1/1/2023 – We have been trying to keep track of incredible playing strength and title wins at a very early age. It started with Capablanca and Reshevsky, and today we are seeing full grandmasters aged thirteen — and in two cases even just twelve! Most recently it was Abhimanyu Mishra who achieved the title at twelve years and just under five months. It is time to update our prodigy page, with better graphics and a few telling graphs. We also invite our readers to contribute.

7/18/2022 – What, you may well ask, is the 'Two Plus Club'? Is this some country club for lonelyhearts, or something of that ilk? Nothing like that. By winning the Candidates tournament for the second straight time, and thus qualifying himself for a second shot at the World title, Ian Nepomniachtchi has joined a very exclusive group of repeat challengers. Let's take a look at who they are. | Photo: FIDE / Stev Bonhage

6/1/2022 – The claim to be the best ever in chess, in any category, is usually backed up by either hard numbers (Karpov's number of grandmaster tournament wins is not open to debate), or strong opinions such as the best absolute player. But the debate on the greatest prodigy seems to lie somewhere in between, depending on your criteria. Read this article and see if you agree. (photo: Capablanca at age four)

6/18/2020 – The Turkish artist Necati Korkmaz made something tiny with incredible effort. The perhaps smallest Chess set in the world is measuring less than a single centimetre. Soon he will apply for this set to become a new Guinness World record. But will it be accepted? | Photo: Facebook

4/26/2019 – Everyone loves to play blitz! But two guys from Himachal Pradesh in India Hansraj Thakur and Hitesh Azad decided to take this a notch higher. They played non stop blitz for 53 hours, 17 minutes and 49 seconds and 303 games to create a world record for the longest period of playing non stop blitz chess games. They bettered the total time of Jacek Gajewski and Wojciech Waruga who had played a total of 514 blitz games in 50 hours. In this article FI PRAFUL ZAVERI tells us all about this new world record. We also have all the 303 encounters, just in case you would like to check the quality of the games.

1/15/2019 – 12 years, 7 months and 17 days — that's the age of the new second youngest ever, GM-elect D. Gukesh. He's also the 60th grandmaster from India! How did this youngster achieve it? On the surface, it looks like an extremely smooth journey where Gukesh achieved one milestone after another. "But when you delve deeper", writes SAGAR SHAH, "you see tremendous amount of sacrifices, grit, determination and much more from not just the youngster and his entire family". | Photo: David Llada

11/11/2018 – Ding Liren lost in Shenzen today for the first time in over 15 months, ending his historic streak at 100 games. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave was the spoiler, and he now is the co-leader of the tournament along with Yu Yangi. Nikita Vitiugov also won on Sunday, sending Radoslaw Wojtaszek into the cellar. Records are meant to be broken, but the all-time undefeated streak claimed by Sergei Tiviakov is going to be a tough one to crack. He kindly provided all 110 games and a brief description in an attempt to set the record...of the record...straight! | Photo: qipai.org.cn

8/8/2018 – We have been trying to keep track of incredible playing strength and title wins at a very early age. It started with Capablanca and Reshevsky, and today we are seeing full grandmasters aged thirteen — and in two cases twelve! Most recently it was Pragnanandhaa, who achieved the title at twelve years and ten months. It became time to update our prodigy page, with better graphics and a few telling graphs. We also invite our readers to contribute.

4/4/2018 – R Praggnanandhaa had been making headlines ever since he became the world's youngest IM in May 2016. All eyes were on the little genius, with everyone eager to see if he could become the world's youngest GM too. The kid gave it his all, and as the deadline to break the record approached closer, he travelled across the globe playing every tournament that offered him the possibility of scoring a norm. But, in the end, he lost the race against time. However, Praggna earned heaps of admiration and love, and, most importantly, his zeal to excel remains undeterred. So, all things considered, wasn't the struggle worth a lot more than the record? | Photo: Lennart Ootes Reykjavik Open Facebook page

6/29/2017 – The ChessBase Mega Database contains more than 6.8 million games, the whole history of chess, from 1560 to 2016. And the Mega has a powerful search mask which gives ample opportunity for a little chess fun. For instance, if you want to know what is the shortest game of all time that ended with stalemate.

5/23/2017 – Who played the longest streak of games, in classical chess, without a single loss? Fischer? Kasparov? And how many games did the record holder survive? Well, we all know that José Raúl Capablanca did not suffer a single loss for eight years, from 1916 - 1924. But has his record been broken? The magazine New in Chess, which we greatly admire, produced a list in their 2017/2 issue. It was modified in 2017/3. Do our readers have further changes?

1/14/2017 – On December 4, 2016, Timur Gareyev played against 48 opponents in a blindfold simul that lasted nearly 20 hours to set the new world record, a truly unbelievable exhibition of human strength and stamina. However, the road to the record was one of extensive preparation during which he met with leading experts in memory techniques, and even brought in the last surviving opponent of Najdorf's 1947 record, 92-year-old Luciano Andrade. Here is the full story behind the world record.

12/2/2015 – Records come and go, and US chess has seen an explosion in interest among young players in the past decade. Until a week ago, the record for the youngest IM in the US was held by Samuel Sevian, but it was just broken by IM-elect Awonder Liang, beating him by three months. Except his record of youngest national master was also just broken.

12/17/2014 – At age 13 years 10 months and 27 days, Samuel Sevian became the world's youngest grandmaster, and the youngest grandmaster in US history, beating Ray Robson's record. His course has been a list of 'youngest evers', and his determination in the recent Saint Louis Invitational, where he clinched the 2500 rating, showed in his games. Here is a look at his spectacular chess resume.

11/24/2013 – With the advent of Magnus Carlsen as the new world champion, the 16th in the line of classical chess, we decided to compile a few lists regarding the records and results, the stats and the facts. You know who the youngest number one ever is, but can you name the second? The third? How about the youngest world champions, or the most crushing victories? We answer all these questions and more.