Full house at Bury

Last evening there were five matches taking place at the Bury St Edmunds Chess Club, the most there has ever been.   40 players packed the room, with analysis boards also available in the bar area. This was the last match at the Club for David Wood (pictured right), who is...

Seven Portieljes

This blog's most recent post about 'Top eBay Chess Items', The Kitten Theme, featured a painting by Gerard Portielje (Belgian, 1856-1929) and noted, A search on 'chess Portielje' brings up two other works by the same artist. Afterwards I noticed another painting and started to wonder...

Gibraltar Masters won by Nakamura

After the final round of the Tradewise Gibraltar Masters, two players finished on 8/10: top seed Hikaru Nakamura from the USA and French GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (usually referred to as 'MVL'). The two then had to take part in a play-off.   After four close-fought draws, Nakamura...

Gibraltar latest

With just one round to play, the Tradewise Gibraltar Masters is heading for a dramatic finale.   No fewer than eight players share the lead on 7/9, with a further nine players (including England's Gawain Jones) on 6½ points. Suffolk players:   Justin Tan is on 5½ and David...

February 1966 'On the Cover'

Fifty years ago, chess photo credits were more haphazard than they are today. I imagine the photo on the left was taken during the 1963 Piatigorsky Cup in Los Angeles. The issue of Chess Life had only 20 pages with surprisingly little content. Five of the pages showed only crosstables...

Tata Masters round-up

After 13 hard-fought rounds the super-strong Tata Steel Masters tournament ended on Sunday with World Champion Magnus Carlsen winning by a clear point from the rest of the field.   His nearest challenger, Fabiano Caruana, surprisingly lost in the final round, when a win would...

Instructional Videos : Caruana

The three previous videos in this series on the players in the forthcoming 2016 Candidates tournament (see the previous post Instructional Videos : Aronianand follow the links back) have all shown analysis from recent editions of the Corus/Tata Wijk aan Zee tournaments. The current...