Chess

Cream of the Candidates

25 June 2022 9:00 am

The Candidates tournament is underway in Madrid, where eight of the world’s best players vie for the right to challenge…

Have they spotted it?

18 June 2022 9:00 am

Returning to the board, Mamedyarov looks at Anand’s outstretched hand with bemusement. It can’t be a draw offer – that…

El Ajedrecista

11 June 2022 9:00 am

Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, ‘El Ajedrecista’, died in prison in the United States on 31 May. The Colombian drug lord, a…

A rising star

4 June 2022 9:00 am

Ding Liren took first place at last month’s Chessable Masters, the fourth event in the 2022 Meltwater Champions Tour. But…

Tiger bites man

28 May 2022 9:00 am

Viswanathan Anand left the spectators in awe at the Superbet Rapid earlier this month. The ‘Tiger of Madras’, as he…

Rock, paper, scissors

21 May 2022 9:00 am

The Superbet Chess Classic in Bucharest concluded last weekend in a dramatic tiebreak between Wesley So, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Levon…

Remembering Averbakh

14 May 2022 9:00 am

Yuri Averbakh had a wry explanation for why he was made chairman of the USSR Chess Federation in 1972. There…

Gorilla tactics

7 May 2022 9:00 am

There is a video in which a small group of students amble about passing a basketball back and forth. The…

Ordination

30 April 2022 9:00 am

In the dying seconds of an online blitz game, I promoted a pawn and instantly regretted it. There was nothing…

What is possible

23 April 2022 9:00 am

There are lessons in chess that cannot be learned from a book. One lands, from time to time, in a…

Nakamura’s place

16 April 2022 9:00 am

Wesley So won the final Fide Grand Prix, which was held in Berlin earlier this month. But it was Hikaru…

Career moves

9 April 2022 9:00 am

Sergey Karjakin won’t be playing much chess for a while. Last month, the Russian grandmaster’s Twittering jingoism in support of…

Varsity battle

2 April 2022 9:00 am

The 140th edition of the Varsity Match took place last month at the Royal Automobile Club in London’s Pall Mall.…

England-Sweden Challenge

26 March 2022 9:00 am

Three summers ago, I was invited to the Swedish city of Eskilstuna, for a brief but exciting match against their…

Establishing Rapport

19 March 2022 9:00 am

Richard Rapport took first place at the Fide Grand Prix in Belgrade last weekend. The Hungarian grandmaster is now almost…

Taking risks | 12 March 2022

12 March 2022 9:00 am

I do not, as a rule, go looking for a fight on a Sunday morning. Chess, if it must be…

Russia in check

5 March 2022 9:00 am

The Champions League final has been moved from St Petersburg to Paris and the Russian Grand Prix in Sochi cancelled.…

Nakamura the wildcard

26 February 2022 9:00 am

Hikaru Nakamura justified his wildcard invitation by taking first place at the Fide Grand Prix in Berlin this month. The…

Contemplating loss

19 February 2022 9:00 am

Contemplating a lost position is a bit like having sauce down your shirt. It is annoying in itself, but worse,…

The battle of the sexes

12 February 2022 9:00 am

One tradition at the annual Gibraltar Masters is a high-spirited skittles match played in the evening between teams of men…

Magnus’s tasks

5 February 2022 9:00 am

World championship match play has a stony logic, where there are no prizes for glorious endeavour. It calls to mind…

Pixel this

29 January 2022 9:00 am

When Magnus Carlsen won last year’s Meltwater Champions Tour, they made two trophies. One was for Carlsen, and the second…

A multitude of queens

22 January 2022 9:00 am

Here’s a challenge which appeared in a German chess magazine in 1848: place eight white queens on an empty chessboard…

When travel unravels

15 January 2022 9:00 am

Recently, with some regret, I declined an invitation to play chess in the Netherlands. I fancied the trip, but alas…

Fresh start

8 January 2022 9:00 am

Chess offers one ultimate consolation in defeat: the opportunity to set the pieces up and start again. At least in…