Luke McShane

The Gaprindashvili Cup, named after the Georgian former women’s world champion Nona Gaprindashvili, is awarded at the biennial Chess Olympiad to the country with the highest total standings between the open and women’s events. In Chennai in 2022, that honour went to India, who won the bronze medals in both sections. The 45th Chess Olympiad,

When I select puzzles to accompany this column, I stick to the plain vanilla. The stipulation must be short and sweet, and one move solutions must be accepted (though I like to include a few further words of explanation). Alas, a thousand such puzzles can never do justice to the wondrous ingenuity of chess composers.

‘I don’t think it will be decided on the chessboard… I broke him in the Sinquefield Cup… as long as I can look him in the eyes and understand that there is absolutely nothing he can do to even enter my mind space then I believe that victory will be mine.’ Thus spake Hans Niemann

Polishing an opening repertoire is essential for top chess players, who must have variations prepared to meet all the standard openings. Those may be selected on grounds of stylistic appeal or rarity, hoping to catch an opponent off-guard. There are standard responses in turn, and a well-prepared player will have counter-ideas locked and loaded. Vast

Earlier this month, at the Kingston Invitational, Peter Lalic won a game against 12-year-old Billy Fellowes in 272 moves. Published in full, it would take up most of this article and resemble a cryptographic message more than a game of chess. But it earns a place in the record books as the longest over-the-board game

For the irrepressible Hans Niemann, August is no time to chill. The 21-year-old American grandmaster began the month by defeating his compatriot Wesley So by 13-10 in the quarter-final of the Chess.com Speed Chess Championship. He gave a vitriolic interview after the match, railing against the ‘chess establishment’ and those he perceives as trying to ruin

The British Championships, which concluded in Hull earlier this month, saw a notable achievement for 15-year-old Shreyas Royal, whose stellar performance was his third and final qualifying result to earn him the grandmaster title. He becomes the youngest British player to reach that milestone, beating David Howell’s record which had held since 2007 (and before

The stench of burning rubber hung in the air as I trudged back to my hotel in Hull city centre last Saturday evening. A wheelie bin lay in the street, with a fire flickering out next to it. Everywhere there were tired-looking policemen, obviously relieved the yobs had dispersed. I too was spent, and a little

All eyes are on the Games in Paris, where an estimated 10,000 athletes from more than 200 nations will compete. This comes 100 years after the Paris Olympics of 1924, a milestone event when the number of competing nations jumped from 29 to 44. That same year, Fide, the international governing body of chess, (Federation

I have a pet theory, based not on hard data but on insights from postmortem chitchat. My theory says that novices and experts, when facing evenly matched opponents, make roughly the same number of screw-ups in a game. The difference is that the novice’s oversights will be far more significant. The novice walks into checkmate,