Chess
Eaten by a bear
I don’t like losing at chess. It feels bad in the moment, whether my position subsides like a failed pudding,…
The sudden mate
The hero pauses, plays the move, and announces ‘Checkmate!’ The villain crumples in shock. It’s a scene played out countless…
Chess sets
Since tennis matches are decided in sets, they are sometimes won by the player who has won fewer games. For…
The Manx Liberty Masters
I sat on the plane to the Isle of Man, leafing through a copy of Nigel Short’s new book, Winning.…
Nona vs Netflix
Last year’s Netflix mini-series The Queen’s Gambit hit all the right notes. For the neophytes, it was quirky and intriguing.…
Detecting vulnerabilities
I suspect many players perceive the chess board in rich contrast, like a heat map. Glowing bright red are those…
Titles bonanza
At the beginning of August, seeing his outstanding performance at the Fide World Cup in Sochi, I wrote that Ravi…
Best-laid plans
A popular conceit among chess authors, particularly dead ones, is to describe a fine game as the execution of a…
Remembering Evgeny Sveshnikov
There be dragons! What we now call the Sveshnikov variation of the Sicilian defence was, in the 1970s, largely uncharted…
Containment
‘Exchange chess’ (also known as bughouse) is the chess equivalent of a three-legged race. It is played in teams of…
Calculated risks
Two years ago, the brilliant young Polish player Jan-Krzysztof Duda made a baffling decision. In the second game of his…
The Fide World Cup
As I write this, the Fide World Cup is underway in Sochi, the Black Sea resort in Russia which hosted…
The king of no castling
In the body of chess rules, castling is a clumsy protuberance. Once per game, you get to move king and…
Kasparov’s tailspin
In a game between top players, the opening moves signify not only the battleground they have embraced, but also the…
Lock-picking
In his autobiographical book Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman! the late American physicist Richard Feynman described how he amused himself…
The world has a new youngest grandmaster
Abhimanyu Mishra became the world’s youngest grandmaster last month, at 12 years and 4 months old. The boy from New…
Firestarter
It’s a joy to watch a player like Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, who can light a fire with his bare hands. Where…
How to lose
Millions of people would see losing to Anand as a privilege rather than a disgrace. So it is simply astonishing…
Macaques and defence
January normally brings cheerful photos from the Gibraltar Chess Festival, where visiting chess-players get an impromptu snap with the Barbary…
The back-rank mate
Compared with Anastasia’s mate, or an epaulette mate, the humble back-rank mate is named without imagination or whimsy. It is…
Hybrid chess
Chess was played by cable in the 19th century because… well, why not? And because everything old is new again,…
Daredevil kings
The fifth match game between Potter and Zukertort, played in London in 1875, saw a dogged struggle. The final position…
Indian variant
Modern chess includes a panoply of ‘Indian’ openings, which share a common root in the starting moves 1 d4 Nf6…
What’s it worth?
The rule of thumb for weighing up piece exchanges says that pawns are worth one, knights and bishops three, rooks…
Dead brain cells
As round 14 of the Candidates tournament unfolded, I had the feeling of watching an anti-climactic post-exam bender. Ian Nepomniachtchi…
