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IM Raghunandan shows how to handle the pressure of winning the final round to make a GM norm

04/05/2019 -

GM norms are extremely difficult to achieve. You need a performance of 2600 in an event to get this distinction. IM KS Raghunandan scored his maiden GM norm at the Dubai Open 2019. This result in itself is creditable, but what make Raghunandan's achievement even more noteworthy, is the fight back he showed after losing two games. After a 4.5/5 start, he lost two of his games. It could have been very easy to just give up at this point. But Raghunandan fought back. He drew his eighth round game. In the final round he was in a must-win situation against the strong Indian GM Sandipan Chanda. These last round must-win situations are extremely stressful, but Raghunandan rose to the occasion like a champion and achieved his maiden GM norm! Here's the article that tells you about how Raghu achieved his norm along with the boy's annotations of his final round victory.

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The Problemist Diary - Part II

03/05/2019 -

After a successful first article - the problemist diary Part I, which was well received by our readers, Satanick Mukhuty is back with part II. The topic of this edition is "Some more terms and themes". When you go over the article you realize that solving composed problems or studies, much like chess positions, is a lot about understanding the patterns and themes. Terms like half-pin and third-pin seem difficult to comprehend at first. But when you delve deeper and go over these problems patiently, you will be improving your problem solving skills. This is exactly what we want to do with the Problemist diary series. We want to teach you and make you fall in love with the beautiful world of chess compositions!

Magnus Carlsen: "India is going to be the strongest chess country in the world"

03/05/2019 -

The GRENKE Chess Classic came to a close on Monday evening with Magnus Carlsen dominating the field once again. Carlsen scored 7½ points out of his nine games and remained a point and a half ahead of his nearest rival. After his final round victory, Aditya Pai, who was present at the venue, caught up with the world champion to talk about his latest achievements, his thoughts on the upcoming Fischer Random world championship and his views on Indian chess and the potential of young Indian players.  "I’ve said already a few years ago. India is going to be the strongest chess country in the world and I see no reason to go back on that" is what Magnus had to say!

FIDE Women's Candidates: Drawing of lots

02/05/2019 -

For the first time in almost 22 years, FIDE Women's Candidates will take place at the end of this month in Kazan, Russia at Nogai Hotel from 29th May - 19th June 2019. The drawing of lots for the Women's Candidates Tournament took place on 30th April, in the Chess Museum of the Central Chess Club in Moscow, named after the 6th World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik. The ceremony was attended by FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich and Honorary FIDE Vice President Judit Polgar - the strongest female player of all time. Organized by the Ministry of Sports of the Republic of Tatarstan, FIDE and the Russian Chess Federation, the Candidates has a record prize fund of €200000. But more importantly, the winner of this double round-robin tournament will become the reigning champion Ju Wenjun’s challenger, with half a million euros at stake. Photo: FIDE

Vidit's blindfold magic on 2nd of May at 9.30 p.m. IST

02/05/2019 -

We often see top chess players not looking at the board while calculating. It seems that their attention is somewhere else, yet after a few minutes they make the move without having even glanced at the position. What do you think they were doing for the last few minutes? Well, they were thinking in their head. They did not need to see the chess board to calculate the variations. They could do it in their head. So how do these super GMs calculate without a chess board? How are they able to make complex decisions in their mind, which normal players cannot fathom. Well, on 2nd of May 2019, we get India no.3 and a GM rated 2707 Vidit Gujrathi to tell us all about how to calculate better in blindfold. At the same time Vidit will be available online for live interaction via chat.

What is the definition of 'Outposts' ?

01/05/2019 -

Every chess player is taught the definition of 'Outpost' with examples on the board, but what is the correct definition of it? What are the various types of outposts? French International Master Xavier Bédouin published an article in French on his site on this subject. Xavier has sent us an English translation of it and it is the first time ever that something of this sort is published in English. It's time to update our knowledge about the definition of outposts. The entire article shows the type and classification of outposts with various diagram and the nomenclature of it along with some new terms coined by the author. Photo: Xavier Bédouin

ChessBase India calendar has 89 tournaments listed for May 2019

01/05/2019 -

Which is the most powerful chess calendar in the world? Well, by sheer numbers and data you can see how the ChessBase India calendar is the best resource available out there for planning your events. Just in the month of May we have 89 tournaments on our calendar. In this article we tell you how the players and organizers can make the best use of our calendar. Some of the major events in the month of May are the 2019 Côte D’Ivoire Rapid & Blitz part of Grand Chess Tour 2019, FIDE Grand Prix in Moscow, Lindores Abbey tournament in Scotland featuring Carlsen, Anand and Ding Liren, Women's Candidates, IMSA even in China, Sigeman & Co. in Sweden and our very own KIIT GM Open in Bhubaneshwar. 

The consistency of Nihal Sarin

01/05/2019 -

How many tournaments did you play from January 2018 until now? Somewhere between 10-15, right? Well, the 14-year-old Indian prodigy Nihal Sarin also played 13 classical events, But guess what? In none of them did he lose a single rating point! This is simply unbelievable. From January 2018 to April 2019, in the last16 months, Nihal played in some of the strongest open tournaments in the world like the Gibraltar Masters, Aeroflot Open, Isle of Man and many others and he gained 74 Elo points to get his rating from 2524 to 2598! Now, on the brink of 2600, Nihal will take part in the first strong Round Robin tournament of his career - Tepe Sigeman & Co Chess Tournament. beginning from the 3rd of May 2019. | Photo: David Llada.

