1/21/2020 – The 18th Gibraltar International Chess Festival starts today at the Caleta Hotel on the east side of the Rock of Gibraltar. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov tops the starting ranking list, joined by fellow "2700 club" members Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Wang Hao, Veselin Topalov, David Navara, Le Quang Liem and Kirill Alekseenko. Anatoly Karpov opened the festival with a simultaneous exhibition. Live games and commentary with GM David Howell and Fiona Steil-Antoni from 14:00 UTC (15:00 CET, 9:00 EST). | Pictured: Mayor of Gibraltar John Gonçalves, made the first move on the top board at the start of the 2020 Gibraltar Masters with top seed GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov from Azerbaijan. Currently No.8 in the world he played his first round game against 12-year-old Candidate Master Raahil Mullick from India. Photo: Niki Riga

11/11/2019 – Levon Aronian only finished in 5th place with 10 points from 18 games in this weekend's blitz tournament, but when combined with his 10 points in the rapid, his total tally tied him for first place with Sergey Karjakin, who won the blitz portion jointly with Le Quang Liem scoring 11/18. In the resulting playoff, Aronian scored a full point in the second game to snare the overall victory in the Romanian capital, Bucharest. | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour

9/19/2019 – Eight players reached round four of the FIDE World Cup after Wednesday's tiebreaks. The biggest surprise was given by Jeffery Xiong, who knocked out second seed Anish Giri in the 10'+10" rapid phase. The other underdog to go through was Le Quang Liem, who eliminated Vladislav Artemiev. Ding Liren, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Leinier Dominguez, Yu Yangyi and Peter Svidler also went through. GM DANNY KING recapped the action of the play-offs. | Photo: FIDE

7/26/2019 – GM Le Quang Liem won his maiden Asian Continental for the very first time in his career, becoming the first Vietnamese player to do so. But he did not stop there and continued his momentum going on to win two more strong tournaments consecutively — the Saint Louis Summer Classic and World Open in Philadelphia — all in just a little over three weeks. Shahid Ahmed investigates how he maintains strong composure in such difficult fields? | Photo: Austin Fuller / Saint Louis Chess Club

7/1/2019 – Over the weekend at the Saint Louis Chess Club, the trio of tournaments comprising the "Summer Chess Classic" came to an end after 10 rounds of action. The most Elo-heavy 'A' tournament was won by the Vietnamese Grandmaster Le Quang Liem with 6.0/10. David Howell (England) and Jeffery Xiong (USA) each scored 5½ points. The winner of the B tournament was Grigoriy Oparin (Russia, 6.5 / 10); The C tournament was won by Arturs Neiksans (Latvia, 6.5 / 10). | Photo: Crystal Fuller

7/1/2019 – Our monthly look at the FIDE ratings for July2019 with a focus on the outcome of the Women's Candidates tournament won by 20-year old Russian phenom Aleksandra Goryachkina (pictured). In blitz, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave has taken the #1 spot away from World Champion Magnus Carlsen thanks to his Norway Chess blitz win. And 58-year old GM Igors Rausis continues his improbable climb up the raking list by bashing much weaker players. | Photo: Eteri Kublashvili

6/21/2019 – The Summer Classic 2019 in Saint Louis consists of three tournaments with six players each held from June 18th to 28th. Sam Shankland is the top seed in the A group, but lost his first round game to the tournament leader David Howell. Another 'Sam' — Sam Sevian — heads the B group but Surya Ganguly is off to a strong start with 2½/3. | Pictured: Swiercz vs. Jones via commentary webcast with GM Jesse Kraai and Caleb Denby

6/17/2019 – With 7.0/9 Vietnamese Grandmaster Le Quang Liem was sole winner of the Asian Continental Championships in Xingtai, China, five players qualified for the World Cup 2019, Dinara Saduakossava won the women's event with 7½/9, Nihal Sarin finished first in the blitz tournament, and a number of interesting games were played. | Photos: Chinese Chess Federation

