There be dragons! What we now call the Sveshnikov variation of the Sicilian defence was, in the 1970s, largely uncharted territory, and viewed with deep suspicion. Its modern name immortalises the Russian grandmaster whose pioneering analytical efforts, and practical success, put the variation on the map. Evgeny Ellinovich Sveshnikov died on 18 August at the
‘Exchange chess’ (also known as bughouse) is the chess equivalent of a three-legged race. It is played in teams of two, on adjacent boards with opposite colours, and it works best when nobody takes it seriously. The only essential rule is that when you capture an opponent’s piece, you hand it to your partner, who
Two years ago, the brilliant young Polish player Jan-Krzysztof Duda made a baffling decision. In the second game of his knockout match with Wesley So at the Moscow Grand Prix, Duda needed just a draw to advance to the next round, having won the first game with remarkable ease. Perhaps he was mindful that when
As I write this, the Fide World Cup is underway in Sochi, the Black Sea resort in Russia which hosted the 2014 Winter Olympics. It’s a thrilling event for spectators, who get to watch high-stakes chess in all its forms — fast, slow, wonderful and blunderful. The main knockout event began with a field of
In the body of chess rules, castling is a clumsy protuberance. Once per game, you get to move king and rook at the same time, with a bewildering list of exceptions. (One dreads having to broach these gotchas with a novice opponent who has castled improperly.) Despite its convoluted logic, castling is nothing more than
In a game between top players, the opening moves signify not only the battleground they have embraced, but also the terrain they have avoided. In his prime, Garry Kasparov’s opponents would often duck the most critical choices, fearing the champion’s formidable advantage in home analysis of complex positions. But those who yielded an inch at
In his autobiographical book Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman! the late American physicist Richard Feynman described how he amused himself by cracking open the safes at Los Alamos, which stored design papers for the Manhattan Project. He started out picking locks, which he describes like this: Now, if you push a little wire gadget —
Abhimanyu Mishra became the world’s youngest grandmaster last month, at 12 years and 4 months old. The boy from New Jersey achieved the milestone by scoring 7/9 at the Vezerkepzo GM Mix event in Budapest last month. In doing so, he has broken the record set almost 20 years ago by Sergey Karjakin, who became
It’s a joy to watch a player like Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, who can light a fire with his bare hands. Where most are content to develop their pieces in the opening moves, he has a knack for igniting the play at the slightest provocation. In the game below, Caruana’s move 9 h3 looks unremarkable, but Mamedyarov
Millions of people would see losing to Anand as a privilege rather than a disgrace. So it is simply astonishing that one lucky opponent, facing the Indian star in an online simultaneous display, squandered the opportunity by cheating. ‘Checkmate Covid, celebrity edition’, hosted earlier this month by Chess.com, was supposed to be a lighthearted event,
January normally brings cheerful photos from the Gibraltar Chess Festival, where visiting chess-players get an impromptu snap with the Barbary macaques which inhabit the island. Alas, the 2021 festival was off, while the Fide Women’s Grand Prix, a 12-player all-play-all which forms part of the Women’s World Championship cycle, was planned for January and then
Compared with Anastasia’s mate, or an epaulette mate, the humble back-rank mate is named without imagination or whimsy. It is the Ronseal of mating patterns, administered by a rook or queen to a hapless king stuck on the rank behind its own pawns. But there is a rich variety of tactical motifs which culminate in
Chess was played by cable in the 19th century because… well, why not? And because everything old is new again, 2021 has brought us ‘Hybrid chess’, in which players play online, but congregate in hubs shared with other players under the supervision of an arbiter. This time, put it down to human frailty and our
The fifth match game between Potter and Zukertort, played in London in 1875, saw a dogged struggle. The final position is shown in the diagram below, where the players agreed to a draw after 91 Kb5-c4. William Norwood Potter, an English master, must have reasoned as follows: the protected passed pawn on d4 obliges the
Modern chess includes a panoply of ‘Indian’ openings, which share a common root in the starting moves 1 d4 Nf6 and include the King’s Indian, Nimzo-Indian, Queen’s Indian, Bogo-Indian, and Old Indian. But before 1900, the prevailing wisdom held that it was advisable for Black to contest the centre with a pawn advance. So the
The rule of thumb for weighing up piece exchanges says that pawns are worth one, knights and bishops three, rooks five and queens nine. It is such a useful guideline that one can go a long way without ever questioning it, but strong players have a feeling for the limitations. The first diagram shows a
As round 14 of the Candidates tournament unfolded, I had the feeling of watching an anti-climactic post-exam bender. Ian Nepomniachtchi had already passed with distinction, wrapping up tournament victory with a round to spare. The Russian plays energetic chess, but part of his success in Yekaterinburg was surely attributable to tempering his impulses throughout the
The Candidates tournament resumed on 19 April in Yekaterinburg. Eight players competed for a €500,000 prize fund, but only one prize mattered — first place, and the right to challenge Magnus Carlsen in a world championship match. It was Russia’s Ian Nepomniachtchi who triumphed — more on that next week. But the clash below, a
Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, at 15 years old one of India’s most exceptional young players, emerged as the winner of the Polgar Challenge, an online event between 20 of the world’s brightest talents which took place earlier this month. It was the opening event of the $100,000 Julius Bär Challengers Chess Tour, and Praggnanandhaa earned himself a
Since the start of the pandemic, opportunities for serious competition between players ranked outside the world’s top 20 have been scarce. So there was a pent-up appetite for the European Online Club Cup, which took place at the end of March, with more than 500 players registered (including more than 150 grandmasters) across 91 teams.
