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“Bishop to d3. . . . Black bishop takes White knight . . . Ooh . . .” The commentator draws in his breath: “Black’s probably going to regret that move.” Black probably does for, moments later, White’s fist swings into his nose, covering Black in blood. Black, keen to avenge both knight and nose, starts pummelling White about the ears. A klaxon blares. The crowd roars: “Do it for the bishop!” Chess matches are not usually so lively. Or bloody. Yet this was the scene on Saturday at the Boston Dome, in Tufnell Park, northwest London, where players contested...

The most bitter rivalry in world chess will resume in Spain on Tuesday when Garry Kasparov plays Anatoly Karpov in a match imbued with nostalgia. Setting aside formerly icy personality differences, the two Russian grandmasters will play 12 rapid and semi-rapid games over four days in Valencia. The match will be shown live on the internet and comes 25 years after the duo first competed against one another for the world title. That contest, in Moscow, lasted five months before it was halted, ostensibly to protect the players' health. Mr Karpov was in the lead when it was cut short...

Maverick chess master Vladislav Tkachiev falls asleep at the board Philippe Naughton A Russian-born chess maverick has caused a stir by falling asleep at the board after reportedly turning up drunk at a grandmasters' tournament in India. Vladislav Tkachiev, 35, who was was born in Moscow, raised in Kazakhstan and now plays as a Frenchman, had to concede a game at the Calcutta Open and could face further sanctions from the game's governing body. Tkachiev completed only 15 moves in an hour in a third-round match against India's Praveen Kumar after repeatedly dozing off. “Each time he fell asleep, players...

A picture of a young Adolf Hitler apparently playing chess against Vladimir Lenin 100 years ago has come to light. The image is said to have been created in Vienna by Hitler's art teacher, Emma Lowenstramm, and is signed on the reverse by the two dictators. Hitler was a jobbing artist in the city in 1909 and Lenin was in exile and the house where they allegedly played the game belonged to a prominent Jewish family. In the run-up to the Second World War the Jewish family fled and gave many of their possessions, including the etching and chess set,...

Hugh Myers (1930-2008), opening theoretician 25.12.2008 – The chess world has lost a particularly creative player and prominent exponent of unorthodox openings. Hugh Myers was a true chess lover: an author, theoretician and magazine editor who wrote a gripping autobiography and made a memorable contribution to chess politics. Four of his entertaining games are presented here. In memoriam. Hugh Myers (1930-2008) With the death of Hugh Edward Myers (Davenport, IA, USA) the chess world has lost a writer and theoretician most noted for specializing in ‘unusual’ openings. From November 1979 to December 1996 he intermittently edited and published The Myers...

The best women's chess player in the world flipped a dirty diaper into the trash as she pondered her next move after a dominating year. "I want to open a chess academy online, keep training, doing the podcast," South Floridian Alexandra Kosteniuk said during a recent stroll with her baby, Francesca. "But right now, my priority is being a mommy." Kosteniuk, 24, won the Women's World Championship in her homeland of Russia in September. After several months of traveling the globe, Kosteniuk, her husband, Diego Garces, and their 20-month-old daughter are settled back at their home in Key Biscayne, Fla....

"I lost a bishop quickly, and I couldn't get back. He's very good," Petkov explained. To an "expert"-ranked chess player, the fight was fair enough. Petkov tried to take on six New Jersey State Prison inmates at once, standing over a long table and moving from board to board in what has become known as the "Inmates and Ivy" tournament - an unusual and occasional competition celebrating its seventh season. Before they were led into the stark gymnasium of the aging maximum-security prison, a group of six polite and humble Princeton students stepped out of the cold Trenton air today,...

