5/5/2026 – It was a rainy night in Sivakasi, and there was a power cut, but it didn't stop 8-year-old Tamizh Amudhan from playing Freestyle Friday on chess.com. The laptop was on, the mobile hotspot was connected, the candle was lit, and the spirit was high as usual. It was 8:30 PM IST on 1 May when Tamizh Amudhan got paired up against elite GM Vincent Keymer, who recently qualified for the Freestyle World Championship 2027 after winning the Grenke Freestyle Chess tournament, and guess what happened? Check out the game in this article.
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Tamizh tricks Keymer!
By Devansh Singh
The game itself is a perfect example of Tamizh's resistance. He had a really bad position out of the opening, and Keymer missed a mating combination to finish the game. Most players get nervous when they notice they could have lost a few moves ago, but this was not the case with Tamizh. He came back from a losing position and played a solid sequence of attacking moves to win the game.
This video course features the ins-and-outs of the possible setups Black can choose. You’ll learn the key concepts and strategies needed to add this fantastic opening to your repertoire. An easy-to-learn and yet venomous weapon.
You can see the boy's dedication in the picture below, sitting on the floor with his laptop on a pillow. His dad, Sathish, is sitting there to keep an eye on his talented son. And finally, the candle in the bottom corner, helping to keep some light on, but the brightest source of light isn't that candle, it's the boy Tamizh himself!
The picture was clicked by his dad, Sathish, just after Tamizh defeated Keymer!
Out of 960 possible positions in Freestyle Chess, position 880 was chosen randomly for the first round of Freestyle Friday, and Tamizh was playing with black against Keymer.
Tamizh played 9...Ne8, and Keymer could have won the game right here with 10.Bxh7 (the Greek Gift sacrifice), but he castled, and that gave Tamizh a chance to avoid checkmate.
Keymer had 57 seconds left, and he just took one second before playing this move, and it turned out to be a huge disaster, as Tamizh found a brilliant attacking idea starting with 22...Nh4 followed by 23...Rg6, winning the exchange after a few more moves.
Tamizh finished the game in style by playing 44...a5!, and Keymer resigned.
Two Super Grandmasters from India explain the ins & outs of Attack, Tactics an Calculations in these two video courses.
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Seventy kilometres away from the Madurai airport is a place named Thiruthangal. It is home to the Hatsun Chess Academy, a one-of-its-kind residential chess academy. Supported by the CSR activities of the Hatsun Agro Products Pvt. Ltd, one of India's biggest dairy-related companies, and powered by the vision of GM Vishnu Prasanna and his team, this is sure to create new champions in the country.
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Tamizh was just four years old when he first learned chess. His first exposure to chess came from his cousins, who had themselves only recently begun playing the game. Tamizh quickly began showing an instinctive understanding of the board.
In this course, we will learn how to identify passively placed pieces in any given situation and how to improve their health by bringing them into active squares.
The boy's parents have done immense sacrifice to support his training. His mother lives with him, nearly 350 kilometres away from home, while his father stays back with his sister. The family has happily embraced this arrangement so that Tamizh can pursue his chess career.
Doesn’t every chess game get decided by mistakes? Absolutely. But most players never truly comprehend that they are making the same kind of mistakes over and over again.
ChessBase IndiaChessBase India is currently the biggest chess news portal and chess software distributor in India. We have daily reports about tournaments in India, profiles of the best talents and information about players performing admirably at the international level. Our motto is “Powering Chess in India”. Apart from news, we provide all the services that are required to ease the life of a chess player.
5/3/2026 – Magnus Carlsen scored the only win of round two at the TePe Sigeman & Co Chess Tournament, beating Nils Grandelius with the black pieces to join Andy Woodward and Nodirbek Abdusattorov in the lead on 1½/2 points. Abdusattorov missed clear winning chances against Woodward, while Arjun Erigaisi and Jorden van Foreest pressed in what turned out to be long draws against Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus and Zhu Jiner, respectively. | Photo: Peter Doggers / <a href="https://www.tepesigemanchess.com/">Official website</a>
5/2/2026 – Nodirbek Abdusattorov and Andy Woodward took the early lead at the TePe Sigeman & Co Chess Tournament after scoring the only wins of round one in Malmö. Abdusattorov beat Zhu Jiner, while Woodward (pictured) defeated local representative Nils Grandelius. Magnus Carlsen's first classical game in almost a year ended in a draw against Arjun Erigaisi, while 14-year-old Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus also drew with Jorden van Foreest. | Photo: Peter Doggers / <a href="https://www.tepesigemanchess.com/">Official website</a>
This entry into the 60 minutes series concentrates on the Modern variation of the Italian game where White opens the centre early : 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bc4 Nf6 4 d4 exd4 5 e5!. This line can be reached by various move orders, most frequently from the Scotch 3 d4 exd4 4 Bc4. It's a sharp variation and Grandmasters such as Evgeny Sveshnikov have used it frequently,with very good results. It's a perfect line for club players to adopt which is relatively easy to learn and which contains many traps. All the main responses are covered here, including 5...d5, 5...Ng4 and 5...Ne4 and the conclusion is that is is difficult for Black to equalize in a straightforward way. Problems are being posed, which over the board might prove tough to solve.
You will learn how Black's dynamic piece activity and structural counterplay more than compensate for White's extra tempo in the colour-reversed setups.
In this course, you’ll learn how to take the initiative against the London and prevent White from comfortably playing their usual system by playing 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bf4 Nh5.
From the 2026 Candidates Tournament, featuring a video review by Dorian Rogozenco, to Jan Werle’s opening video on the French Tarrasch Defence, and Oliver Reeh’s tactical column ‘Top Grandmasters at Work’. Analyses by Giri, So, Wei Yi and many others.
London System Powerbase 2026 is a database and contains in all 11 285 games from Mega 2026 and the Correspondence Database 2026, of which 282 are annotated.
The London System Powerbook 2026 is based on more than 410 000 games or game fragments from different opening moves and ECO codes; what they all have in common is that White plays d4 and Bf4 but does not play c4.
In this course, Grandmaster Elisabeth Pähtz presents the London System, a structured and ambitious approach based on the immediate Bf4, leading to rich and dynamic positions.
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