All posts tagged: Chess tournaments

Anand’s presence inspires Divya Deshmukh to first win

Anand’s presence inspires Divya Deshmukh to first win

Published by Webster

India’s young chess talent, IM Divya Deshmukh, registered her first win at the 2025 Nicosia FIDE Women’s Grand Prix, defeating IM Olga Badelka in a thrilling encounter. Her victory came after a rollercoaster game where fortunes swung multiple times. The presence of Indian chess legend GM Viswanathan Anand at the venue seemed to provide the much-needed inspiration for Divya, who overcame a difficult position to secure the win. Meanwhile, at the top of the leaderboard, GM Anna Muzychuk of Ukraine bounced back from a previous loss to defeat GM Elisabeth Paehtz. This crucial win allowed her to catch up with GM Zhu Jiner, as both players now share the lead heading into the final round of the tournament. Divya’s grit Despite feeling under the weather, Divya remained composed throughout her game. She admitted to taking a relaxed approach following a tough loss in the previous round. “After a tough loss yesterday, I didn’t want to overthink or prepare much, so I just decided to freestyle,” Divya said. The game saw multiple momentum shifts, with Badelka …

Can India’s NextGen of chess players live upto the expectations in the era of Gukesh and Praggnannandhaa | Chess News

Can India’s NextGen of chess players live upto the expectations in the era of Gukesh and Praggnannandhaa | Chess News

Published by Webster

In the span of a heady few hours for Indian chess on Friday, there were twin coronations. In Petrovac, Montenegro, 18-year-old Pranav Venkatesh became the world junior champion a few hours after Aravindh Chithambaram won the Prague Masters event in Czechia. It was another sign that the next wave of Indian gunslingers was already arriving on the scene, even while the world is still gawking at names like D. Gukesh, Arjun Erigaisi, R. Praggnanandhaa and Vidit Gujrathi. “Obviously, we were very optimistic about Indian chess some months ago. But if players like Aravindh and Pranav Venkatesh join the party, then of course that’s great for us,” Viswanathan Anand declared after Pranav’s victory. Story continues below this ad Pranav’s victory at the World Junior Chess Championship came a year after Divya Deshmukh had won the equivalent girls’ title. After Anand, India struggled to produce a steady stream of super-elite chess talents. For a brief period, Pentala Harikrishna and later Vidit kept India relevant in elite chess, but such exceptional players remained rare. The era dominated by …

‘Means a lot to me that my parents don’t have to think about money anymore’: Gukesh | Chess News

‘Means a lot to me that my parents don’t have to think about money anymore’: Gukesh | Chess News

Published by Webster

Current chess world champion D Gukesh opened up about his parents’ struggles before his success, revealing that they had to depend on the generosity of friends to support his international tournament expenses. “I remember my parents’ friends sponsoring me to play tournaments abroad. It was quite difficult at that time, and we had a lot of help from very, very nice and selfless people. Now, the last year was financially very good for us,” Gukesh said at the ‘India Today Conclave 2025’. “I think it means a lot to me that my parents don’t have to think about money anymore. We can lead a comfortable life, not struggle like before,” he added. Gukesh is India’s youngest grandmaster, missing the tag of becoming the world’s youngest by just 17 days. He’s the youngest-ever winner of the Candidates tournament, which earned him a shot at the World Championship in the first place. And he was the first Indian chess player to topple Viswanathan Anand’s 36-year stay in the world rankings as the top-ranked Indian player. Story continues …

How Chess.com became more than just a chess app and Titled Tuesday spiced up a routine weekday | Chess News

How Chess.com became more than just a chess app and Titled Tuesday spiced up a routine weekday | Chess News

Published by Parlour News

Around the time Gukesh Dommaraju became the youngest world champion in history of chess in December, Indian chess also made its mark elsewhere. On the popular Chess.com app, India overtook the USA as the “most active country” on the platform, another indicator that not just the protagonists in the thick of action, but spectators following it were also overwhelmingly from India. Right after the three-week battle between Gukesh and Ding Liren in Singapore culminated with the teenager from Chennai become the second Indian to be crowned the world champion after Viswanathan Anand, Chess.com saw what it called a “Gukesh wave”: for three straight days, the app hosted 17 million games daily — the highest daily number in 2024 — at a rate of 15 more games starting per second during peak hours. In the eye of this online chess storm was India. The world’s most populous country currently has 19.5 million registrations, says Avadh Shah, who is the India Director for Chess.com. He points out that an average of 500k new users download the app …

Boris Spassky: The man who dared George Bush to put him and Bobby Fischer in same cell, ‘and give us a chess set’ | Chess News

Boris Spassky: The man who dared George Bush to put him and Bobby Fischer in same cell, ‘and give us a chess set’ | Chess News

Published by Webster

Boris Spassky, the 10th world champion in the history of chess, breathed his last in Moscow on Thursday at the age of 88. For the world at large, Spassky’s is the name that lives on in hyphenated eternity with Bobby Fischer’s: the duo wrestled for the world champion’s crown in 1972 in frigid Reykjavik in a match billed the Match Of The Century. Spassky was a man who stood out for his grace. In September 1972, barely three days after he had lost the world champion’s crown to the brash, loud-mouthed Fischer in the Match of the Century, Spassky was asked in an interview if his opponent’s shenanigans in the match had affected him. On the way to beating Spassky, Fischer had kept the world including his opponent on edge about the match happening at all, skipped the opening ceremony, forced game 1 of the world championship to be deferred, forfeited game 2, forced game 3 to be played in a small room behind the actual playing arena, and complained incessantly about things like the …

