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India’s D Gukesh became the youngest winner of the FIDE Candidates tournament after an exciting final round on Monday in Toronto. India’s D Gukesh became the youngest winner of the FIDE Candidates tournament after an exciting final round on Monday in Toronto. Gukesh held fellow title contender Hikaru Nakamura to a draw with black pieces in Round 14 to ensure his title win and become the second Indian to qualify for a World Championship final in the classical format, after Viswanathan Anand. The 17-year-old has now qualified for the World Championship final, where he is slated to face China’s Ding...

The association was also forced to address rumours circulating online that Yan had cheated during the competition by using anal beads equipped with wireless transmitters to send and receive signals. Yan allegedly clenched and unclenched rhythmically to communicate information about the chess board via code to a computer, which then sent back instructions on what moves to make in the form of vibrations, according to reports circulating on the Chinese social site Weibo.

R Praggnanandhaa began the third day of his epic final with Magnus Carlsen in the FIDE World Cup on a strong note but the day, and match, ended as predicted: Carlsen, the world no. 1, winning his first ever World Cup, 2.5 - 1.5. Carlsen bossed the endgame of the first tiebreak to win the first rapid game; that result and three draws (two in classical over the past two days), gave him the title. Praggnanandhaa, who like Carlsen was playing in his first World Cup final, will now play in the Candidates tournament in 2024, where the winner will...

Chess.com and Lichess will halt their relationships with St. Louis Chess Club and no longer provide support for or cover any of their tournaments in the wake of allegations of sexual misconduct, The Wall Street Journal revealed on Wednesday. In an exclusive story, the influential newspaper reveals how the two biggest chess servers no longer will broadcast, provide news coverage of or support tournament at the Saint Louis Chess Club.

Adecision to effectively ban transgender women from competitive chess tournaments until further notice by the chess world's governing body has sparked a backlash on social media. The International Chess Federation, known by its French acronym FIDE, recently released an updated version of its handbook that says players who transition "from a male to a female" have "no right" to participate in official events for women until a further decision is made. That decision will be based on "further analysis" in a process that could take up to two years.

The 2023 FIDE World Championship in Astana, Kazakhstan is the most important over-the-board classical event of the year and decides who will be the next world champion. After a record-breaking Candidates Tournament, world number-two Nepomniachtchi faces world number-three Ding Liren in a battle for Magnus Carlsen's throne after the current world champion abdicated his title.

DUBAI (Reuters) - An Iranian chess player arrived in Spain on Tuesday after receiving what a source close to her said were warnings not to return to Iran for competing without a hijab at an international tournament in Kazakhstan. Sara Khadem, born in 1997, took part in last week's FIDE World Rapid and Blitz Chess Championships in Almaty without the hijab - a headscarf mandatory under Iran's strict dress codes. The source, who did not want to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter, said Khadem subsequently received multiple phone calls in which individuals warned her against returning...

A study of an international chess tournament has revealed that wearing a face mask significantly reduced the average quality of player decisions, impacting the cognitive performance of competitive chess players. Australian chess Grandmaster and University of Queensland Prof. David Smerdon analysed almost three million chess moves played by 8,531 people in 18 countries before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. “The decrease in performance was due to the annoyance caused by the masks rather than a physiological mechanism,” Smerdon said. “The data showed masks were more likely to decrease performance in situations where there was a demanding mental task with a...

After an accident, former World Champion Anatoly Karpov was rushed to the hospital with multiple head injuries in which he was placed in an induced coma. Karpov was put on a ventilator now, and has been diagnosed with cerebral edema, fractures of the right parietal and right temporal bones, multiple head hematomas, and traumatic subarachnoid hemorrhage. We will update this report as the news trickles in.

Hans Niemann, the 19-year-old Grandmaster embroiled in a cheating scandal, filed a lawsuit against world champion Magnus Carlsen, Chess.com, grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura, and others, seeking $100 million in damages. The lawsuit accuses the defendants of slander, libel, unlawful group boycott, tortious interference with business, and civil conspiracy. Niemann defeated Carlsen in an over-the-board match at the Sinquefield Cup in Missouri in early September. Afterward, Carlsen withdrew from the tournament, posting a vague tweet that implied he couldn't say more about his reasons for withdrawing. Weeks later, during an online match against Niemann at the Julius Baer Cup, Carlsen quit after...

