11/26/2019 – Seven players tied for first at the Spanish Championship in Marbella. The first tiebreaker criterion left Alexei Shirov, Paco Vallejo and Iván Salgado on the podium, in that order. Among the women, Sabrina Vega obtained her sixth national title, while Liudmila Kolotilina and Mónica Calzetta got second and third places respectively. | Photo: Spanish Chess Federation

11/22/2019 – After six rounds, five players share the lead at the Spanish Championship in Marbella, with top seed Paco Vallejo and former world number two Alexei Shirov included in the group that collected five points so far. José Cuenca, Miguel Santos Ruiz (pictured) and Pedro Ginés Esteo (b. 2004) are also co-leading. In the race for the women's trophy, four players are currently on top with 4 out of 6. | Photo: Spanish Chess Federation

11/19/2019 – Most of the strongest Spanish players are participating at the 2019 edition of the national championship in Marbella, Málaga. After three rounds, five players have managed to maintain a perfect score: Alexei Shirov, Iván Salgado, Jaime Santos, José Cuenca and defending champion Gabriel del Río. The strong event had Anatoly Karpov as a special guest. The former world champion also gave a simul. | Photo: Diario Sur

10/21/2019 – Among the players on the Isle of Man is former top ten GM Alexei Shirov. Today GM Simon Williams selects his favourite of Shirov's sacrificial masterpieces. Watch for free (for a limited time) starting at the usual hour: 16:00 UTC (18:00 CEST / 12 Noon EDT).

10/15/2019 – Round five of the FIDE chess.com Grand Swiss was as exciting as could be, with the game on board one lasting almost seven hours and seeing world number two Fabiano Caruana miraculously saving a half point against Luke McShane. The point was also split in Wang Hao v Parham Maghsoodloo on board two, while Alexander Grischuk, Vladimir Fedoseev and Alexei Shirov won with White to join the leading pack. | Photo: Maria Emelianova / chess.com

10/12/2019 – Fabiano Caruana, Wang Hao, Bu Xiangzhi, Alexei Shirov and Adhiban Baskaran are the only five players left with a perfect score after two rounds at the FIDE chess.com Grand Swiss. World champion Magnus Carlsen was held to a draw by Alexey Sarana and is now one of forty-five players on 1½ out of 2. Upsets kept turning up on Friday, as the plot begins to unfold in the Isle of Man. GM YANNICK PELLETIER looked at the highlights from round two. | Photo: Maria Emelianova / chess.com

9/19/2019 – Today's guest in Karsten Mueller's Endgame Show is the famous Alexey "Fire on Board" Shirov. We suspect Shirov has some surprising ideas to spark your endgame play. Live at 13:00 UTC (15:30 CEST, 9:00 AM EDT) and on-demand for ChessBase account holders. Don't have an account yet? You can register a free 90-day account to watch!

8/7/2019 – Alexei Shirov showed he can still play, at the 5th CellaVison Cup in Lund, Sweden. He won the tournament with 7 of 8 thanks to better tiebreak score ahead of Kryakvin and Külaots. Pia Cramling took the women's prize with 6 points. The tournament also featured paintings by Mariya Yugina, wife of GM Mihail Marin. | Photos: Lars OA Hedlund

3/14/2019 – The Challengers group at the Prague Chess Festival concludes today, and with one round to play Spanish GM David Anton is in pole position, leading by half a point over Jan Krejci. But Anton will face one final challenge as he seeks to qualify to the 2020 Masters: Indian prodigy Praggnanandhaa. | Photo: Vladimir Jagr / PragueChessFestival.com

2/2/2019 – The story of Tal can never be finished and his fans always want more. Only this series has to end for now. In the concluding installment here our columnist offers his final observations on Team Tal, the last testament of Valentin Kirillov. | Photo: chesspro.ru

2/1/2019 – A large ten-round Swiss tournament was organised at the Chilean port city of Arica. Players from seventeen countries arrived in the northernmost city of the Andean country. Top seed Alexei Shirov took first place after finishing with an undefeated 8½/10 score. Peruvian IM Renato Terry surprised by ending up second and Farrukh Amonatov clinched third place on tiebreaks. Full pictorial report provided by club "Jaque 64".

