Nakamura Leads Clutch Chess on 4/6 After Day One in Saint Louis
At the Clutch Chess: Champions Showdown in Saint Louis, Hikaru Nakamura finished day one in front on 4/6, with two wins and four draws. Javokhir Sindarov is…
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Shogdzhiev, 11, Beats Three 2600s in Serbia for a Second GM Norm
Eleven-year-old Roman Shogdzhiev has earned his second grandmaster norm at the 2026 Serbian Super Liga, playing top board for Partizan Belgrade. He scored 6/9…
A Fourth-Tier Hamburg Team Goes to the European Club Cup
At the 2026 European Club Cup, most attention goes to the professional squads at the top. René Mandelbaum, who played for SK Weisse Dame Hamburg, wrote a…
Capablanca Skips Alekhine and Still Takes Board-One Gold in 1939
The 1939 Chess Olympiad in Buenos Aires is remembered first for the war. Germany invaded Poland on 1 September, mid-event, and Capablanca played his last…
Clutch Chess Pays $125,000 to Win, With Points Rising Daily
The Saint Louis Chess Club hosts the Clutch Chess: Champions Showdown from 27 to 29 October, and the field and format are now set. Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru…
Nakamura Wins a Seventh Straight Bullet Brawl With 178 Points
GM Hikaru Nakamura has now won seven Bullet Brawls in a row. On Saturday he scored 178 points to win the latest edition, finishing ahead of 218 titled players…
Bayegan Pendik Win Club Cup as Giri Crushes Abdusattorov
Top seed Bayegan Pendik Chess Sports Club won the 2026 European Chess Club Cup by beating defending champion SuperChess Romania 3.5-2.5 in the final round. GM…
Bodhana Sivanandan, 11, Beats Polgar's 1988 Age Record for Female IM
At the 41st European Chess Club Cup in Budva, Montenegro, FM Bodhana Sivanandan completed the requirements for the International Master title on Friday. She…
Carlsen Headlines MOVE Cup: €300,000 Prize Fund, Betting Backer
The inaugural MOVE Cup, an eight-player rapid event in Barcelona on January 19-20, 2027, will be headlined by Magnus Carlsen. The prize fund is €300,000, and…
Oceania in November: Eight-Day Club Events and a Geelong Open
Twenty Oceania tournaments are tracked for November 2026, and every one of them is in Australia. Eleven are classical and nine are rapid. The longest events…
So Beats Caruana 1.5-0.5 in Playoff for Fourth US Title
GM Wesley So won the 2026 U.S. Chess Championship, beating defending champion GM Fabiano Caruana 1.5-0.5 in rapid tiebreaks. It is his fourth national title…
Three Teams Tied on 11 Points in the Open Before the Final Round
After round six of the European Club Cup in Budva, three teams share the lead in both sections going into Friday's final round. In the open, defending…
Li, 16, Takes Women's Title as So Stumbles, Caruana Forces Playoff
Wesley So walked into the last round of the U.S. Championship a full point clear. He walked out in a playoff. GM Sam Sevian outplayed So in a heavy-piece…
Novy Bor and SuperChess Meet in Round 6 With 10/10 Each
Two teams are left on a perfect 10/10 match points in the open section of the European Club Cup in Budva, and they now play each other. After five rounds, Novy…
Ohanyan Wins Atyrau Masters on Buchholz After Tie With Jiang, 15
Armenian GM Emin Ohanyan won the Atyrau Masters after finishing level on 7/9 with 15-year-old Chinese IM Jiang Haochen. The tiebreak decided it: Ohanyan's…
West Rand Closed Brings 94 Players to Krugersdorp on Nov. 28
Five tournaments are tracked in Africa for November 2026. Three are classical and two are rapid, spread across South Africa, Nigeria, Algeria and Tunisia. The…
Abdusattorov, Giri and Erdogmus All Lose in Club Cup Round 4
Round four of the 2026 European Chess Club Cup was hard on the big names. GMs Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Anish Giri and Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus all lost, to GMs Aydin…
So Draws Niemann in Under an Hour, One Round From a Fourth Title
Wesley So needed very little time on Round 10 day. He drew Hans Niemann in under an hour and kept a full-point lead over Fabiano Caruana and Grigoriy Oparin in…
158 Players in Bogotá Open a South American November
South America has 84 tournaments tracked for November 2026, 51 of them rapid and 33 classical. The calendar starts fast, with the biggest field of the month on…
Arturs Neiksans on Quitting Chess, Coaching Levy and Moving On
Few grandmasters have a path as crooked as Arturs Neiksans'. In a long ChessBase interview recorded during his first visit to the company's studio, the Latvian…
Eleven Teams Perfect After Round 3, Beer Sheva Slip Against Dunajska Streda
After three rounds of the European Club Cup, eleven teams share first place in the open section on 6/6 match points. Every team seeded first through twelfth is…
So Holds Caruana to a Draw and Keeps His Full-Point Lead
Wesley So held onto his full-point lead in round nine of the 2026 U.S. Chess Championship by getting through defending champion Fabiano Caruana. It was a…
Murzin's Swindle Keeps Bayegan Pendik Clear After a Top-Board Loss
The favorites kept cruising in round two of the European Chess Club Cup, with GMs Wei Yi, Arjun Erigaisi and Richard Rapport among the stars to reach 2/2. The…
Sindarov's Seconds: Abdusattorov, Vidonyak and Likely Madaminov
The World Championship match between Gukesh Dommaraju and Javokhir Sindarov runs from 24 November to 12 December in Cologny, near Geneva, over 14 games at the…
So Beats Woodward in a Pawn Ending, Leads Caruana by a Point
