Added on 05.15.2018
GM Joel Benjamin This week I’ll wrap up the Russian Team Championship, give the lowdown on the Sigeman tournament, and check in on the Women’s World Championship. The Russian Team title was not decided until the last round, when the Bronze Horsemen of St. Petersburg took a lead into the last round over Legacy Square Capital of Moscow. Legacy took on the tailenders and duly crushed Zhiguli Samara by a near maximum score. The pressure was on Miedny Vsadnik to defeat the underachieving but...Full StoryAdded on 05.01.2018
"Here is the May 2018 schedule for ICC TV! Join us this month and become a star on ICC and YouTube!" - GM Alex Yermolinsky 05/03 Thursday 3PM GM Alex Yermolinsky Every Russian Schoolboy knows LIVE! 05/12 Saturday 2PM IM Christof Sielecki SimulMaster! 05/13 Sunday 7PM GM David Smerdon Banter Blitz 05/17 Thursday 3PM GM Alex...Full StoryAdded on 04.17.2018
Round 11 It's a S(l)am Dunk! With a whopping +6 (+6=5-0) Sam Shankland is the 2018 US Chess Champion. In the last round, both Sam and Fabiano won. It's quite remarkable that Caruana, with a massive +5, got second place. Shankland played a convincing game against the youngest GM of the tournament, Awonder Liang, to secure the title,m no matter Caruana's result. Sam showed to be totally focused on the game, and with a somewhat killer-like attitude, he went on to destroy Liang. These are a...Full StoryAdded on 04.16.2018
This week I’ll have a final tidbit from the GRENKE Masters, as well as a couple of major open tournaments from a country that might surprise you. I watched Alex Yermolinsky’s GRENKE video recap to see if he was covering what I might include in some final thoughts, and I saw he spoke at length about Hou Yifan’s missed endgame opportunity against Caruana, as well as Fabi’s last round win over Vitiugov. BTW, I found Yermo’s insights, not only about hard chess but about players and approaches to...Full StoryAdded on 04.09.2018
This week we will focus on the GRENKE Chess Classic from Germany, but first, we will take note of a major surprise in the strong open tournament which concluded last week. Many big names took part, but first place went to the unheralded 13-year-old German IM Vincent Keymer. Keymer’s 8-1 score had many fans remembering Sofia Polgar’s “Sack of Rome, where she notched a 2900 performance rating at age 14 nearly thirty years ago. Keymer beat several grandmasters and went into the last round tied...Full StoryAdded on 04.06.2018
IM John Watson John's back! After some months of hiatus, IM John Watson is back, with a new, fantastic videos series for ICC's members! Tricks 'n Traps in the Opening. How many tricks and traps are there in the sea of opening theory? From the simplest ones to the more advanced, IM John Watson in this amazing video series shows you how to fool (or not be fooled by!) your opponent, who might not know the intricacies of an opening. The course is organized by general opening, and in 15 videos...Full StoryAdded on 04.02.2018
This week we wrap up the European Individual Championship and get started on the GRENKE Chess Classic. GM Ivan Saric Ivan Saric took clear first in the European Individual Championship by winning his last two games to finish on 8.5/11. The last round is often played conservatively by those who want to ensure qualification into the World Cup—23 spots were given out in Batumi. Saric defeated David Navara in the last round but started to make his move in the previous round against Rasmus...Full StoryAdded on 04.01.2018
"Here is the April 2018 schedule for ICC TV! Join us this month and become a star on ICC and YouTube!" - GM David Smerdon 04/05 Thursday 3PM GM Alex Yermolinsky Grenke Chess Classic Highlights 04/07 Saturday 4PM GM Ronen Har-Zvi Time Odds! 04/10 Tuesday 3PM GM Alex Yermolinsky Grenke Chess Classic - Live recap 04/14 Saturday 2PM IM...Full StoryAdded on 03.29.2018
Deep in the Mind of the Spirit Divine The idea for what we call chess was conceived It soon came to birth manifested on earth The design for which had been decided on high It would be based on the unending circle At best "Chess is an expression of Pi" One might conclude that I have no right to speak with such certainty on this matter, but I would attempt to justify myself by revealing the foundation on which chess is built upon. I'll begin by stating my case upon a formula that came...Full StoryAdded on 03.22.2018
CARUANA! Fabiano Caruana, the American super-GM with an Italian name, is the Challenger to the Chess Throne. After a rollercoaster 14-round tournament, Fabiano emerged victorious, clear first a full point ahead of his immediate rivals, Mamedyarov and Karjakin. From Brooklin to Miami, then Europe to find coaches, and tournaments to play in, then back to the US, to represent his homeland. And now to London, to challenge Magnus Carlsen, arguably the strongest player of the last decade. The...Full StoryAdded on 03.19.2018
