Added on 08.28.2012
The 40th Chess Olympiad started today. 165 Teams from all over the world, this morning at 8:00am ICC time, crossed their rooks and bishos over the boards, to fight for a medal. Istanbul, the beautiful Turkish city on the Bosphorus, is home of the 825 players who have gathered to play this amazing event. ICC will have live coverage of the top boards (42 boards), and Chess.FM will be on the air for the last three rounds. We wil have the Game Of the Day service for all the rounds, and you will...Full StoryAdded on 08.21.2012
Here at ICC Chess.FM we are always looking for improvement, and to provide our members with useful and interesting material to improve their game. We felt the need for a brand-new show, aimed at beginners up to intermediate players, where they can learn how to build an opening repertoire. IM John Watson is a renowned chess teacher, and with his new show he's going to put at your service his great teaching experience. In these videos, IM Watson is going to help you build your own opening...Full StoryAdded on 08.07.2012
Chalkida Chess Academy “Palamedes of Evia” will host a friendly chess match between Turkish Grandmaster Suat Atalik and his wife, IM/WGM Ekaterina Atalik, as a prelude to the International Chess Tournament “Negroponte 2012”. This unique event is the first ever chess match between husband and wife, who also happen to be the winners (overall and women’s category respectively) of the previous edition of “Negroponte”, in 2010. Hosting this match in Chalkida is a vivid example of the true spirit...Full StoryAdded on 07.30.2012
With Dortmund just finished, we're going to cover the 45th Biel Chess Festival, starting July the 23rd at 8am ICC time. Numero Uno Magnus Carlsen leads the group of amazingly strong players, that makes this event one of the most interesting of the year! American hero Hikaru Nakamura, Russian Alexander Morozevich , Chinese Wang Hao, French Etienne Bacrot and Dutchman Anish Giri will challenge the Norwegian chess genius in an amazing double round robin 10-rounds tournament. ICC will have Chess.FM...Full StoryAdded on 07.15.2012
Dortmund: The Realm of King Caruana Fab Fabiano! The young American-Italian stud made it: he won the Sparkassen Chess Meeting super tournament in Dortmund, dethroning King Vlad . In a dramatic last round, Caruana, after the amazing win over Kramink in round 8, managed to beat GM Bartel, to take the trophy. Now Caruana is officially one of the elite players - his rating put him there already - and nobody will be able to affirm that he's getting rating points in "weaker events". The...Full StoryAdded on 01.16.2012
Levon, Levon likes his money It's Levon Aronian's tournament to lose! After beating the Dutch no1, Anish Giri, in round 10, the amenable Armenian World no.2 now has an impressive +5 score at the top on 7.5/10, a full point ahead of his nearest rival, Vassily Ivanchuk, who leapfrogged Magnus Carlsen in the standings after beating cellar-dweller David Navara. Checkout and support the Tata Steel Rd.10 video recap with an extended 17min Levon Aronian post-mortem on his game with Giri. The video...Full StoryAdded on 12.12.2011
It's getting to be an all too familiar script, but nevertheless an exciting one: The Norwegian World No.1, Magnus Carlsen dominates the elite scene with a strength and flair that sets him aside from everyone else. Just turned 21, he's already the second-highest rated player of all time continues to find additional gears to pull clear of his rivals in the world rankings. Carlsen has now gone to 2833 in the unofficial live rating list after his performance last month in winning the...Full StoryAdded on 11.25.2011
Magnus Carlsen has a recognized talent for being one of the best tournament finishers in the game, and the World #1 reaffirmed this status at the Tal Memorial with yet another dramatic and classy final round win to claim the title on tiebreak. In a final round of fighting chess, the highlight was easily the battle of Garry Kasparov students past and present with Carlsen taking on Hikaru Nakamura with the huge fan-base for both expecting fireworks from the off...only it soon turned...Full StoryAdded on 10.31.2011
When those two masters of the macabre, Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi made their first movie together after individual success on screen in the early 1930s with Frankenstein and Dracula, it was to appear in the 1934 Universal classic The Black Cat - a movie that is regarded as a classic of the horror genre. And the tense highlight of the movie was a gripping five-minute sequence when both played a game of chess (literally and figuratively) for the life of the young female lead, played by...Full StoryAdded on 10.15.2011
Photo © G-Star Raw The big sponsorship and media pulling-power of Magnus Carlsen looks to have finally won over FIDE, as they bowed to the Norwegian World No.1's demands to change the format to the 2012 World Championship Candidates rules that clears the way for him to re-enter the fray for a possible title clash. The 2011 Candidates in Kazan a few months back was settled by knockouts that only served to make a mockery of the system, with many games...Full StoryAdded on 10.11.2011
Carlsen Grand Slams Chucky Vassily Ivanachuk may have been the Samba King in the first leg of the Grand Slam Final in Sao Paulo, but it was World No.1 Magnus Carlsen who single handedly stopped the Ukrainian from one of his best tournament performances ever, as he dominated the second leg in Bilbao to snatch the title from the Ukrainian after an exciting playoff between the two. The omens started to look bad for Ivanchuk after a second crushing defeat at the hands of Carlsen in the...Full StoryAdded on 09.20.2011
After almost a month of intense and unrelenting action, the FIDE World Cup in Khanty-Mansisyk in Siberia ended on Monday with the six-time Russian champion and special Chess.FM guest commentator, Peter Svidler, completing one of the best periods of his chess career to lift the title. Svidler took the $120,000 first prize after beating his fellow countryman, Alexander Grischuk, 2.5-1.5, in the best-of-four game final. It proved to be a crushing psychological win for Svidler, who...Full StoryAdded on 08.16.2011
August is generally the month in chess where we seldom see elite tournaments. But this year is different, with the rescheduling of the über-strong Russian Championship Super-final from December to guarantee the participation of former world champion and Russian No.1, Vladimir Kramnik. Something had to give, as Kramnik again had accepted an invitation to play in the London Chess Classic through early December, so the only option to have the strongest Russian Championship of recent years was to...Full StoryAdded on 08.16.2011
Led by World Champion Vishy Anand, India has become the epicenter of what's best-in-chess these days. India also have Humpy Koneru being the official challenger later this year in the women's world championship; last month India staged their strongest-ever tournament, the 1st Airport Authorities of India International; and right now in Chennai, India is staging the 50th World Junior Championship. And now India is set to storm the online chess world with a new tournament in...Full StoryAdded on 08.16.2011
Summer Nights sees most people relaxing by sitting outside in the shade rather than locked in front of a hot computer screen. And many of you will most likely be doing this right now with an iPad nearby - and with the latest update to ICC's iPad App (version 1.5) released last week, you have no excuse now to be checking in on ICC to see what's happening during a long, hot summer of chess! In our new version of the ICC iPad App "Chess at ICC HD", we've listened to all the feedback (good and...Full StoryAdded on 08.05.2011
What exactly is it about Dortmund that brings out the very best in Vladimir Kramnik? Having won in the German city a record nine times in the past, victory in the 2011 edition of the tournament was sealed at the weekend with a round to spare that gave the Russian former world champion his tenth title. Yet despite his margin of victory, Kramnik didn't rest on his laurels in the final round but instead went for broke against a faltering Hikaru Nakamura in an effort to again enter the "2800...Full Story