American chess grandmaster Hans Niemann previously admitted to cheating twice in the past, but a new investigation reveals that he did it way more than that. Conducted and released by Chess.com, a 72-page report alleges that the 19-year-old champion likely received illegal assistance in more than 100 online games, the latest of which occurred as recently as 2020. Those matches included contests in which prize money was awarded. {snip}

We appreciate your patience over the last several weeks as we have been working on a comprehensive report on Hans Niemann and the events following Magnus’ resignation in the 2022 Sinquefield Cup. We know many of you have been eager to hear from Chess.com, and while there is more we want to research around the topic, we present to you this report on our findings so far. Our report was first referenced by the Wall Street Journal article published on October 4 2022. We know that while we are answering some questions here, more questions will surface, and we look...

Rising chess star Hans Niemann has admitted to cheating in online chess in the past as he rejected any suggestions he had used computer assistance in a major tournament. The American made an impassioned statement during an interview with St Louis Chess Club commentator Alejandro Ramírez after allegations swirled on social media. World champion Magnus Carlsen stunned the chess world yesterday by suddenly withdrawing from the Sinquefield Cup following his shock defeat to Niemann with the white pieces.

For all of the scandals that have rocked the world of elite chess in recent years, rumors that a 19-year-old grandmaster used anal beads and artificial intelligence to beat the world's top player might be the most bizarre. Speculation has grown online that San Francisco-born Hans Niemann, a relative newcomer to the sport, inserted wireless vibrating anal beads into his body before his victorious match against World No. 1 grandmaster Magnus Carlsen, 31, last week. Chess fans have speculated that an accomplice watching the match at the Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis used a chess program to determine the perfect...

Reigning World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen suddenly resigned after making just a single move Monday during his widely anticipated rematch against Hans Niemann, whom Carlsen hinted may have cheated in another game between the two grandmasters earlier this month...The resignation took announcers Peter Leko and Tania Sachdev by surprise, with Sachdev noting such a move was "unprecedented" and "making a very big statement."

When the world champion withdrew from a major tournament after a stunning loss, it ignited suspicions of foul play. Hans Moke Niemann, his opponent, denied any wrongdoing. Chaos ensued.

The team reacts to the news that Magnus Carlsen will not play his game against Mamedyarov at the start of the fourth round of the 2022 Sinquefield Cup. 2022.09.05

Played by humans, chess is a game of strategic thinking, calm concentration and patient intellectual endeavour. Violence does not usually come into it. The same, it seems, cannot always be said of machines. Last week, according to Russian media outlets, a chess-playing robot, apparently unsettled by the quick responses of a seven-year-old boy, unceremoniously grabbed and broke his finger during a match at the Moscow Open. “The robot broke the child’s finger,” Sergey Lazarev, president of the Moscow Chess Federation, told the TASS news agency after the incident, adding that the machine had played many previous exhibitions without upset. “This...

FIDE Candidates Tournament (chess24.com) 2022.07.031.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 d6 6.Bg5 e6 7.Qd2 a6 8.O-O-O Bd7 9.Nxc6 Bxc6 10.f3 h6 11.Bf4 d5 12.Qe1 Bb4 13.a3 Bxc3 14.Qxc3 O-O 15.Be5 Rc8 16.Bxf6 Qxf6 17.Qxf6 gxf6 18.exd5 Bxd5 19.Rd4 f5 20.Bd3 Bc6 21.Rd1 Kg7 22.Be2 Kf6 23.Rh4 Kg5 24.g3 Rfd8 25.Rhd4 Rxd4 26.Rxd4 e5 27.f4+ exf4 28.Rxf4 Be4 29.c3 Rd8 30.Bd1 Rd7 31.Bc2 Re7 32.Bd1 Rd7 33.Bc2 Re7 34.Bd1

Contrary to popular belief, the wars of tomorrow won’t be fought in the trenches. They’ll be fought in labs and lecture halls around the world. Powerful minds, rather than powerful machines, will prevail. And if powerful machines are to prevail, then powerful minds will be required to create such machines. China, the United States’ biggest rival, is busy creating a new generation of individuals with powerful minds. In fact, according to the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, a think tank dedicated to examining international security and emerging technologies, based at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, China is fast...