Luke McShane

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...