The chess world is full of intriguing players and intriguing stories going all the way back to the enigmatic Paul Morphy—but even among this hallowed, august company, Ossip Bernstein manages to stand out. Bernstein's career is noteworthy f...
My last article was about how George Koltanowski slowly got better and better as a chess player; first in the early/mid 1920s (boring and slow), and then in 1928 when he embraced dynamics. Though he was a strong player at that point, he was e...
IM Cyrus Lakdawala contributed to this article. In 2018, the reigning world champion Magnus Carlsen, played world number-two Fabiano Caruana for the world championship. Carlsen defeated Caruana in the rapid tiebreak, and successfully defend...
@Jed1w1zard writes: I am a club-level chess player. I was wondering if you could clear up an issue for me that I have repeatedly been encountering in my games. When I play as White, I typically like to play the London System since it’s a ...
Chess.com's newest coach of the month is IM Levy Rozman. Rozman is familiar to streaming fans, as his Twitch.tv/gothamchess channel is one of the largest and most successful on Twitch. Rozman brings a unique wit, humor and troll-shaming to the p...
How strong was Samuel Reshevsky in his prime? Well, he won the U.S. championship eight times, the same number as Bobby Fischer. Reshevsky also played eight times in the Chess Olympiads (six times on first board). Was he good enough to b...
Judit Polgar, the strongest female chess player of all time, speaks to David Cox about growing up as part of her father Laszlo's groundbreaking educational experiment, the famous touch-move controversy when she played Garry Kasparov in 1994 and wh...
The super-grandmaster Ian Nepomniatchi sat down with Chess.com ahead of his appearance in the 2019 FIDE World Fischer Random Chess Championship, where he will go head-to-head with Fabiano Caruana, Wesley So and the world champion Ma...
Samuel Reshevsky was born in Poland on November 26, 1911 and started to play chess at the age of four. He came to the U.S. permanently at age nine (1920). From 1924 to 1931 he quit chess completely to get an education in the U.S., and graduated...
IM Cyrus Lakdawala contributed to this article. In 1975, Bobby Fischer and Anatoly Karpov were set to play for the world chess championship. Fischer, the reigning world champion, argued with the world chess federation (FIDE) over the format fo...
For Jeremy Silman's article on the early life of Pal Benko, click here. Pal Benko: My ticket to freedom was, naturally, chess. First on my agenda was to qualify for an out-of-country zonal. Of course, I didn’t want to play in a Soviet-co...
Hou Yifan, the youngest women’s world champion in history, tells David Cox about her journey to become one of the strongest female players of all time. Find out her thoughts on a "battle of the sexes" match against Magnus Carlsen, and why sh...
The updated standings and leaderboard information for Arena Kings season five are below. You can read the season five announcement here for complete details. Season Recap: Beginning on September 16, Arena Kings was back for ...
Pal Benko was born July 15, 1928 and died August 25, 2019 at the age of 91. Instead of throwing endless games at you (okay, okay…I will throw you a lot of games), I first want you to understand Benko’s personality and who Benko r...
Reminder: Deadline for entries is 5:59 p.m. Pacific time September 2. The biggest event in online chess is back for 2019, and the field of 16 grandmasters is set for the 2019 Speed Chess Championship beginning September 2 at 6 p.m. PDT. W...
At one time there were no official titles in chess. In 1950 FIDE created the Grandmaster, the International Master and the International Women Master titles. The first two sets of titles weren't based on rating...
This year, Chess.com has been working on new resources to help you connect with the chess community. Our latest project, Top Chess Players, is now in alpha mode, and you can start learning about your favorite players and giving us feedback. ...
Anish Giri tells David Cox about the multicultural upbringing that shaped his chess talent, why social media has been huge for the game and the moments when he’s believed he can become world champion. As the current world number-four, Anis...
Magnus Carlsen is off to a hot streak to begin his 2019 chess season. Carlsen won the Tata Steel masters tournament (9/13), Gashimov Memorial (7/9) and Grenke Chess Classic (7.5/9). Carlsen's performance ratings at the three events we...
We are thrilled to introduce a new series at Chess.com: coach of the month! Each month, we will be highlighting a coach at Chess.com/coaches and sharing an interview with that coach discussing his or her philosophy of chess, philosophy of coachi...
Wesley So tells David Cox about his remarkable journey from learning the game in an impoverished neighborhood in the Philippines to reaching the world's top 10. In many ways, Wesley So’s life story reads a bit like the script of a Ho...
The game of chess just keeps getting younger and younger! Grandmaster titles are now being achieved at twelve, thirteen, and fourteen years of age. Young talents are able to take advantage of the wealth of information, consistent and regular tourn...
A little perspective: At the turn of the 20th century Harry N. Pillsbury was the dominant American chess player. Most other well known American chess players of that time, such as Jackson Whipps Showalter, Albert Hodges and...
As you know from my previous article, in 1992 Vladimir Kramnik transformed from a FIDE master into one of the world's leading players. The year 1993 made it official: Kramnik became a candidate for the world title. Again we played in the ...