4/14/2019 – The 21st Dubai Open witnessed one of the closest finishes that you would see at an open tournament. After nine rounds we had eight players on the same score of 7.0/9. Buchholz was the tiebreak and based on it Maxim Matlakov from Russia finished first and took home USD $13,000 along with the glittering Sheikh Rashid Bin Hamdan Al Maktoum Cup. Other players on 7.0/9 were 14-year-old prodigy Abdusattorov Nodirbek, Le Quang Liem, Yuriy Kuzubov, Eduardo Iturrizaga, Sanal Vahap, Aleksandar Indjic and P. Iniyan. A detailed report from Dubai by NIKLESH JAIN.

3/25/2019 – The Sharjah Masters 2019 is one of the strongest open tournaments in the world. With a total prize fund of $60,000 and the first prize of $15,000, they have been able to attract some of the strongest GMs in the world. There are 35 GMs and 35 IM taking part in this tournament. After three rounds we have five leaders: 14-year-old Nihal Sarin, Alexander Fier, Ernesto Inarkiev, Le Quang Liem and Eduardo Iturrizaga. Niklesh Jain is at the venue and sends us a detailed report.

3/10/2019 – The Spring Chess Classic is a pair of 10-player round-robin tournaments at the Saint Louis Chess Club. After eight rounds, Jeffrey Xiong, Ray Robson and Illya Nyzhnyk are leading with 5 points. Vassily Ivanchuk and Rustam Kasimdzhanov are surprisingly in the last two places. Live games from 19:00 UTC (20:00 CET, 2 PM EDT) / Live commentary webcast from 21:30 UTC (22:30 CET 4:30 PM EDT). | Pictured: Commentary hosts Ben Simon and GM Aman Hambleton

3/9/2019 – The Spring Chess Classic is a pair of 10-player round-robin tournaments at the Saint Louis Chess Club. After four rounds, the A group field was surprisingly tight with five out of the ten players tied on 3 points. But after seven, Jeffrey Xiong (pictured) and Illya Nyzhnyk have taken the lead. Vassily Ivanchuk and Rustam Kasimdzhanov, meanwhile, are struggling. | Photo: Austin Fuller

1/9/2019 – The early defeat of GM Le Quang Liem (pictured) against 12-year-old Christopher Yoo at the Bay Area International Open, January 1st to 7th, in California caused a stir, but the Vietnamese grandmaster recovered with a winning streak which saw him score 5½ points from the last six rounds, and finally manage to win the tournament jointly with the Russian GM Andrey Stukopin, who also reached 7 points. Christopher Yoo, slipped to 37th place but with the consolation of earning his third IM norm, which makes him the youngest American IM ever. | Photo: David Llada

12/19/2018 – The Asian Continental Championship remained wide open until the very end. At the conclusion of the final round, all of the top three finishers — Wei Yi, Amin Tabatabaei and Le Quang Liem — were tied for first and it wasn't until the application of the tiebreaks that Wei Yi was declared the winner. In the women's group, too, Padmini Rout was caught in the lead after the final round by Gong Qianyun but clinched the title nonetheless as she had won the direct encounter against Gong in round 6. Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son and Surya Shekhar Ganguly took the fourth and the fifth spots respectively to book their berth into the 2019 FIDE World Cup. | Photo: Peter Long

12/16/2018 – Recovering from their early upsets, Wang Hao, Vidit Gujrathi and Le Quang Liem made their way back to the top of the leaderboard at the 17th Asian Continental Championship in Manila, Philippines. Surya Ganguly and M. Amin Tabatabei are tied for first with 5½ after seven rounds. Six grandmasters including Vidit Gujrathi, Wei Yi and Le Quang Liem are a half point behind at 5/7. With two rounds to go, it's still wide open.