As the Candidates tournament rolls along, the action doesn’t stop in major tournaments around the World. This week I have news and action from two completed events, The Reykjavik Open and the Saint Louis Spring Internationals. Baskaran Adhiban got off to a slow start with draws against lower-rated players in rounds one and three, but then reeled off five wins in a row en route to 7.5/9 and clear first place. The key victory came—as it so often does—in the penultimate round, against the top...Full StoryAdded on 03.12.2018
This week I’ll have a report on the Tal Memorial Rapid and Blitz tournament, but first let me wrap the Aeroflot Open. Vladislav Kovalev - Photo by Niklesh Jain 24-year-old Belarussian GM Vladislav Kovalev emerged as the clear winner with 7/9, followed by the Indian Sethuraman and the young Russian Gordievsky at 6.5. It was a tournament where a lot of the top seeds took it on the chin, as you might expect in Russia. The win that catapulted Kovalev to first place came in the penultimate...Full StoryAdded on 03.05.2018
While there are some interesting events going on in world chess, I’m going to put them aside to focus on remembering a very important figure in American chess history. Anatoly Lein passed away last week at the age of 86. He became a grandmaster in 1968, and defeated many of the giants of Russian chess, including World Champions, Tal and Smyslov, as well as Bronstein, Polugaevsky, Stein, and Taimanov. Emigrating to the U.S. in 1975, he was able to put up strong results against younger...Full StoryAdded on 02.26.2018
This week I’ll feature games from the cutthroat competition in the Aeroflot Open in Moscow, as well as a look at a more convivial competition on the Emerald Isle. Open tournaments will always produce an upstart somewhere along the way. Eesha Karavade is not an up and comer at age thirty, but the start for the Indian WGM/IM was quite remarkable. With two wins and two draws against 2600 level players, she found herself among the early leaders. Here’s how she scored the point in the fourth...Full StoryAdded on 02.19.2018
It’s another fairly slow week in world chess, so I feel I’ll have to report on something that is sort of chess, and sort of not chess. Plus I will also wrap up the St. Louis Norm Congress and show an interesting game form the Cuban Championship. GM Magnus Carlsen and GM Hikaru Nakamura Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura met in Norway for the unofficial World Championship of Chess960, also known as Fischer Random, after the ex-World Champion, who was a great advocate of this chess...Full StoryAdded on 02.12.2018
We have a bit of a lull after the big time events in Wijk aan Zee and Gibraltar, but I’ll have action from the Moscow Open and St Louis Norm Congress. First up: a match between two legendary former World Champions. Anatoly Karpov retired from classical tournaments years ago, but he can still be coaxed into playing in rapid events. He took on Hou Yifan is a six-game match in China. At 66, Karpov is nearly three times older than his 23-year-old opponent. Hou Yifan also outrates 2018...Full StoryAdded on 02.05.2018
This week we have the conclusion of the Tradewinds Gibraltar Masters. The last five rounds produced a number of interesting games and a tense fight for first that needed extra time to resolve. GM Levon Aronian, winner of the Gibraltar Chess Festival In the end, Hikaru Nakamura did not manage to reel in his fourth consecutive Gibraltar title, when Levon Aronian took first place in the playoff. A whopping seven players landed in a tie for first. But let’s back up a bit and see some games...Full StoryAdded on 02.01.2018
"Here is the February 2018 schedule for ICC TV! Join us this month and become a star on ICC and YouTube!" - GM Joel Benjamin 02/04 Sunday 6PM GM David Smerdon Banter Blitz 02/08 Thursday 3PM GM Alex Yermolinskyn Every Russian Schoolboy Knows! 02/10 Saturday 2PM IM Christof Sielecki SimulMaster! 02/19 Monday 4PM GM Ronen Har-Zvi Time...Full StoryAdded on 01.29.2018
The great Tata Steel tournament has come to a close, but in its place steps up a big-time open tournament, the Gibraltar Masters. I’ll have the best action from the first six rounds. If you missed Hikaru Nakamura in Wijk aan Zee, don’t worry for him, he’s in a better place. Hikaru has the magic touch in Gibraltar, having won four titles, including the last three in a row. Counting the first seven rounds - where he leads with 6.0 - he has an undefeated streak of 53 games on the Rock,...Full StoryAdded on 01.22.2018
We’ve got the action from Tata Steel covered in our live recap videos, so I’m going to focus on a couple of other stories that may not be getting so much attention in the chess media. Two tournaments, two continents, two grandmaster titles. First, I’m very pleased to report that a student of mine, John Michael Burke of New Jersey, has earned his third grandmaster norm in the Charlotte Chess Club Winter International. Coupled with a FIDE rating already comfortably over 2500, Burke’s title...Full Story
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