Wesley So has beaten Andy Woodward in a pawn endgame in round eight of the U.S. Championship. That puts him on 6/8, a full point clear of Fabiano Caruana, and…
Total Chess Rating Puts Carlsen at 2830, 51 Points Clear
Total Chess has proposed a Total Chess Rating, a single figure that folds a player's classical, rapid and blitz FIDE ratings into one number on the familiar…
231 Players Set for North American Youth Championship in Mexico City
We are tracking 131 tournaments across North America for November 2026, 98 of them classical and 33 rapid. The events below are a selection weighted toward the…
Favourites Sweep as Grandelius Falls on Day One of the European Club Cup
The 41st European Chess Club Cup began in Budva, Montenegro, on Saturday, and round one went much as the seedings said. The top three teams all won 6-0, even…
Fischer's Game of the Century at 70, and the Magazine That Never Printed It
On 17 October 1956, a 13-year-old from Brooklyn sacrificed his way through Donald Byrne's position at the Marshall Chess Club. In the October 2026 issue of…
So Takes Sole Lead on 5/7 as Liang Falls in 27 Moves
Wesley So is now the only unbeaten player and the sole leader of the 2026 U.S. Chess Championship. He fought back from a worse position to beat Ray Robson in…
Uzbekistan Tops the Olympiad Route to the 2027 World Cup
FIDE has published the final allocation of 2027 World Cup and Women's World Cup places earned at the Samarkand Olympiad. After the continental transfers, 83…
Sameh Meets Top Seed Kuandykuly After a 6/6 Start at the World U13
Egypt's IM Abdalrahman Sameh Mohamed has won all six of his games in the Under-13 Open at the 2026 World U7-U17 Championships in Roquetas de Mar, Spain. After…
Atyrau Masters: Two Seeds Fall, Anand and Ahmad Lead on 3/3
The Atyrau Masters, the third stage of the Kazakhstan Chess Cup, lost its two highest-rated players within two rounds. Vietnamese GM Nguyen Duc Hoa (2405) beat…
Bengbu's 198-Player Classical Tops Asia's November Calendar
Asia has 168 tournaments tracked for November 2026, and the classical events at the top of the list are spread from eastern China to western India to the…
Caruana and Liang Join a Four-Way Lead After Round 6
Six decisive games on Thursday reshuffled both U.S. Championships at the halfway point. In the Open, GMs Wesley So, Andy Woodward, Fabiano Caruana and Awonder…
Rafael Vaganian at 75: The Armenian Who Reached No. 4
Rafael Vaganian was born on 15 October 1951 in Yerevan, and turns 75 this week. His career spans the Soviet school, the post-Soviet scramble and a long second…
Fast Classical Debuts at a 721-Player Youth Worlds in Spain
The 2026 FIDE World Championships U7–U17 opened on October 13 in Roquetas de Mar, in Spain's Almería province, with 721 players from 82 countries. The event…
Roman Shogdzhiev, 11, Is One GM Norm From Mishra's Record
IM Roman Shogdzhiev, 11, scored his second GM norm on Monday in the Serbian Super League. He now needs one more norm and 29 rating points to pass GM Abhimanyu…
Woodward Beats Caruana as Eight of 12 Games Are Decisive
Round 5 of the 2026 U.S. Championships was the bloodiest round yet across both tournaments: eight of the 12 games were decisive. The biggest result came in the…
Caruana Joins So in the Lead as Liang Falls to Xiong
Round four of the U.S. Championship in Saint Louis was a day for long endgames, and it reshaped both sections. Fabiano Caruana beat Ray Robson to join Wesley…
Caruana Wins Titled Tuesday on a U.S. Championship Rest Day
Fabiano Caruana won Titled Tuesday on October 13 on what was an off day in the 2026 U.S. Championship, where he currently shares the tournament lead. He…
Europe in November: 199 Seniors Head to Usedom for Nine Days
European organizers have 330 tournaments on the November 2026 calendar, 145 of them classical and 185 rapid. The classical events below are the ones most worth…
Jumabayev Wins Fagernes as Gloeckler Secures a Second GM Norm
Kazakh grandmaster Rinat Jumabayev won the Fagernes International Autumn on tiebreak, finishing on 7½/10 as the only unbeaten player in the 62-player GM…
Woodward and Shankland Win as So and Liang Stay Level at 2.5
The top of the U.S. Championship open section did not change in round three. Wesley So and Awonder Liang met head-on and drew in 30 moves without much action,…
Yu Yangyi Beats Ding Liren in Armageddon to Win Shenzhen
Yu Yangyi won the Shenzhen Nanshan International Chess Masters 2026 by beating Ding Liren in an Armageddon game with the white pieces, after a final that could…
Munich 1936: The Chess Olympiad FIDE Never Recognised
Munich 1936 was staged by a federation that FIDE had shut out. ChessBase's retrospective revisits an event the Greater German Chess Federation called a Chess…
Viernheim Lead Baden-Baden on Board Points After Three Bundesliga Rounds
Two clubs won everything on the opening weekend of the German Bundesliga. SC Viernheim and OSG Baden-Baden each took 6 match points from three rounds, played…
Fifteen Chess Tourists, Eight Days and One Bronze Medal for Monika
Most Olympiad coverage stays inside the playing hall. This ChessBase travel diary by Axel Eger steps outside it, following a group of fifteen amateur players…
Maghsoodloo Takes Freestyle Friday on 9/11 Among 112 Masters
GM Parham Maghsoodloo won the latest Freestyle Friday with 9/11, and the result moves him a step closer to qualifying for the 2027 FIDE Freestyle Chess World…
NSW and Perth Opens Anchor a Late-September Oceania Calendar
Oceania's September chess was mostly classical and entirely Australian in the data we track, with the heaviest action stacked into the last week. Two events…