Chess
Sochi Challenge
On Saturday 8 November the first game will be played in the three-week long rematch between defending world champion Magnus…
Winning hand
Tension has always existed between games of skill, such as chess or draughts, and games seemingly based on chance, like…
Baku beyond
The irrepressible Fabiano Caruana has added to his laurels by sharing first prize in the Baku Grand Prix, which finished…
Tigran Tigran
Tigran Petrosian seized the world championship from Mikhail Botvinnik in 1963, defended the title against Boris Spassky in 1966 and…
Fabian strategy
Good news. Fabiano Caruana will be coming to London this December to participate in the sixth London Classic. This will…
Highland fling
Recently Professor Jackie Eales gave a lecture in Canterbury on ‘Queenship in the Age of the Enraged Chess Queen’. (The…
Scotch miss
This week, a tribute to the one major Scottish contribution to chess, the invention of the Scotch game, later to…
Double trouble
The importance of pawn structure cannot be overestimated when planning chess strategy. Although Philidor (18th century) understood the importance of…
Sinking the field
Fabiano Caruana has dominated the Sinquefield Cup in St Louis in a way that almost defies belief. The Italo-American grandmaster,…
Gifted and talented
Despite occasional evidence to the contrary, I have persisted in the belief that the ability to play chess well indicates…
Olympiad highlights
To round off my coverage of the chess Olympiad in Tromsø, which saw a total of 313 teams in the…
Great wall
China have won the Olympiad in Tromsø. I believe that we can now look forward to a sustained Chinese dominance…
Olympiad
The Tromsø Olympiad finishes on Thursday 14 August, too late for any definitive conclusions to be drawn here as to…
Two’s a crowd
The British Championship, which finished in Aberystwyth last week, has been shared by international master Jonathan Hawkins and the defending…
Treasure Island
As I write, young Jonathan Hawkins has stormed into the lead in the British Championship in Aberystwyth with the tremendous…
Witsch craft
The ever reliable Steve Giddins has just published a new book on that great strategist Aron Nimzowitsch. This is the…
Final flame
I am very sorry to report the death of International Master Andrew Whiteley, a friend of mine for half a…
Attack
This was the watchword of Grandmaster Dragoljub Velimirovic, one of the leading players of the former Yugoslavia. I first encountered…
Tiger tiger
Petrosian Move by Move is a new book published by Everyman Chess written by the Swedish international master Thomas Engqvist.…
Blitzkrieg
Chess, unlike football, appears to confer little or no home advantage. In a recent article for Kensington & Chelsea Today,…
Hat trick
For the second year running, 24-year-old Sergei Karjakin has won the Norway International, on both occasions ahead of Magnus Carlsen. The…
Vlad the Impaler
As I write, the former world champion Vladimir Kramnik is leading in the Norway tournament in Stavanger. The line-up is…
On the brink
The last great tournament to have been completed before the outbreak of war in 1914 was St Petersburg, which saw…
Close run
Although world champion Magnus Carlsen clearly secured first place in the Gashimov Memorial tournament, he did not have things all…
Iron nerves
The game that clinched Magnus Carlsen’s victory in the Gashimov Memorial came, fittingly, in a last-round cliffhanger against his closest…