IM P Shyamnikhil dominates 5th SCS Open 2019

30/04/2019 -

Top seed IM P Shyamnikhil of Integral Coach Factory wins the fifth edition of the Sivakasi Chess Sparklers FIDE rated tournament held at Mepco Schlenk Engineering College, Sivakasi from 14th to 17th April 2019. Shyamnikhil finished with a staggering 100% score of 8.0/8 and earned ₹70000 cash and a beautiful trophy. Untitled B Selvamurugan of Tamil Nadu, scored 7.0/8, finished at 2nd position and won ₹50000 cash and a trophy. FM P Maheswaran of Postal also finished at 7.0/8. Due to a lesser tie-break score, he had to settle for 3rd position. He received ₹35000 cash and a trophy. Both of them suffered their only loss of the tournament against the eventual champion in the final round. Photo: R Anantharam

6 things to learn from Magnus Carlsen's 2990 performance at the Grenke Chess Classic 2019

30/04/2019 -

Magnus Carlsen won his third super tournament of the year 2019. When he won the Shamkir Chess 2019 a couple of weeks ago, we felt that the World Champion would not be able to better his 2988 performance, at least in the near future. 22 days later Magnus Carlsen is standing on the podium of the Grenke Chess Classic with six wins, three draws, and a performance of 2990! With this Carlsen not only finished 1.5 points ahead of his nearest rival Caruana, but he also pumped his live rating to 2875.2! There are a lot of things that we could learn from the World Champion, and in this article we bring you six qualities of Magnus that helped him win the Grenke Chess Classic 2019.

Anish Giri gets the monkey off his back, wins a super tournament after seven years

29/04/2019 -

Harikrishna and Anish Giri were looking at the Shenzhen Masters 2019 title. For Hari it would be his first super tournament. For Anish Giri it would be a super tournament victory after nearly seven years. They had to go through a marathon final round to decide who would win the event. Harikrishna had a half point lead, but faced the formidable Ding Liren with the black pieces. Anish Giri, on the other hand, had much better chances as white against Jakovenko. The final round lasted for over six hours. Harikrishna lost to Ding Liren, while Anish Giri managed to beat Jakovenko. Anish Giri scored took home the first prize of $20,000 (approx 14 lakh rupees). Harikrishna finished second. It was one of his finest performances, boosting his rating to 2730 and world no.25 on the rankings.

Girish Koushik wins the biggest trophy of his chess career

29/04/2019 -

The Chess fraternity experienced one of its finest Chess Tournaments with the third Edition of Bangalore Open - a crowd funded FIDE Rating Chess Tournament organised by Innovators Chess Academy at Silicon City Academy of Secondary Education from 17th-21st April 2019. The hot favourite, IM Girish A Koushik won the event with a score of 9.5/10, a full point ahead of the runner-up IM M Chakravarthi Reddy 8.5/10 and second runner-up FM Niranjan Navalgund who also finished at 8.5/10. Girish won a cash prize of ₹50000 and a huge Trophy. The five-day, ten round tournament witnessed the participation of 389 players from all over the country and three different federations. Photo: Sushrutha Reddy

Magnus Carlsen checkmates Peter Svidler with his pawns

28/04/2019 -

2871! That's Magnus Carlsen's live FIDE rating after winning his 8th round game against Peter Svidler. With a rating performance of 2956, Carlsen has scored 6.5/8 and has taken a big step towards winning the Grenke Chess Classic 2019. His game against Svidler with the black pieces was spectacular as Magnus played one strong move after another to launch a decisive mating attack. The end of the game was picturesque as Magnus checkmated his opponent with two pawns. Some of the other games are still in progress. The ones that are completed are Anand drawing against Aronian, MVL and Caruana beating Keymer and Meier respectively. Caruana trails Carlsen by a point. Detailed round 8 report.

Grenke 2019 Round 6+7: Anand loses two consecutive games to 2600 GMs, Carlsen leads by one full point

28/04/2019 -

The Grenke Chess Classic 2019 is progressing just like any other tournament for world number one Magnus Carlsen. After seven rounds, he now has a lead of one point over his nearest rival Fabiano Caruana. In round 7 Magnus played a game that was so good that even commentators Gustafsson and Leko were left confused as to how Levon Aronian lost the game. In this article we look at two games of Vishy Anand from rounds 6 and 7. Anand lost his 6th round game to Naiditsch and round 7 game to Meier. When was the last time that Anand lost two consecutive games against players who were rated below 2700. In-depth analysis of both these games.

Prantik and Neelash win 4th West Bengal State Rapid and Blitz 2019

27/04/2019 -

Former National Blitz Champion IM Prantik Roy and IM Neelash Saha won 4th West Bengal State Rapid and Blitz Championship respectively. Prantik scored undefeated 8.0/9 to win the Rapid, Neelash scored 7.5/8 to win the Blitz event. Srijit Paul and Koustav Chatterjee also scored 8.0/9, but due to a better tie-break score, Prantik edged ahead and became champion, Srijit and Koustav had to settle with first and second runner-up position respectively. In Blitz, defending champion CM Aronyak Ghosh finished half-a-point behind the champion at 7.0/8 and secured the first runner-up place. Anurag Jaiswal also scored the same and he was placed third. This year State Rapid witnessed a mammoth 270 participants from various districts across the state. Photo: Shahid Ahmed

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