Tim

Jay Bonin!

Via Georgian archives

Nino Khurtsidze played 1st board of Georgia's first women's team at the 3rd European Team #chess championships 1999 in Batumi (only two boards & one reserve player those days). The year before she had won the national men's championship. She died much too young in 2018.

The pawn on f5 saves the day

Think Levon Aronian’s colorful shirts are all about fashion?
He says they’re not — but there is a story behind those colors. 👕✨
Watch till the end to hear it from the man himself!

Happy birthday, @LevAronian 🎂🎉

Hate to be agreeing with Vladimir Kramnik, but here we are

Chess: World No 2 Nakamura tosses checkmated king into audience Puzzle: find White’s win in a boardful of pieces

Leonard Barden politely observing that this was an event only Americans could love: "Whether the projected return match India vs USA will ever take place looks doubtful. Indian audiences are more respectful of the classical origins of chess...."

www.ft.com/content/0472...

Why FIDE dropped the 400 point rule The rule limits the rating gap used when evaluating game results. From October 1st FIDE dropped the 400 point rule for players rated above 2650. This makes it harder for top players to gain points by ...

Level-headed take from chess statistician Jeff Sonas on dropping the 400-point rule for 2650+ GMs. Implementation could have been better, but relatively few such games are played now (and probably fewer still in the future)

en.chessbase.com/post/why-fid...

🎂 Bon anniversaire à Levon Aronian, né le 6 octobre 1982 !

📸 Lennart Ootes

Of course. Hikaru is even worse. Terrible form. The Indian team is full of lovely people, who all had the burden of playing with the Black pieces, presumably to keep things simple for "chess fans" in attendance

Caruana and Yip politely cringing in the background

I get that they wanted a chess spectacle Levy fans could follow, and also that Levy has enough sense of self to know that he's celebrating against a stronger player (and one of the world's kindest humans) who hasn't competed for almost a decade

but this shit still makes my skin creep

thank you!

Anish Giri post on Twitter saying he has acquired chessmonitor.com A comment creator of Chessable wishes him luck in taking on Chessbase, which has somehow managed to exist as the only major cgess database software in the market for decades Girl thanks David Kramaley and says Chessable has been an inspiration

Genuinely excited to see what @anishgiri.bsky.social does with this. Chessbase needs competition. There are many products with serviceable parts -- the now defunct Chess Position Trainer, last updated about a decade ago -- is perhaps the best.

Something to handle transpositions please Anish sir!

‘Chess Messi’ Faustino Oro achieves grandmaster norm and 2500 rating at just 11 The Argentinian looks set to break the record for the youngest GM after winning the Legends and Prodigies tournament in Madrid

try explaining to this little dude that the starting position is exhausted

www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/o...

I had determined my Morphy number some years ago was a respectable 5. But I had not tried to reach either of these two.

Are there reliable scores from Tolstoy's games?

NIC Podcast #77 - GM Erwin l'Ami This week’s episode of the New In Chess Podcast features an interview with Dutch grandmaster Erwin l’Ami. Erwin has been a chess professional for some twenty...

Younger players "don't have that feeling of frustration because they don't know how it used to be. They are fully adapted to this age, the current playing conditions. ... They're doing a great job"

Rest of the New in Chess interview also of great interest:

www.newinchess.com/blog/post/ni...

A keen observation from @erwinlami.bsky.social on the staying power of Fischer Random / Chess960

"Freestyle is not really going to last... There are about 10 players in the world – my generation, but a lot stronger, in the top – who feel a little bit helpless when it comes to openings, frustrated"

Black and white photo of Ivanov at the 25th Olympiad in Lucerne, November 1982 - (📷via Wikimedia Commons) #chess · (Via Douglas Griffin)

Reading about GM Igor Ivanov, who only earned the title in 2005, shortly before his death. He took part in two candidates cycles for the chess world championship and was No. 33 *in the world* in January 1984.

More than 1,800 people are grandmasters today

Fun Trompbava trap.

This is going to be a feed of me interrupting chess podcasts I was listening to on the commute

How dare you sir

Did Ding "deserve" to be world champion? He went through some personal hell to spare us all two years of Russia gloating about Nepo. Gtfo. A major champion in my book, and I'd take peak Ding over peak Nepo any day of the week

Team Tal: an untold story Valentin Kirillov and Misha Tal are childhood pals. Destiny takes them on separate paths and then brings them together. The former world champion now has a devoted friend serving as his official secon...

@simaginfan.bsky.social I saw the mystery photo in your latest post and couldn't help myself. Chessbase has a plausible sounding caption: "Portisch and Petrosian flanking Arbiter Armin Heintze, Candidates’ Match 1974 | Photo: Chess Life & Review, May 1974"

en.chessbase.com/post/team-ta...

I tend to agree with David Howell: FIDE should have set a minimum average rating for opponents in games counting toward the world championship qualification. If you're out there grinding as a 2650-2675 GM in opens, you're going to see some tough 2300s on the rise

Good post. For a brief period I was checking correspondence games for openings. They were incredibly unhelpful for normal play. If you can find something in the Lichess database (filtered to games at your level) that scores as well as, or better than, the "best" move... that's often the way to go

Chessbase pros: Is there a way to prevent Stockfish from analyzing to depths of hundreds of moves when the position reaches something like mate in 3? The engine is spinning its wheels and the program freezes

You're not really going to improve on mate in 3 with extra thought... #chess

I was not aware of them, though the reviews are excellent. Thank you for this recommendation!

Faustino Oro continues to break records. He's now also the first player under 12 to hit 2500. www.chess.com/news/view/fa...

Imagining how many chess sets FIDE could send to developing countries with Nigel Short's annual tropical island travel budget

Chess: Kai Hanache, 13, beats three grandmasters at UK blitz qualifier Schoolboy also beat three international masters and made a huge ratings gain, but was edged out in the final round

Leonard Barden on interest in English blitz tournaments growing rapidly, Kai Hanache, 13, beating 3 GMs & congratulations to Eugenia Karas who qualified as top woman www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/s...

Making friends

Korchnoi, together with his second Michael Stean (center) and his assistant Yasser Seirawan (right) (Photo credit: P. Jarnoux, Paris Match)

Korchnoi, on skis in Velden. (Photo credit: P. Jarnoux, Paris Match)

A couple of fine photos of my chess hero, Viktor Korchnoi, from Douglas Griffin's recent blog post on the 1980 candidates quarterfinal match against Tigran Petrosian. Having surveyed this evidence, you will not be surprised to learn who won

dgriffinchess.wordpress.com/2025/09/20/t...