Chess

Played on computer screens at a fast pace, chess is a natural fit for the Esports World Cup. For the second year running, it took its place alongside dozens of major computer games, and Magnus Carlsen, who won last year’s event in Riyadh, was back to defend his title in Paris earlier this month. The Norwegian was undefeated throughout the event, and took home $250,000 by defeating 19-year-old Denis Lazavik, from Belarus, in the final, winning both sets 3-1. Lazavik’s presence in the final (who won $190,000 for second place) was itself a sign of how much the game has changed. He plays very little classical (slow) chess, where he is still ranked outside the world’s top 100, but is one of a growing band of players to make their mark through consistent excellence in online play.

When you’re in contention for tournament victory, the final day of a chess tournament is knotted with tension, knowing that even a brief lapse of concentration can squander a week or two of effort. The nerves splinter your sleep, and then the game usually begins early, because the organisers need time to pack up afterwards. Over the years, I’ve met with Triumph and Disaster, but one of the more painful memories was the final round of the British Championships in 2002, where, as an 18-year-old, I blew a promising position against the Indian grandmaster R.B. Ramesh, who therefore won the event outright. Last Sunday, 24 years after that debacle, I faced another pivotal final round at the British Championships, held on the campus of Warwick University.

On 24 July 2026, Arkady Dvorkovich announced that he was voluntarily suspending his duties as president of Fide, the international federation. Dvorkovich is a former deputy prime minister of Russia, so when he was named in the EU’s 21st sanctions package, there was little room for manoeuvre. Rather than let the sanctions paralyse the federation’s operations, he stepped back ‘with immediate effect’, handing over to deputy president Viswanathan Anand, the five-time world champion. This is not the first time Fide has found itself in this position.

Gukesh Dommaraju, the 20-year-old world champion from India, is in crisis. Since winning the title by defeating Ding Liren in 2024, he has suffered a catastrophic slump in form. His latest setback, at the Quantbox Chennai Grand Masters tournament, saw him finish in clear last place, just as he did at the elite Norway Chess event in June. Gukesh will defend his title in a match which is provisionally scheduled to begin in November. He has plummeted to 30th place on the live rating list, barely above the symbolic 2700 level. His Uzbek challenger Javokhir Sindarov currently sits at fourth place, making him a clear favourite.

Eleven-year-old Bodhana Sivanandan is one of the world’s brightest talents in her age group. A recent jump in her international rating saw her secure the Fide Master title – an important milestone – and in April she became England’s top-rated female player (of any age). She is beginning to collect scalps from grandmaster opposition, including the former women’s world champion Mariya Muzychuk, whom she defeated in a classical game at the European Club Cup in October 2025.    Last week, she got off to a flying start at the Dole Open in Aix-en-Provence. Facing a strong French grandmaster in the first round, Sivanandan was under pressure, but turned the tables thanks to a sharp tactical eye.

The inaugural Daniel Naroditsky Memorial Rapid and Blitz took place early in July in Charlotte, North Carolina. Organised by the Charlotte Chess Center Foundation, where Naroditsky had served as resident grandmaster, the event honoured the popular streamer and commentator, known to fans as ‘Danya’, who died in October aged 29. Rapid and blitz were fitting formats, as Naroditsky was one of the world’s top blitz specialists, particularly in online play. A stellar field included Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura and Wesley So, as well as the Candidates winner Javokhir Sindarov. Sindarov took first place in both disciplines, and paid tribute to Naroditsky, describing him as the ‘kindest person in chess’.

Alireza Firouzja jokingly described the final day of the Super Rapid and Blitz, held in Croatia earlier this month, as the ‘worst of his life’ – and yet somehow he won the tournament anyway. The rapid event was held over the first three days, which left Firouzja and Praggnanandhaa in joint first place, and an impressive game from the latter is shown below. Firouzja followed that up with a crushing 8/9 score on the first day of blitz chess, building up a lead which looked unassailable. But his feeble start of 2/7 on the final day put the tournament win in jeopardy. He scraped into the tiebreaks thanks to a dramatic turnaround in the penultimate round against Gukesh (below), and went on to win a tense ‘armageddon’ game against Abdusattorov which decided the event.