The ancient game of "Go" is well known as easy to learn and difficult to master. Louis Abronson of Los Gatos is one of 22 players traveling to Beijing, China to represent the American Go Association in the first World Mind Sports Games, October 3rd through 18th. Go is one of several Mind Sports, which include chess, bridge, checkers, and xiangqi (Chinese chess). Abronson, like the other players, earned the right to compete in Beijing by winning a series of qualifying tournaments. "International Go is dominated by the Asian giants--China, Japan and Korea--and they will each be sending their best,"...

A two-inch-tall ivory chess piece, part of an ancient set, suggests that traders brought the game to Europe at least five centuries earlier than previously thought. Archaeologists led by Richard Hodges of Britain's East Anglia University excavated the game piece (right) from the remains of a fifth-century port city on the Albanian coast. Chess had probably originated as a war-strategy training game in India by the third century A.D., but it took ages to reach Europe, historians traditionally believed. "A number of chess pieces, found from Scotland down to southern Italy, date to around the 12th century, so it...

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A RUSSIAN man has been crowned world champion in the novelty sport of chess boxing, a game that requires equal skill at moving pawns and throwing punches. Mathematics student Nikolai Sazhin, 19, competing under the name "The President'' knocked out a 37-year-old German policeman Frank Stoldt, who served as a peacekeeper in Kosovo until recently. The loser said he was simply too punch-drunk to fend off checkmate. "I took a lot of body-blows in the fourth round and that affected my concentration. That's why I made a big mistake in the fifth round: I did not see him coming for...

(CNSNews.com) - President's Bush's call on Wednesday for Congress to lift its 27-year moratorium on offshore drilling is an "example of typical Bush White House politics," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) told Cybercast News Service Thursday. Other leading Democrats on Capitol Hill also said they were surprised that Bush has not yet rescinded the executive office ban on drilling, which was established by his father, President George H.W. Bush, in 1990. "What the president is doing is unfair to the American people to indicate, 'We will let Congress do something about it,' " Reid said. "He has the authority...

In 1982 C.N. [Chess Notes] 164 reported that we had been in correspondence with the publishers of The Guinness Book of Records. The result was that a number of the book’s inaccuracies were corrected and, in particular, subsequent editions added an entry on Capablanca’s small number of losses in his adult career and his unbeaten record between 10 February 1916 and 21 March 1924. How long Capablanca’s feat remained in the Guinness book we do not know, but certainly it was still there many years later. Before us lies the US paperback 1988 Guinness Book of World Records, which had...

Chess Champion Bobby Fischer Washington DC, Jan 23, 2008 / 04:39 pm (CNA).- Legendary chess player Bobby Fischer, who made history by dethroning the Soviet chess king Boris Spassky in 1972, asked to be buried as a Catholic, according to officials of the Catholic Church in Iceland, where he had been living since 1992.The famous and eccentric chess player, who died last Thursday at the age of 64, was buried Tuesday in Iceland during a private Catholic ceremony.The French news agency AFP reported that Fischer, who was born into a Jewish family in New York, expressly asked to be...

One of the world's greatest chess geniuses, Bobby Fischer, has died at the age of 64. A spokesman for Fischer said the former world chess champion passed away in a Reykjavik hospital yesterday. The US-born former world chess champion, who became famous around the world for beating the Soviet Union's Boris Spassky in 1972, had been seriously ill for some time. Rest in Peace, Bobby

Controversial former world chess champion Bobby Fischer has died aged 64, Iceland's media says. The US-born player, who became famous around the world for beating the Soviet Union's Boris Spassky in 1972, had been seriously ill for some time. Mr Fischer was granted Icelandic citizenship in 2005 as a way to avoid being deported the US. Mr Fischer was wanted for breaking international sanctions by playing a match in the former Yugoslavia in 1992. He also had alienated many in his homeland by broadcasting anti-Semitic diatribes and expressing support for the 11 September 2001 attacks in New York. The reclusive...

