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…
History
Today’s story set against a genuine parallel from chess history.
51 stories
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…
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…
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…
Caruana Chases a Fifth Straight US Title, and Reshevsky's Record
Fabiano Caruana has won the US Championship four years running, from 2022 to 2025. As he defends the title in Saint Louis, a fifth straight win would equal a…
Adams Plays 3.Bc4 Against the Sicilian, and Nobody Laughs
In round six of the Samarkand Olympiad, Michael Adams beat Etienne Bacrot in a game that began 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.Bc4. That is a setup theoreticians long…
How Chess Fights Cheating, Online and Over the Board
Engines now play far better than any human, and they run on a phone. That makes cheating a problem with no final fix. Online platforms and FIDE both work on it…
Chess960 Explained: Why Freestyle Shuffles the Pieces
Chess960 keeps every rule of chess except the starting position. The pieces on the back rank are shuffled before each game, and the pawns stay where they are.…
Svane's Second Olympiad Gold and Germany's Board-Prize History
Frederik Svane's second Olympiad gold puts him alongside a single predecessor: before him, only Dr Robert Hübner had won two individual golds for Germany. His…
How Swiss Tournaments Pair Players and Break Ties
Most open chess tournaments, from local weekenders to the Chess Olympiad, use the Swiss system. It was first used in Zürich in 1895 and lets a big field…
Larsen's Monte Carlo 1968 Win Over Gheorghiu, Move by Move
Bent Larsen is remembered for 1.b3 and for opening ideas his contemporaries thought odd. A ChessBase Master Class lesson on his strategy argues that this is…
Classical, Rapid, Blitz: How Chess Time Controls Work
Every serious chess game is played against a clock, and the amount of time on it decides what kind of chess it is. FIDE splits games into three categories,…
How a Chess Player Becomes a Grandmaster
Chess titles are awarded by FIDE for life. Once a player earns one, it stays, even if their rating later drops. The highest is grandmaster, first awarded to 27…
Titled Field Heads to Monastir as the Sahel Festival Eyes Sousse 2027
Fresh from the Olympiad, a group of titled players is heading to Tunisia for the Sahel Chess Festival, which runs October 24 to November 1, 2026 in the resort…
What a Chess Rating Actually Measures
A chess rating is a prediction, not a score. It estimates how a player will do against another rated player, and it moves after every rated game depending on…
How a Player Earns a Shot at the World Chess Title
The world champion doesn't pick a challenger. The challenger has to come through a two-year qualifying cycle run by FIDE, ending at the Candidates Tournament,…
FIDE Assembly Backs Chess960 Ratings and a Qatar-Georgia 2030 Pick
The FIDE General Assembly met on 26-27 September in Samarkand, alongside the 46th Olympiad and the FIDE Congress. FIDE's summary of the main decisions covers a…
FIDE Hands Out Its First Excellence Awards in Samarkand
Chess has always ranked its players down to the decimal point, but it has never had a proper night out to thank everyone else who keeps the sport running. That…
Timur Turlov Elected FIDE President, Ending a 30-Year Russian Run
Chess has a new president, and the vote wasn't close in the end even though it took two rounds to get there. Timur Turlov was elected the eighth President of…
ChessMom Doubles Up as Samarkand Sets a New Record
The 46th Chess Olympiad in Samarkand has already made history for its sheer scale, with a confirmed 205 open teams and 189 women's teams once Angola finally…
Carrillo Wins Second Term Atop FIDE Americas, 29-12
Continental elections rarely make headlines outside the federations that vote in them, but this one carried a clear margin. On September 24, during the 46th…
A Rest Day Built on 900 Years of Samarkand's Layers
Chess Olympiads are built around thousands of games played across two long weeks, but organizers always carve out one day for players to put the pieces down.…
Seirawan Chess Gets Its Own Championship, Sept 30-Oct 2
Chess.com has put a number and a date on its newest variant event. The Chess.com Seirawan Chess Championship runs from September 30 to October 2, with a $2,500…
Nakamura's 66th Bullet Brawl Win Extends an Absurd Streak
Hikaru Nakamura won Bullet Brawl for a record 66th time on Saturday, September 12, and the margin made the result feel almost routine for him and staggering…
Geneva's Return to World Title Chess, 22 Years On
FIDE has locked in the details for the next World Championship match, and the venue choice does more work than a press release usually allows. The Salesforce…
Samarkand's 400 Teams Break Budapest's Record by 20
Every two years the Olympiad tries to top itself, and Samarkand has managed it by a wide margin. The 46th FIDE Chess Olympiad, running from September 16…
Samarkand's Deaf Champion Coached Its Future Star
Three teams now sit alone at the top of the 3rd FIDE Chess Olympiad for People with Disabilities in Samarkand, but the standings are only half the story coming…
Carlsen-Nepomniachtchi Renew Rivalry, This Time for a Team Trophy
Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi are set to face off yet again, and this time it will not be for a world championship. GM Magnus Carlsen's Alpine APL…
Samarkand's Disability Olympiad Hits a Record 40 Teams
Round 2 of the 3rd FIDE Chess Olympiad for People with Disabilities produced a cluster of lopsided scorelines in Samarkand, and by the end of the day eight…
Samarkand's Disability Olympiad Echoes Belgrade's First Steps
The third FIDE Chess Olympiad for People with Disabilities opened in Samarkand with 41 teams beginning play in Round 1, and the ceremonial first move fell to…
Topalov's Clutch Chess Lead Echoes His Old Kasparov Duels
Garry Kasparov has spent much of his post-retirement career being the one who makes other legends sweat. On the first day of the 2026 Clutch Chess: The…
Samarkand Links Ancient Ivory Pieces to a Modern Milestone
Uzbekistan has spent the last several years turning itself into one of chess's busiest hosts, and this week it added a genuine first. The 3rd FIDE Chess…
FIDE's Education Summit Follows a Familiar Institutional Playbook
FIDE is folding another standalone event into the calendar of the 46th Chess Olympiad. On 24 September 2026, the federation will hold the FIDE Summit on Chess…
FIDE's New Athletes Commission Echoes the IOC's Playbook
FIDE has opened the call for candidates for the upcoming elections to its Athletes Commission, a body meant to give players a formal seat at the table when the…
Nigel Short's Last Continent Is Antarctica
Nigel Short has spent more than four decades collecting chess milestones, but until now, one gap remained on his personal map. This Antarctic summer, six…
Carlsen's Escape Extends Old Nepomniachtchi Pattern
Magnus Carlsen needed an escape act to keep his Global Chess League team perfect, and the man on the other side of the board was the opponent who has given him…
Carlsen and Nepomniachtchi Meet Again, but This Time Board Six Matters More Than They Do
The last time Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi sat across a board with real stakes attached, it ended with a five-hour, 136-move slog in Dubai that broke…
Deekshitha's Record Gain Shows How Fast the FIDE Rating List Can Move
The September FIDE rating list carries the usual reshuffling at the top. Wesley So is back in the world top 5 for the first time in nearly four years, off a…
The Torch Passes Again: Sindarov's Win Over Anand Echoes a Familiar Chess Story
Javokhir Sindarov's opening day at the 2026 Tech Mahindra Global Chess League produced one of those results that chess fans have seen before, just with the…
India Used To Have One World-Class Player. Now It Has A Bench.
For most of the last three decades, Indian chess meant one name. Viswanathan Anand carried the country's ambitions almost single-handedly from the early 1990s…
Renato Terry's Bullet Arena Dominance Echoes Titled Tuesday's Nakamura Era
Eighteen. That's how many 3+0 Thursday titles IM Renato Terry has now collected after his 9.5/11 performance in the day's final event, a number that starts to…
Faustino Oro and the Ever-Shrinking Youngest-GM Record
Faustino Oro's confirmation as a grandmaster at 12 doesn't break the all-time record for youngest GM ever. That mark still belongs to American Abhimanyu…
Nakamura's 65th Bullet Brawl Win Is the Latest Chapter in a Two-Decade Bullet Reign
Hikaru Nakamura picked up his 65th career Bullet Brawl title on Saturday, his 16th of 2026 alone, scoring 51/65 for 170 points and finishing 23 points clear of…
Why Kasparov vs. Topalov in Chess960 Feels Like Unfinished Business
Garry Kasparov and Veselin Topalov are set to meet again, this time at the Saint Louis Chess Club for Clutch Chess: The Legends, a $144,000 Chess960 match…
How Anna Muzychuk Went From Boycotting Saudi Arabia to Booking a Spot in Saint-Tropez
Bibisara Assaubayeva and Anna Muzychuk have punched their tickets to the 2026 WR Women's Chess Tour Grand Final by winning the tour's European leg in…
Caruana's Italian Job: An Old Opening Finds New Teeth in the Grand Chess Tour Finals
Fabiano Caruana didn't need a novelty from the computer age to take the first game of his 2026 Grand Chess Tour Finals title match against Praggnanandhaa…
The 'Curse of the Draw' Follows the Grand Chess Tour to St. Louis
Day one of the 2026 Grand Chess Tour Finals gave St. Louis exactly the kind of chess that makes commentators tear their hair out: two fights, two full points…
Eastern Asia's Youngest Players Just Wrote Another Chapter in the Region's Chess Pipeline
The rapid portion of the Eastern Asia Youth Chess Championship 2026 has wrapped up, with new champions crowned across six separate age categories. According to…
Vereslav Eingorn and the Odesa Chess Lineage He Leaves Behind
FIDE announced this week that Vereslav Eingorn, the Ukrainian grandmaster, coach and author, has died at 69. He was born on 23 November 1956 in Odesa, then…
FIDE's Youth Championships Get New Numbers: What the U7-U17 Shift Really Means
FIDE and the Spanish Chess Federation have opened registration for the FIDE World Youth Chess Championships, inviting national federations to send players in…
Peru's Saco Oliveros Academy Turns a School Chess Title Into a Statement of Method
The American Continental Stage of the FIDE ISCF World Schools Team Championship 2026 wrapped up at the DoubleTree by Hilton Cariari in San José, and the team…