
The Week in Chess
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The Week in Chess is an electronic magazine covering the games and results from current international chess events by Mark Crowther.
The Week in Chess
13h ago
The Djerba Chess Festival takes place 16th to 23rd February 2025 ..read more
The Week in Chess
1d ago
The Chessable Masters take place Tue 18th Feb to Fri 21st Feb 2025. Players: Grischuk, Firouzja, Esipenko, Giri, Erigaisi, Caruana, Nakamura, Nepomniachtchi, Duda, Carlsen, Praggnanandhaa, Sevian, Artemiev, Wei Yi, Wesley So and Yu Yangyi. 10 minutes per game. Double Elimination KO ..read more
The Week in Chess
1d ago
The Monaco FIDE Women's Grand Prix takes place Mon 17th Feb to Fri 28th Feb 2025. Players: Zhongyi Tan, Aleksandra Goryachkina, Humpy Koneru, Kateryna Lagno, Bibisara Assaubayeva, Harika Dronavalli, Alexandra Kosteniuk, Sarasadat Khademalsharieh, Elisabeth Paehtz and Batkhuyag Munguntuul ..read more
The Week in Chess
1w ago
The Freestyle Grand Slam Weissenhaus is the first in a series of rebranded Chess960 (Hans-Walter Schmitt organised a series of events in Germany and coined this name) events trying to popularise a format espoused by Bobby Fischer in 1993 and launched by him in Argentina in 1996, the idea itself is very old going back to at least the 18th Century. The format has never found favour amongst regular players because it seeks to solve problems they don't really have, an exhaustion of opening choices, unwillingness to spend massive amounts of time preparing openings and boredom with the original game ..read more
The Week in Chess
2w ago
Praggnanandhaa won the 87th Tata Steel Chess tournament for his most impressive result of his career so far. The path to victory was not at all smooth and he had to show great determination on the final day. Praggnanandhaa shared the lead with World Champion Gukesh and I don't think anyone predicted both players would go down to a defeat.
Gukesh was well beaten by a resurgent Arjun Erigaisi who said his confidence returned after beating Nodirbek Abdusattorov in Round 12. The game was a Petroff with opposite sides castling, Erigaisi always seemed at least equal, there was a weird exchange sacri ..read more
The Week in Chess
2w ago
The twelfth round of the Tata Steel Masters saw the top three all involved in dramatic games. At the end of the day Praggnanandhaa and Gukesh share the lead on 8.5/12 and Nodirbek Abdusattorov is now on 7.5 points after losing. If they are tied tomorrow there will be a blitz tie-break match after the round.
First of all Praggnanandhaa won a short game against Alexey Sarana whose solid undefeated start is a distant memory after his third loss in a row. Praggnanandhaa found a clever idea in the Queen's Gambit that led to opposite sides castling and a nasty position for Sarana. Praggnanandhaa bro ..read more
The Week in Chess
2w ago
The Tata Steel Masters heads into the final two rounds with three players in contention for first place. Gukesh's draw took him to 8/11 and a win for Praggnanandhaa put him right back in it on 7.5 points. Nodirbek Abdusattorov let a win escape against Vincent Keymer but stays very much in contention on 7.5 points as well. The leaders now all face players in the bottom half of the field, one of those players is however Arjun Erigaisi who faces two of them and may try to salvage something from an otherwise terrible event by winning these key games.
World Champion Gukesh was held to a draw by Wei ..read more
The Week in Chess
2w ago
Gukesh leads the Tata Steel Masters with 7.5/10 by half a point from Nodirbek Abdusattorov on 7 points, a further half point behind is Praggnanandhaa. It seems very likely the winner will be one of these three players and all of them won today. There is a rest day on Thursday followed by the final three rounds with the event finishing on Sunday.
Gukesh started the game as black with 1.e4 d6! the first time he'd ever played this, Max Warmerdam played 2.g3! a pre-event piece of prep and after 2...c5 they were in a Sicilian. Gukesh had the kind of complicated position he needed and after 24.Bf1 ..read more
The Week in Chess
2w ago
Today produced an opportunity for the World Champion Gukesh to take the lead and he delivered by beating Mendonca in a good game with the white pieces. His co leaders could not match him, Abdusattorov, drew in a solid game against Caruana, and Praggnanandhaa lost to Giri. Gukesh played a complicated game and while his opponent Mendonca played strongly for much of the game, he needed too much time to do so and in zeitnot he made a bad blunder. Giri put Praggnanandhaa under pressure and although he missed a few chances to win earlier he still got the converted the advantage to a full point after ..read more
Wei Yi and Caruana keep themselves in contention after wins in Round 8 of the Tata Steel Masters - 8
The Week in Chess
2w ago
The Tata Steel Masters enters a second rest day on Monday with a three way tie between Gukesh, Nodirbek Abdusattorov and Praggnanandhaa on 5.5/8, half a point clear of Vladimir Fedoseev on 5 points and in turn half a point clear of Alexey Sarana, Wei Yi and Fabiano Caruana on 4.5/8. The winner of this year's Masters will surely be one of these players.
Today the leaders Praggnanandhaa and Gukesh drew a Berlin Ruy Lopez in 33 moves. A game not without interest but also not that thrilling either. Fabiano Caruana beat Vincent Keymer on the black side of an Exchange Queen's Gambit. Caruana had a c ..read more