Gukesh finishes winless at Freestyle chess event | Chess News

Gukesh finishes winless at Freestyle chess event | Chess News

Published by Webster

Another year, another world champion struggles at Weissenhaus. One year after then world champion Ding Liren ended in last place after going winless at the Freestyle Chess G.O.A.T. Challenge, Ding’s successor on the throne, D Gukesh too endured a winless tournament. The reigning world champion’s results sheet for the first event of Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour reads: zero wins, 11 draws and six defeats. At least he did not end up dead last like Ding did last year. Gukesh will also find solace in the knowledge that a few weeks ago, he almost won the Tata Steel Chess Tournament in Wijk Aan Zee (a tournament where Ding had also suffered on the board). Gukesh’s Weissenhaus event ended with a defeat in 30 moves to Alireza Firouzja on Friday. His 11 draws and six defeats span the nine round robin games played in the rapid format where he had two defeats and seven draws. Then, in the quarters, he lost both his classical time control games to Fabiano Caruana before two draws against Hikaru Nakamura, …

Gukesh salvages draw from lost position against Alireza Firouzja | Chess News

Gukesh salvages draw from lost position against Alireza Firouzja | Chess News

Published by Webster

The playing hall burst into applause. Even Gukesh Dommaraju broke into a rare smile after shaking hands with his opponent Alireza Firouzja on Thursday in the first game of their classification match for 7th spot at the Weissenhaus leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour. Gukesh had not managed to beat Alireza, but it was a draw that was as good as a win for a player who is still winless at the luxury resort village in Germany. The applause was for the way Gukesh had managed to salvage a draw from a completely losing position. It was one of those games where the eval bar favoured Alireza from the start: in fact, the bar tipped over in the Frenchman’s favour after the first moves from both players. This was because Gukesh, playing with black pieces, had opted to hop the wrong knight. Story continues below this ad INTERACTIVE: How Gukesh evaded Alireza Firouzja to force a draw At one point in the game, the evaluation bar was down on the floor indicating a …

Gukesh ends round robin stage winless, but sneaks into quarters of Freestyle Chess at Weissenhaus | Chess News

Gukesh ends round robin stage winless, but sneaks into quarters of Freestyle Chess at Weissenhaus | Chess News

Published by Webster

Call it the curse of being a world champion! Gukesh Dommaraju went winless in nine qualifying round robin games at the Weissenhaus leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour. Gukesh follows in the footsteps of his predecessor on the world champion’s throne, Ding Liren, who had also endured a winless event last year at Weissenhaus, when the event was just a standalone freestyle event and the Chinese grandmaster was still a world champion. The 18-year-old world champion from Chennai, in fact, ended the rapid section of the event with a defeat to Magnus Carlsen. Despite playing out seven draws (and being handed two defeats by Alireza Firouzja and Carlsen), Gukesh has qualified for the quarter-finals after ending in eighth spot out of 10 contenders. Gukesh’s opponent in the next round for now remains unclear. A new rule introduced at the event during the technical meeting was that the player who ends on top of the standings after the round robin section of the tournament, will get to pick his opponent in the quarter-finals. This …

Heart rate sensors, confession booths, colourful jackets: What Freestyle Chess Grand Slam event looks like | Chess News

Heart rate sensors, confession booths, colourful jackets: What Freestyle Chess Grand Slam event looks like | Chess News

Published by Webster

Magnus Carlsen sits on the board brooding over the position that he will have to start playing in another 10 minutes against Hikaru Nakamura when a camera technician approaches him and starts mic-ing him up. Ordinarily, this close to the start of a match is time for absolute solitude for any chess player, a time when they don’t even offer their opponent a customary eye contact when they have to shake hands. Today, though, things are different. Carlsen is happy to oblige, still staring intently at the board as the camera crew members slips wires inside his clothing. Enough has been spoken about what freestyle chess — which goes by several names like Fischer Random and Chess960 — looks like. With the positions of pieces on the back ranks randomised, the starting position of a board are revealed to the players only 15 minutes before each match. Players are permitted to use the 15-minute period to seek advice from other players, but not from an electronic source like a chess engine. Story continues below this …

Freestyle organisers drop ‘world champion’ from regulations ahead of Weissenhaus event | Chess News

Freestyle organisers drop ‘world champion’ from regulations ahead of Weissenhaus event | Chess News

Published by Webster

There was a temporary truce in the world of chess after FIDE announced that organisers of Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour had removed the phrase ‘world championship’ from their regulations. This means that the winner of the Freestyle Chess Tour will not be officially called a Freestyle World Champion, as the organisers had initially intended. “Today, the organisers of the ‘Freestyle Chess Tour’ fully deleted from its regulations the reference to the ‘World Championship’ title. Following this change in the regulations, players wishing to participate in the 2025 ‘Freestyle Chess Tour’ are no longer required to sign the waiver note,” FIDE posted on their social media handles. The intent of Freestyle Tour’s organisers to crown the winner of their event as a ‘world champion’ had been the sticking point between the global governing body of chess and organisers. The first event of the Freestyle Tour will be held in Weissenhaus later this week, with events also planned for New York, Paris, New Delhi and Cape Town. Story continues below this ad “As the regulations of …