REYKJAVIK, Iceland ( — Bobby Fischer, the brilliant, troubled former chess champion, has died, a spokesman said Friday. He was 64. Fischer spokesman Gardar Sverrisson said Fischer died in a Reykjavik hospital on Thursday. There was no immediate word on cause of death. U.S.-born Fischer, a fierce critic of his homeland who renounced his U.S. citizenship, moved to Iceland in 2005. He was world famous for defeating the Soviet Union's Boris Spassky in 1972. The Chicago-born, Brooklyn, N.Y.-reared Fischer was wanted in the United States for playing a 1992 rematch against Cold War rival Spassky in Yugoslavia in defiance of...

She is far and away the strongest female chess player that ever lived. [Note: She has always declined to play in competitions limited to females, which is why she never won the Women's World Championship.] At times she was in the top ten of the overall world rankings, but in the last three years, due to the birth of two children, has dropped back a little in her preparation and results. But as everyone can see from her recent tournaments this remarkable lady is on the rebound. Interviewing Judith Polgar [born July 23, 1976, in Budapest, Hungary] implies some kind...

Yet again we see Garry Kasparov on a big American TV network. One Good Move, which provides the video feed, writes: "Kasparov makes a compelling case for the Bush Administration's hypocrisy in the world, and that Putin has the puppet Bush dancing to his tune. A dance meant to keep the world in turmoil so that KGB Inc. can benefit from high oil prices." Interview and our readers' reactions. Kasparov on Chris Matthews' Hardball No wonder the Skype calls have temporarily ceased. This has been the Garry Kasparov Week, with the former world champion and current Russian opposition leader appearing...

He did it again: the former world champion and leader of the Russian opposition has appeared on yet another prime time American TV show. After Colbert and Maher, this time Kasparov argues with CNN's Wolf Blitzer about Russian politics under the regime of the president Vladimir Putin. Late Edition can be seen all over the world – in case you missed it here are transcripts and a podcast. Kasparov vs Wolf Blitzer on CNN's Late Edition It is the third time in a week that the former world chess champion and current opposition leader in Russia has appeared on a...

SATIRE: The following are transcripts of recorded conversations between chess pieces conspiring to check mate their opponents. To understand the jargon, let’s review chess pieces and the chess board. The players on each side include 1 King, 1 Queen, 2 Rooks, 2 Bishops, 2 Knights and 8 Pawns. The board, or battle field as it is aptly named by the pieces, is broken down into eight rows labeled 1-8 and eight columns labeled a-h. To designate the location of a piece, the notation is as follows, [ROW,COLUMN] for example, 1a indicates the far left and closest square on the white...

Kasparov Wins Opposition Primaries In Russia 27.09.2007 – The Moscow branch of the Other Russia opposition party Monday chose former world chess champion Garry Kasparov as candidate for the 2008 presidential elections. Kasparov garnered 66 of a possible 113 votes at the all-important Moscow primary, defeating ex-premier Mikhail Kasyanov. In addition to many international reports there is a remarkable 12-page (!) story in the New Yorker [Letter From Moscow: "THE TSAR’S OPPONENT — Garry Kasparov Takes Aim at the Power of Vladimir Putin" by David Remnick].

21.09.2007 – The recently ended International Women's Chess Tournament in Baku was a great success, with sponsors and organisers promising further such tournaments in the future. Our reporter Zahir Ahmadov used the opportunity to conduct an informal questionnaire on the state of women's chess: are men better at the game, and if so why. Interesting reactions. Women In Chess By Zahir Ahmadov The Honorary President of FIDE Florencio Campomones said in the opening ceremony of the 2nd International Women’s Chess Championship in Baku that he hoped that this tournament would have an impact on the development of women’s chess in...

A death row Republican The condemned man says he supports public executions By Dan Williamson / May 3, 2007 Christopher J. Newton murdered his cellmate because he kept surrendering during chess games. The convicted murderer who’s next on Ohio’s execution list didn’t sound particularly remorseful about killing his cellmate in cold blood, but he said this week he deserves to die. Christopher J. Newton was surprisingly candid in his conversation Monday with Dayton Daily News reporter Laura Bischoff, who interviewed Newton on behalf of the Ohio Legislative Correspondents Association. In addition to explaining why he murdered his cellmate at the...