If there were a ‘best name’ prize at the World Team Championships, held in Hong Kong in June, then ‘Dragon Chilling’ would surely have won it. It managed to be both mythic and absurd at the same time: honouring the team of Chinese stars, especially former world champion Ding Liren who played on top board, and serving up a delicate millefeuille of memes. One layer goes back to 2023, when chess fans noticed Ding sitting alone in a side room during his World Championship match against Ian Nepomniachtchi, serene to the point of indifference as the battle unfolded. ‘Ding was chilling during game one,’ Chess.com captioned it, and the comments filled up with fans parroting the phrase ‘Ding chilling’.

Britain’s first grandmaster, the late Tony Miles, once said about a game he won: ‘I did absolutely f*** all and it proved to be enough!’ It was a long endgame squeeze, in which his opponent made a series of modest weakening moves which eventually cost him the game. Experienced players know that passive ‘waiting’ in the endgame takes reserves of patience which few possess. Indeed, I have even seen defending players sabotage their own position out of sheer boredom. In the very late endgame placing the opponent in ‘zugzwang’ – a situation where all moves worsen their position – may be the only technique to win the game. Composers of problems (particularly mate in two problems) often play with the same idea.

Chess has much unspoken etiquette, besides what is formally required by the rules. The standard protocol for offering your opponent a draw is straightforward: make your move, offer the draw, and only then press the clock. But if you offer a draw before you make a move, the opponent can ask you to move before deciding on their response. And it’s considered rude to offer a draw when your position is clearly worse (unless, say, your opponent is far lower rated, or has much less time). Repeatedly offering draws counts as a distraction. If your peace offer is declined, you tacitly forfeit the right to repeat it, unless your opponent has returned the offer since then. Another no-no is to offer a draw while your opponent is thinking.

Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa scored a memorable triumph at Norway Chess earlier this month, thanks to an astonishing late run. After six out of ten rounds, the Indian grandmaster was at the bottom of the table. The four consecutive victories which followed (against Firouzja, Carlsen, Gukesh and Keymer) propelled him into first place, narrowly overtaking Wesley So, who led the event for most of the second half. Norway Chess has an unusual scoring system. Each round, there is a game of classical (slow) chess, but at the elite level many of those games are drawn. In case of a draw, there is a rapid ‘armageddon’ tiebreak game – that is, White gets a time advantage, but must win the game at all costs, because a draw counts as a win for Black.

It takes a moment to grasp what I am watching. A cluster of bodies underwater, each pair on opposite sides of a chessboard which sits at the bottom of the pool. They float horizontally and peer down at the board through their goggles. The player to move presses upwards repeatedly with his palms, as if hyping up an imaginary crowd, but actually resisting the buoyancy that would return him to the surface. He reaches down, makes his move, and rises to the surface to take a breath. The pieces are magnetic, lest they float away, and the captured pieces are discarded in a small metal tray. This is the world championship of Diving Chess, held last month in Tarnowo Podgórne, in Poland.

‘A healthy mind in a healthy body’ – a fine aspiration, but what do you do when both let you down at once? That was the case for Alireza Firouzja at the Superbet Chess Classic Romania 2026. He struggled at the outset, scoring just a draw and two losses from his first three games. The crucial moment from the third is shown below, after Giri has just pushed his pawn to b4. Anish Giri–Alireza Firouzja Grand Chess Tour, Romania, May 2026 68… Be1?? The decisive mistake. Instead, 68…h1=Q+! 69 Kxh1 Be1 was a crucial nuance to achieve the draw, because 70 Rc4+ Kf3! carries a threat of g3-g2+ forcing a promotion.