12/13/2018 – The 17th edition of the Asian Continental Championship did not begin on the right note. A night before the start of the event, GM Vidit Gujrathi took to Facebook to express his dissatisfaction about the conditions provided. He further revealed that he and his colleagues MR Lalith Babu and Abhijit Kunte were attacked by a group of goons, just a few hundred metres away from their hotel! In our first report, we talk about the incident, FIDE's reaction and the happenings of the first three rounds. No photos or video are currently available in the "gallery" of the official site: philchesstournaments.com

9/28/2018 – The Olympiad in Batumi witnessed its most exciting round as India took on USA. While this was the biggest encounter, the match turned into something pretty one-sided as Fabiano Caruana beat Vishy Anand and took home the match with the score of 2½:1½. The real action was witnessed in the match between Poland and Russia, as the Poles managed to beat the mighty Russian team. The two decisive wins were scored by Jacek Tomczak, who beat Kramnik, and Kamil Dragun, who got the better of Dmitry Jakovenko. A report filled with pictures, videos and GM analysis.

8/15/2018 – The 25th edition of the Abu Dhabi Chess Festival kicks off today at Hotel Dusit Thani, Abu Dhabi. The anniversary event is extra strong this year, featuring five grandmasters with a 2700+ Elo, among them the FIDE Presidential candidate Nigel Short making a brief return to the chessboard amid a hectic campaign season.

8/10/2018 – The first three rounds of the Abu Dhabi Masters saw quite a few upsets, miscalculations and opening debacles. In fact, the top seed of the tournament, Le Quang Liem had to taste defeat at the hands of 17-year-old VS Rathanvel in the very first round. By the end of three rounds only two out of the five grandmasters rated above 2700 have been able to maintain an unblemished score of 3/3. Richard Rapport (2719) is the highest rated among them. | Photos: adchessfestival.ae

8/4/2018 – Scoring 4½/7, tournament's top seed, GM Yu Yangyi bagged the title prize of the 9th Hainan Danzhou Super Grandmaster tournament. In the final round, the race for the title was between Yu Yangyi and his countryman Bu Xiangzhi. Going for a comfortable draw in the Petroff, Yu put the onus of catching up on his rival who was half-a-point behind. Bu was never really in a position to win his game but Fedoseev, Bu's opponent, surprisingly pulled out a win at the last moment to score his first win of the event. Le Quang Liem and Wei Yi also scored impressive wins in the finale.

8/3/2018 – Big changes occurred on the leaderboard at the conclusion of the penultimate round at the 9th Hainan Danzhou Masters. Tournament leader, Bu Xiangzhi lost his first game of the event to Jan-Krzysztof Duda. This allowed Yu Yangyi, Bu's closest rival to take over the lead after he won a fine attacking game against Vladimir Fedoseev. Le Quang Liem also scored his first win of the tournament in round six against Sam Shankland.

8/2/2018 – After two exciting rounds at the 9th Hainan Danzhou Masters, draws were agreed on all boards in the antepenultimate round Wednesday. Wei Yi was the only player with any chance of pushing for a win while players battled in fairly balanced positions on all other boards. This is a welcome development for the tournament leader, Bu Xiangzhi, who now has to stay ahead of his rivals for only two more rounds in order to clinch the title.

7/30/2018 – Two wins and two draws were witnessed in the fourth round of the 9th Hainan Danzhou Super Grandmaster Tournament. Interestingly, the downfall of both losers — Vidit Gujrathi and Jan-Krzysztof Duda — began after they moved their pawn to b5. Bu Xiangzhi kept his tournament lead in the meantime with a draw against Wei Yi in a razor-sharp Ragozin. Going into the rest day, he remains ahead of his nearest rival by half-a-point.

7/30/2018 – The third round of the 9th Hainan Danzhou Super Grandmaster tournament was a turbulent affair. Bu Xiangzhi took sole lead beating Le Quang Liem after the latter faltered miserably in a Symmetrical English; Vladimir Fedoseev pulled out a draw from a lost position against Jan-Krzysztof Duda; Vidit Gujrathi broke Sam Shankland's undefeated streak of 62 games; while Yu Yangyi managed to eke out a win in a dead drawn position against Wei Yi. Round 3 report.