Luke McShane

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.