At the start of May, 14-year-old Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus became the youngest player in history to cross the symbolic 2700 threshold on the international rating scale, placing at no. 31 in the world rankings. The result that took him there was an astonishing third match in the ‘Clash of Generations’ series, in which the Turkish teenager had previously defeated Peter Svidler and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. His opponent in this latest edition, held in Monaco, was Bulgaria’s Veselin Topalov, the former world no. 1 and Fide world champion. At 51, Topalov is past his prime, but the 5-1 scoreline in favour of Erdogmus still comes as a shock. Topalov had his chances, despite what the score might suggest, but his obvious rustiness manifested in a couple of decisive blunders in critical positions.

Watching Magnus Carlsen win tournaments feels like watching an escape artist: you’re never quite sure how he succeeds, but it’s no surprise when he does. After four rounds of the TePe Sigeman & Co event, held in Malmö earlier this month, Carlsen languished on two points from four games, after losing a fascinating endgame battle against Jorden Van Foreest (see below). He then won his last three games in a row to draw level with Arjun Erigaisi, followed by winning the tiebreak. The pattern is well established; his motivation seems to only peak when the prospect of not winning becomes real.

The European Individual Championship is a gigantic brawl, and since it began in 2000 the winner has always been a seasoned grandmaster. This year’s event in Katowice, Poland, drew 500 competitors, including 90 grandmasters. Lasting 11 rounds, it is not the kind of event you can win ‘by chance’. So it was astonishing to see 17-year-old Roman Dehtiarov from Ukraine win the gold medal. Though he became Ukrainian champion in 2024, his opportunities to travel abroad have been limited since the start of the war. In Katowice he began the event seeded just 126th, and not yet a grandmaster. He finished clear first on 9/11, thanks to a string of impressive attacking games, including the two shown below.

While the open Candidates was a procession – Javokhir Sindarov clinched the event with a round to spare – the women’s event could not have been more different. With one round remaining, six out of eight players retained a chance of winning the tournament. Leading on 7.5/13 were Rameshbabu Vaishali from India and Bibisara Assaubayeva from Kazakhstan. In the final round, Assaubayeva could only draw, while Vaishali faced an aggressive opening from Kateryna Lagno, who needed to win at all costs. Vaishali grabbed a pawn and steadily defused Lagno’s attack, leaving herself in clear first place on 8.5/13.

Javokhir Sindarov from Uzbekistan dominated the 2026 Fide Candidates tournament, which concluded in Cyprus earlier in April. His ten points from 14 games is a record in the modern all-play-all format, and he was the only player to get through the tournament without loss. Sindarov, who became a grandmaster at the age of 12, rises to fifth in the world rankings. Now 20 years old, he will face the 19-year-old Indian world champion Dommaraju Gukesh in a match for the title, likely to be held later this year. It will be the youngest title match in history, symbolic of the extraordinary development of chess in both countries. In Cyprus, Fabiano Caruana was one of the pre-tournament favourites, and was Sindarov’s closest pursuer as the second half began.

More than 3,500 players convened in Karlsruhe, Germany over the Easter weekend to take part in the Grenke Chess Festival. The flagship event was the Freestyle Chess Open, and Magnus Carlsen’s advocacy for Freestyle chess (also known as Fischer-Random, or Chess960), in which the pieces on the back rank are rearranged randomly at the start of the game, has given a huge boost to the popularity of this variant. His 9/9 winning score last year was astonishing even by Carlsen’s standards, but this time he had to settle for shared third place on 7/9, alongside other elite players including Nepomniachtchi and Abdusattorov. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Germany’s top player Vincent Keymer both finished ahead on 7.5/9, with the latter taking the title on tiebreak.

Javokhir Sindarov from Uzbekistan has dominated the first half of the Candidates Tournament in Cyprus, with an astonishing start of six points from the first seven games. That puts the 20-year-old 1.5 points clear of his closest pursuer Fabiano Caruana, and makes him a huge favourite. The tournament winner earns the right to challenge for the world championship title. Hikaru Nakamura, one of the pre-tournament favourites, is all but out of the race after starting with just 2.5/7. Against Sindarov, he chose an ambitious sacrifice of two pawns in the opening, reaching a situation where the bishop pair – especially the one on d6 – are known to offer good long-term prospects. But the position remains double-edged, and after a dozen quick-fire moves, Sindarov had just played 12...