about chess

Falkbeer Countergambit

You’ve already seen that the King’s Gambit is a powerful weapon. If Black isn’t ready to respond properly in the opening, they will easily lose the game in a few moves. It’s clear as day that simply accepting the opponent’s sacrificed pawn is the wrong strategy. Why? It forces you to go on the defensive…

Borislav Ivanov – The False Prince Of Bulgaria 

Cheating is probably one of the biggest world chess problems. That means unfair play by participants. In most cases, it’s computer-assisted cues. However, today we’ll talk about the story of another cheater who became famous in the early 2010s. His name is Borislav Ivanov. Technologies are developing very fast: now everyone has access to the…

Defense Against the Scholar’s Mate

You probably already know how the scholar’s mate works. Now it’s time to learn how to save yourself from it! All players face such a threat from time to time. But there is nothing to be afraid of. We’ll tell you how to unfold a simple and reliable defense against the scholar’s mate. White goes…

Ronaldo and Messi play chess

Famous footballers Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi took part in a Louis Vuitton brand photo shoot The chess position is taken from the game of Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura, which was played on June 8, 2017

World’s Top Chess Players According to FIDE Ratings

How does one identify the world’s top chess players according to FIDE ratings? To answer this quite reasonable question, an American physics professor Arpad Elo invented a special rating calculation system for a 2-player game. FIDE started using Elo’s ratings back in 1970. Since 2012, separate ratings were implemented for rapid and blitz chess. These…

Elon Musk: “Chess seemed to me too simple a game”

One of the Twitter users asked the billionaire engineer: “Do you play chess yourself?” “I played as a child,” he explained, “but it seemed to me then that the game was too simple to be useful in real life: a simple 8—by—8 grid, no fog of war, a technological tree, a random map, positions of…

Human vs Computer in Chess – The Chronicle

Today, no chess player can defeat a machine. Even Magnus Carlsen on a good day would be powerless. However, this wasn’t always the case. There was a time when matches of a human vs computer in chess did not have an obvious leader. Humans kept demonstrating their superiority. Such encounters used to be incredibly fascinating…

Great Chess Players Who Never Became Champions

After learning to play chess, every child dreams of becoming the World Champion. It’s the ultimate goal that everyone strives for. Of course, few actually manage to accomplish it. In the history of the sport, only 16 people have “ascended”. But is it fair to say that only the World Champions can be considered great…

Viswanathan Anand

This brilliant chess player is currently the world’s leading grandmaster. Thanks to his success, the game’s popularity skyrocketed in India, his home country. Viswanathan Anand was born in Mayiladuthurai, India, on December 11, 1969. However, his family soon moved to Madras (now Chennai, India’s chess capital). Vishy (as his fans call him) owes a great…