1/8/2019 – Americans invade Mexico! At least to play some chess! Grandmaster ALEX YERMOLINSKY recounts his recent trip to a memorable tournament (with a memorable name) "south of the border", in an instalment of his ongoing travelogue featuring Latvian legend GM Alexei Shirov and GM Alex Shabalov and a photo tour of Chihuahua's central Plaza de Armas. | All photos: Alex Yermolinsky

10/27/2018 – With only two rounds to go, seven players share first place at the Chess.com Isle of Man International Tournament. The six co-leaders drew each other — in fact, the six first boards finished tied, while the only player that used this opportunity to join them at the top was Michael Adams, who inflicted Gupta's second straight loss. Twelve players are trailing by half a point, including round seven winners Anish Giri, Levon Aronian and Alexander Grischuk. | Photos: John Saunders / Official site

8/9/2018 – In Sweden there is currently "Extremadura" (it's been a hot dry summer) and so the T-shirt of Aleyey Shirov was very suitable for the Cellavision Cup in Lund. The recently re-Spaniard played all eight decisive games and won the tournament thanks to better tiebreak score over tied Jonny Hector. Both scored 7.0 / 8. | Photos: Lars OA Hedlund

6/17/2018 – The second weekend of June saw Slovenia's second largest city, Maribor, host a series of chess activities. First, Alexei Shirov took on six promising Slovenian players in a clock simultaneous exhibition. At the same time, a match faced two very strong historical figures in the chess world, Alexander Beliavsky and Evgeny Sveshnikov. The weekend also included an online match against a club from Shanghai, a blitz tournament and the final match of a league of cadets. | Photo: Lena Uranjek

5/6/2018 – The Russian Team Championship has long been one of the strongest team events of the year, often with elite players from abroad mixed with local talents. This year, due to economic difficulties, many times were forced to forego on big names, but as pointed out by author ALEX YERMOLINSKY, this is almost a blessing in disguise as many talented local masters and grandmasters find themselves invited to play. Enjoy this illustrated report with various commented games. | Photo: Russian Chess Federation

4/3/2018 – On Easter Monday, the GRENKE Chess Open ended with a sensation. Vincent Keymer won Europe's largest open chess tournament with 8.0 points from nine rounds. He started as number 99 in the ranking list, yet left behind 49 grandmasters, including such well-known names as Etienne Bacrot (France), Richard Rapport (Hungary), Alexei Shirov (Latvia) and Anton Korobov (Ukraine). What makes the victory all the sweeter is that it comes with a GM norm and a cash prize of 15,000 euros. | Photo: Georgios Souleidis

8/30/2017 – At the RTU Open in Riga the drawing of lots gave me a very special opponent. I was to play against Alexei Shirov, one of my chess idols as a junior. The chance to play him was definitely my tournament highlight. I knew that I was the underdog but I did not want to submit meekly. But what to play against Shirov? Fortunately, Peter Heine Nielsen's new DVD "The Semi-Slav" offered help. | Photo: Pascal Simon

8/22/2017 – The RTU Open took place in Riga from August 7th to 13th, and was won by Ukrainian Grandmaster Vladimir Onischuk with 7½/9. Local hero Alexei Shirov couldn't show his best chess and finished 35th. Strong impressions were made by some youth players, including the world's current female No. 1 in the Under-18 category, Zhansaya Abdumallik | Photos: rtuopen.lv

7/26/2017 – The second edition of the Stars Cup recently took place, pitting once more a team of Iranian talents against experienced strong international players, to allow the Iranians a chance to learn and grow. This year, the international team included the likes of Shirov, Jobava, Bruzon Batista, and more, and Iran's lineup saw Maghsoodloo, who finished with a 2700+ performance, Firouzja, and more. Reporting on it, with a look into Iranian chess, is GM Elshan Moradiabadi. | Photos: chessstarscup.ir

4/24/2017 – The Berlin Defense (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6) is a very solid line for Black - so solid that players dubbed it "The Berlin Wall". But Alexei Shirov has some ideas "how to crack the Berlin Wall". Hedinn Steingrimsson liked these ideas - and so did Hou Yifan who used Shirov's recommendations to beat Fabiano Caruana in round 1 of the Grenke Classic.

1/17/2017 – The Berlin Defence gives White a hard nut to crack – after 5.d4 White has trouble proving any advantage. Top Latvian GM Alexei Shirov proposes a different approach: play 5.Re1 and you will get a symmetrical position that is not boring at all. With a whole range of grandmaster games Shirov shows that White can indeed develop pressure and seize the initiative, and that the position is full of subtleties. His latest DVD gives you a first-class weapon against the Berlin and helps you to be at least one step ahead of your opponent.

12/5/2016 – From December 1 to December 24 we invite our readers every day to open a door in our advent calendar. Click and enjoy a little chess treat. Advent calendar, door 5.

10/7/2016 – Alexey Shirov started the Isle of Man tournament with 4.0/4 but in round five surprisingly decided to use the option of a "bye". He did not play the round and took a rest which brought - or cost, according to perspective - him half a point. In round six Shirov was back at the board but all his fire seemed gone. He played with Black against Pavel Eljanov and found no recipe against Eljanov's cool and creative positional play and was convincingly outplayed. After six rounds Eljanov is now sole leader with 5.5/6.