are symmetrical positions much more dangerous than you expect? and much more!

3/20/2023 – Day 3 of the American Cup saw four players eliminated from the tournament, as the first matches of the Elimination Bracket took place. Levon Aronian knocked out Sam Sevian, while Sam Shankland won a hotly contested playoff against Ray Robson. Meanwhile, in the women’s section, Tatev Abrahamyan took down Katerina Nemcova, while newcomer WGM Atousa Pourkashiyan sent Anna Zatonskih home with a 1½-½ victory. | Photo: Saint Louis Chess Club / Lennart Ootes

10/15/2022 – After nine rounds, Fabiano Caruana and Jennifer Yu are the sole leaders at the U.S. Championship and U.S. Women’s Championship, respectively. Caruana drew with Awonder Liang after the latter continued the trend of playing offbeat openings in Saint Louis, while Jennifer Yu defeated Ashritha Eswaran in what was her sixth victory of the event. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

10/10/2022 – Fabiano Caruana and Jennifer Yu are the sole leaders in the U.S. Championships going into the first rest day of the 13-round event. In round 5, Caruana drew birthday boy Wesley So with the white pieces, while Yu defeated Sabina Foisor with black in what was her fifth consecutive decisive game of the tournament. | Photo: Bryan Adams

10/1/2022 – Wesley So, Levon Aronian, Leinier Dominguez and Sam Shankland all have something in common. They play for the US national team, and they are all Libra. Although many Libra grandmasters play excellent chess, none have won a world championship title, except for Ruslan Ponomariov, who won the FIDE title in 2002. Even legends like Ossip Bernstein, Viacheslav Ragozin and New York-born Reuben Fine were close, but not close enough. Maybe it's because Libras bring too much lightness to the game? | Photo: Pixabay

6/9/2022 – Defending champion Sam Shankland bounced back from his first-round loss against Le Quang Liem by beating Saleh Salem with the white pieces in the Masters section of the Prague Chess Festival. This was the only decisive game of the day. A more eventful second round in the Challengers saw four players scoring wins with white — one of the winners was Vincent Keymer, who grabbed the sole lead as the only participant who scored back-to-back victories in the first two rounds. | Photos: Petr Vrabec

3/28/2022 – Four players representing the United States scored full points in round 5 of the Berlin Grand Prix. Levon Aronian and Hikaru Nakamura both won and are now sharing the lead in pool A, much like Wesley So and Sam Shankland, who are now co-leaders in pool C. Given round-5’s results, we are likely to see tiebreaks after Monday’s final round, as none of the four groups has a sole leader at the moment. | Photos: World Chess

3/3/2022 – Two players have a 1-point lead in their respective pools going into round 3 of the FIDE Grand Prix preliminaries in Belgrade. Anish Giri and Vidit Gujrathi kicked off the event with back-to-back wins and are the sole leaders in pools B and C. In pool A, Sam Shankland joined Dmitry Andreikin in the lead thanks to a win over Alexander Grischuk. In pool D, both games were drawn for a second consecutive day. | Photos: Mark Livshitz

1/30/2022 – Magnus Carlsen beat Fabiano Caruana to claim his eighth tournament title in Wijk aan Zee with a round to spare. The world champion will not even need to show up for Sunday’s final round, as the organizers of the tournament confirmed that Daniil Dubov will not be playing despite testing negative to a second Covid-19 PCR test. Meanwhile, Arjun Erigaisi clinched the title in the Challengers, thus getting an invitation to next year’s main event. | Photo: Jurriaan Hoefsmit