It looks like the recent flurry of changes to the Informant have stopped for now, as the general structure of Informant 116 is essentially the same as that of Informant 115, which in turn followed the model from Informant 114. Following the l…

There was some drama in the last round of the Norway Chess supertournament, but it was a little surprising that it mostly came from the victor, Sergey Karjakin, rather than his main rivals. Magnus Carlsen and Viswanathan Anand were half a point behind,…

What a strange and exciting round at the Norway Chess tournament! After four rounds Sergey Karjakin was very close to being the runaway winner, and by round 6 it seemed that the contest was between him and Magnus Carlsen, with the other eight players r…

Here is a nice article by Garry Kasparov, extolling the virtue of chess as a way to aid education, especially in the developing world. Phiona Mutesi features prominently in the article, and hers is an inspirational story. Worth a read, especially if yo…

The European Individual Chess Championship finished in a big tie for first, with Alexander Moiseenko, Evgeny Alekseev, Evgeny Romanov, Alexander Beliavsky, Constantin Lupulescu, Francisco Vallejo Pons, Sergei Movsesian, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Alexey Dreev…

I’ve been letting the Norway Chess reports slide, as I’ve been trying to catch up on work while also moving along in the back-and-leg saga. About the latter: I had a second cortisone shot on Monday and started physical therapy today. Fun! The pain is m…

Alejandro Ramirez had a great tournament and gave Gata Kamsky a run for his money, but in the end experience prevailed as Kamsky won the U.S. Championship by finally defeating his opponent, in the Armageddon game. Before that they played a pair of 25-m…

In the women’s championship, Irina Krush came into the last round needing only a draw against Camilla Baginskaite to seal clear first, and that’s just what she got. She played it safe, but even within those self-imposed parameters she managed to outpla…

Gata Kamsky has been leading the U.S. Championship from the start, but hasn’t quite managed to slam the door on his pursuers. Today he had the second seed, Timur Gareev, on the ropes thanks to a pair of sound extra pawns. Gareev shed them going for a d…

Six rounds remain in the Norway Chess super-tournament, and Sergey Karjakin has yet to play Magnus Carlsen, Levon Aronian, Viswanathan Anand or Veselin Topalov – four of the world’s top five players. Still, he leads with a 3-0 score, and this after win…