Luke McShane

White to play and mate in two moves. Composed by Ivar Godal, Ideal-Mate Review, 1983 Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 15 January. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery. Last week’s solution 1 Bxe5!

Michael Adams described his victory at last month’s London Chess Classic as ‘probably my best ever result’. Rated fourth in the world in his prime, Adams has won countless tournaments, but was delighted that, at the age of 52, he could still triumph against a much younger field. The top seed was the Indian teenager

1 One top player, besides admiring his trainer’s creativity, noted that they had a shared appreciation of 1980s music. Who was the player and his trainer? 2 How to Win at Chess is a new book for novice players, which became a New York Times bestseller. Which popular YouTuber wrote it? 3 One episode of the

The Sinquefield Cup in St Louis ended last week in victory for Fabiano Caruana, who thereby took first place in the 2023 Grand Chess Tour, extending his impressive run of form this year. Caruana’s victory pushes his rating back over the 2800 mark, securing his place just behind Carlsen in the rating list.    The event saw

Before the seventh round of the European Team Championship in Montenegro, I woke with a peculiar malaise I could not explain. Answer soon came, in an alarming salvo of diarrhoea. My hopes for an easy ride in my game against the German grandmaster Alexander Donchenko did not last long, and I landed in a tenable

My hotel room in Montenegro enjoys a picturesque view of the Adriatic sea. It’s a 15 minute drive to Sveti Stefan, the island where Fischer faced Spassky in their 1992 rematch, 20 years after Fischer won the world title in Reykjavik. I am here playing for England in the biennial European Team Championship, where we have just finished in 6th

English grandmasters Michael Adams and John Nunn both won gold medals at the World Senior Championships in Palermo, which ended earlier this month. Adams was the top seed in the over-50 section, while Nunn was the top seed in the over-65s, and the reigning champion. With one round to go, both were half a point

Large chess tournaments are usually played according to the ‘Swiss’ pairing system. In each round, players are grouped according to their total points amassed so far, and match-ups for the next round take place between players in the same score-group. Even in a large field of diverse abilities, the potential winners tend to encounter their

Bodhana Sivanandan won the gold medal in the World Girls U8 Championship in Sharm El Sheikh earlier this month, making her the first English world youth champion since 1998, when Nicholas Pert won the U18 event and Ruth Sheldon won the Girls U18. I witnessed Sivanandan’s enormous talent when we played a casual game of speed chess at ChessFest

The Jonathan Penrose Memorial Chess Challenge, held at Colchester Town Hall on 7 October, was a felicitous tribute to the ten-time British champion, who died in 2021, and would have turned 90 on that very day. Before it was razed by Boudicca, Colchester was one of the earliest Roman settlements on these isles. More recently, it