Police have arrested Russian opposition leader Garry Kasparov at a banned anti-Kremlin rally in central Moscow. He was detained during a huge security operation to prevent opponents of President Putin gathering at Pushkin Square. The former chess champion leads the United Civil Front group, part of the opposition coalition Other Russia. It accuses President Putin's regime of trampling on democracy. The Kremlin says Other Russia destabilises Russia. Mr Kasparov was seen inside a police van waving and smiling at gathered media after his arrest, the Associated Press said. Reports say dozens of other opposition activists were arrested, as well...

The young chess players were the first such champions in Arizona. But a team of homeschool students from the southeast Valley, called the Chevalier Noir (Black Knight) Academy, was shut out last weekend from competing, not allowed to defend its title in the Arizona Scholastic Chess Championship held in Tucson. State chess officials allowed the homeschool students to play as teams for two years because of changing or unclear national rules on the subject, but this year, they ruled team members must come from the same school. "The tournaments were created and designed for school teams," said Will Wharton, president...

GARRY KASPAROV, the former world chess champion, took a pen and notebook and diagramed the protesters’ march through St. Petersburg on March 3. Like a general reliving a battle or a player analyzing a winning combination, he sketched Uprising Square and showed where the police had gathered in strength, blocking the street leading to the governor’s office. A tactical mistake! “This is typical for this government,” he explained. “They protect themselves.” As a result, only a few police officers guarded St. Petersburg’s main commercial street, Nevsky Prospekt. And that was where Mr. Kasparov and thousands of others — as many...

DOHA, Qatar (AP) - Bobby Fischer is still living the quiet life in Iceland, the home he adopted after being held in Japanese custody for nearly a year. He still refuses to play chess, at least the version that everybody else plays. And he's still a wanted man, as far as the U.S. government is concerned. Beyond that, there are many things the world may never know about the reclusive chess icon, and Miyoko Watai, Fischer's longtime companion, says she isn't going to break the silence. "I prefer not to talk about private things," said Watai, who is in Qatar...

The chess set designed to help POWs escape Last updated at 07:42am on 30th November 2006 They may look like worn pieces of an old cardboard chess set, but these little discs contain a prisoner of war escape kit. When prized open a white bishop from the 'Ajax Chessmen' reveals a tiny compass hidden inside. And a silk map is believed to still be concealed in the cardboard tube. Even the innocent handwritten message on the tube which contained the 32 pieces chess pieces is in code. The chessmen sets were sent to POW camps throughout World War II by...

ELISTA, Russia - The future of the world chess championship was in question Friday when a player did not show up for the fifth game and threatened to withdraw from the match after he was accused of cheating and locked out of his private bathroom. Vladimir Kramnik, a Russian, was accused by the manager for his opponent, Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria, of taking too many bathroom breaks — an apparent suggestion that he was secretly using a technical device or a computer program to help him with his moves. Kramnik, the Classical World Champion, had been leading Topalov, the World...

"Last week, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov inspected the Northern Nuclear Testing Site on the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. " Ivanov visited the town of Belushya, where experts responsible for testing nuclear weapons live. News agencies covering his trip noted some major changes there.

Border guards seized a British lorry on its way to make a delivery to the Iranian military - after discovering it was packed with radioactive material that could be used to build a dirty bomb. The lorry set off from Kent on its way to Tehran but was stopped by officials at a checkpoint on Bulgaria's northernborder with Romania after a scanner indicated radiation levels 200 times above normal. The lorry was impounded and the Bulgarian Nuclear Regulatory Agency (NPA) was called out. On board they found ten lead-lined boxes addressed to the Iranian Ministry of Defence. Inside each box...

"The United States has agreed to sell Taiwan 66 advanced fighter jets to counter China's continued arms build-up..."

