Luke McShane is chess columnist for The Spectator.
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The stench of burning rubber hung in the air as I trudged back to my hotel in Hull city centre last Saturday evening. A wheelie bin lay in the street, with a fire flickering out next to it. Everywhere there were tired-looking policemen, obviously relieved the yobs had dispersed. I too was spent, and a little
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White to play and mate in two moves. Composed by C.W.M. Feist, Hampshire Magazine, 1884. Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 12 August. 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…Rxh4+! 2
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All eyes are on the Games in Paris, where an estimated 10,000 athletes from more than 200 nations will compete. This comes 100 years after the Paris Olympics of 1924, a milestone event when the number of competing nations jumped from 29 to 44. That same year, Fide, the international governing body of chess, (Federation
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Black to play. Sokolovsky-Chopra, Biel Masters, 2024. Another game played on 20 July 2024. Black is in control, but which move struck the decisive blow? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 5 August. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address. Last week’s
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I have a pet theory, based not on hard data but on insights from postmortem chitchat. My theory says that novices and experts, when facing evenly matched opponents, make roughly the same number of screw-ups in a game. The difference is that the novice’s oversights will be far more significant. The novice walks into checkmate,
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White to play. This is a variation from Mirkovic-Gluzman, Belgrade 1991. Which move allows White to gain a decisive material advantage? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 29 July. 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
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If you visit the English Chess Federation’s website hoping to become a member, you will be confronted with a comprehension test. You will scroll past walls of text before appraising your membership options. Would you like to be a Supporter, Bronze, Gold, or Platinum member? Perhaps you are eligible for Junior Bronze, Free Junior Bronze,
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White has just played Kf3-e3. Which response showed this to be a decisive mistake? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 22 July. 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 Bd3! e.g.
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Garry Kasparov endorsed the slower time control which was used at the Superbet Chess Classic. That event, which concluded this month in Bucharest, was the latest leg of the Grand Chess Tour, the annual series of events for elite players which comprises a mix of faster and slower formats. In the words of the former
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White to play and mate in two moves. Composed by Philip Hamilton Williams, The Chess Amateur, 1914. Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 15 July. 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
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There is a sublime satisfaction in a good detective thriller. We will, of course, have accessed the same facts as our sharp-witted sleuth. The fleck of yellow paint on the raincoat meant little to us, as did the creaking door and the page missing from the notebook. But at last the alibi is dismantled, and
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White to play. This is a variation from Gelbmann–Gyimesi, Hungary 1996. Black threatens mate with …Qh4 or …Qh3. How does White turn the tables? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 6 July. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address. Last week’s solution 1
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The English Championships concluded last weekend in two dramatic playoff matches. In the open event, Gawain Jones defeated last year’s winner Michael Adams by 1.5-0.5. The first game saw Adams pressing in a complex queen endgame, but he lost after an astonishing oversight which allowed mate in one move. Though Adams pushed hard for a
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White to play. Banerjee-Carroll, English Championship 2024. Ten-year old Banerjee found the only move to exploit the awkwardly pinned rookon d6. What did he play? Email answers to chess@-spectator.co.uk by Monday 1 July. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow
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‘OK, there is a body with a knife there, and the police come and say nothing happened… You have to find who, why, what, but it happened, don’t pretend that it didn’t happen!’ Vladimir Kramnik deployed that analogy about the world of online chess, which he sees as riddled with cheating. Cheating happens. Once in
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White to play. Magnus Carlsen-Ding Liren, Norway Chess 2024. Ding’s last move, 29…Rb6-b2 was a blunder allowing a quick checkmate. What did Carlsen play? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 24 June. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address. Last week’s solution
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Lawyers in a courtroom, it is said, should not ask questions to which they do not already know the answer. Chess players are well advised to adopt a similar attitude to pawn endgames – steer clear unless you can anticipate the outcome with certainty. In endgames with more wood on the board, overlooking a nuance need
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White to play. Adapted from an example in Capablanca’s classic manual Chess Fundamentals. Only one move leads to a win for White. Which? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 17 June. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks
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‘Back to the Future with Casablanca Chess’ was the tagline for the elite rapid tournament held in Morocco last month. The intriguing premise was that games would begin from positions taken from the opening phase of famous historical games. The four guinea pigs for this experiment – dubbed the Casablanca Chess Variant – were Magnus
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White to play and mate in two moves. Composed by Michael Lipton, Deutsche Schachzeitung, 1970. Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 10 June 2024. 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…Be4!