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and Syrian officials discussed the confrontation between Hizbollah and Israel on Monday, the official news agency SANA said. Mottaki, who arrived in Syria on a brief visit, delivered a letter to President Bashar al-Assad from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad expressing support for Syria against any threat, SANA said, in reference to Israel, which is bombarding Lebanon. Syria and Iran are the main backers of Hizbollah

The Federal Security Service will soon have the power to fight terrorists in foreign countries. A State Duma bill, set to be passed in a second reading this month, gives the security service, known as the FSB, the authority to go beyond information-sharing with its foreign counterparts and dispatch commandos to strike terrorist groups and bases. "The amendments provide for special-operations units of the FSB to be used at the discretion of the president against terrorists and bases that are located outside the Russian Federation for the purpose of interdicting threats to the Russian Federation," Mikhail Grishankov, deputy chairman of...

The aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln has departed its home port at Everett for a six-month deployment in the western Pacific." ....

WASHINGTON, Dec. 23, 2005 - The servicemembers recovering at Walter Reed Army Medical Center here will receive a unique gift this holiday season: a larger-than-life chess set adorned with signatures and messages of support. The 8-by-8-foot chess set is being donated by Mega Chess, a private company in California, and delivered by Operation Interdependence, an organization that supports regularly scheduled deployments of troops with care packages. This is about the 20th chess set Operation Interdependence is delivering to troops, said Albert Renteria, Operation Interdependence founder and president. Each set is donated by Mega Chess and bears the signatures of hundreds...

Russia has every right to sell arms to Iran, its defense minister said on Wednesday, responding to mounting criticism of a $1 billion deal announced last week. The United States, calling Iran a "state sponsor of terror", said selling weapons to the Islamic Republic did not help the Middle East. "This deal, this contract is absolutely legitimate. Like it or not, it's our affair. There are plenty of things we don't like either," Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said in comments shown on NTV television.

IRONDEQUOIT, N.Y. (AP) - They're too loud. They hog the seats at the food court. Often they don't even buy anything. So now they're being kicked out of the mall. Teenagers? Try chess players. The new owners of the Medley Center have banned chess and card games, effectively removing a group that has been playing chess at the suburban Rochester mall for years. They can play only from 8 to 10 a.m., when the mall is open to walkers. "I really feel we've gotten jilted," 70-year-old retired salesman Ray Licata said in Thursday's Democrat and Chronicle. Mall owner Adam Bersin...

CHESS in America is having a crisis. There were no American contenders in the recent world chess championship tournament in San Luis, Argentina, which was limited to the world's top eight players. The closest American candidate for the tournament was Hikaru Nakamura - a 17-year-old who is ranked 42nd in the world. But Nakamura - who at 15 became the youngest American grandmaster, breaking Bobby Fischer's record - says that he might give up pro chess because there is so little money in it. Losing Nakamura would be devastating for American chess. How can chess save itself? No doubt it...

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the interior ministry to conduct preventive strikes against terrorists. "[The Interior Ministry's] measures in this area must have a preventive nature," the president said at a meeting Wednesday with high-ranking interior ministry officials in the Kremlin. "We realize how serious the tasks facing security-related agencies in Russia are, especially the law enforcement bodies and interior ministry troops," Putin said. He also said the latest events in the world confirm that terrorism remains a major global threat. "The recent blasts in London; the terrorist acts in Iraq, Turkey, Israel, and Egypt; and the assaults on government...

Chess pieces sit on three sides of the board He has been dreaming of building a chessboard for three players ever since he was a boy. He was always unhappy about a situation when only two people could play chess. But three was always a crowd for this game. Mr. Kononov eventually made his dream come true. He is a radio engineer by profession. He was involved in serious projects working in that field for many years. He came up with lots of ideas. He was part of a team that designed an aircraft driven by solar energy, it was...

Chess has always been a simulacrum for political and military confrontation, with its gambits and endgames, stalemate and checkmate. We imagine diplomats or generals facing each other across a board. The game has been internationally popular for more than two centuries, but, like the literary genre of the spy thriller, it came into its own in the cold war. To take one of many examples: the opening scene of one of the first James Bond films, From Russia with Love, is a chess match between two grandmasters. And in real life, it was the Fischer-Spassky match of 1972—when an eccentric...

Former world chess champion and chairman of the Committee 2008 Free Choice Garry Kasparov, speaking at a public meeting on Wednesday in Novosibirsk, announced the formation of the United Civil Front, which will be able to “dismantle the Putin regime.” According to Kasparov, the main task of the Front will be to “establish a free political arena in which normal elections can be held in 2008.” Marina Litvinovich told Kommersant that “in six months or a year, it will be clear whether that is a united democratic party.” As soon as he arrived in Novosibirsk, Kasparov held a press conference...

A noisy rally by supporters of Mikhail Khodorkovsky outside the court ended in a brawl Monday, with police detaining 28 people, including Yabloko deputy head Sergei Mitrokhin, and beating former chess champion Garry Kasparov with batons. About 300 people -- a mix of children, students, middle-aged adults and pensioners -- rallied outside the Meshchansky District Court at noon as judges inside started reading the verdict in the 11-month trial of Yukos founders Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev. Some boarded buses and trams and rode down the street outside the courthouse, waving flags from the windows and drawing loud cheers from the...

Kenneth Dickerman for The New York TimesAlex Korves, an eighth grader from Manhattan, said that in Nashville, the hallways were filled with boys roughhousing, and that "when they find out you're on the opposing team, they're nasty." CHICAGO, May 15 - Suleidy Quesada, 14, said her chess coach has taught her a special strategy that goes beyond mastering openings and endgames: "I look straight in their eyes, I touch my hair, I lick my lips," explained Suleidy, who has been playing four years. "If you're losing and ask for a draw, they say yes." But at a tournament here...

MOSCOW (AP) - Garry Kasparov, the world's former No. 1 chess player who quit the professional game last month to focus on politics, said Saturday he had been hit over the head with a chessboard in a politically motivated attack. Kasparov, an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin, was not injured Friday when he was hit with the chessboard after signing it for a young man at an event in Moscow. A spokeswoman for Kasparov, Marina Litvinovich, said the assailant told the chess champion: "I admired you as a chess player, but you gave that up for politics." She said...

MOSCOW (AP) - Garry Kasparov, the world's former No. 1 chess player who quit the professional game last month to focus on politics, said Saturday he had been hit over the head with a chessboard in a politically motivated attack. Kasparov, an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin, was not injured Friday when he was hit with the chessboard after signing it for a young man at an event in Moscow. A spokeswoman for Kasparov, Marina Litvinovich, said the assailant told the chess champion: "I admired you as a chess player, but you gave that up for politics." She said...

SAN DIEGO – Bobby Fischer has dropped a federal lawsuit against the U.S. government over what the former chess champion called his illegal nine-month detention in Japan. The lawsuit was filed March 23, the same day Fischer was released from a Japanese detention center and took up residence in Iceland. The case was voluntarily dismissed Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Diego. "He wants to get on with his life," Richard J. Vattuone, the attorney who filed the lawsuit told The San Diego Union-Tribune in Tuesday's editions. "He's not interested in any more lawsuits, so that matter is over,...

Chess legend Bobby Fischer arrived in Iceland on Thursday, hoping to avoid deportation to the United States by accepting an offer of citizenship from a country still grateful for its role as the site of his most famous match. [. . .] In the interview, he unleashed an angry diatribe against the United States. "The United States is an illegitimate country...just like the bandit state of Israel - the Jews have no right to be there, it belongs to the Palestinians," said Fischer, whose mother was Jewish. "That country, the United States, belongs to the red man, the American Indian...It's...