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Olympian efforts abound on Istanbul's lower boards — Just as in the five-ring Olympics where athletes compete in track events and on the ski slopes, many of the competitors and countries that show up at the biennial Chess Olympiad arrive knowing they have little hope of earning a medal. Men’s and women’s chess teams from more than 150 countries took part in the recent 40th Chess Olympiad in Istanbul, which once again was dominated by the globe’s long-standing chess powerhouses: Russia, China, Armenia, Ukraine and the U.S. World-class players from the top teams produced some gripping chess, from Russian former world chess champ Vladimir Kramnik’s positional masterpiece against Armenian No. 1 Levon Aronian to U.S. star Alex Onischuk’s heartbreaking loss to Chinese GM Ling Diren in ...

FIDE Grand Prix begins in London — The inaugural tournament for the FIDE Grand Prix is taking place in London Sept. 21 to Oct. 3 at the historic Simpson’s-in-the-Strand chess venue. The Grand Prix competition is a series of six events featuring the top chess grandmasters in the world. Each competitor must play in four of the six Grand Prix events with points awarded according to the final placements in each tournament. The chess player who finishes with the best overall result qualifies to the final Candidates match event, and the winner of that match becomes the challenger to the World Chess Champion Viswanathan Anand of India. Israeli Grandmaster Boris Gelfand, who challenged Anand for the World Chess Championship title in May of this year, currently sits in first place after ...

Did a Computer Bug Help Deep Blue Beat Kasparov? — In May 1997, an IBM supercomputer known as Deep Blue beat then chess world champion Garry Kasparov, who had once bragged he would never lose to a machine. Kasparov and other chess masters blamed the defeat on a single move made by the IBM machine. Either at the end of the first game or the beginning of the second, depending on who’s telling the story, the computer made a sacrifice that seemed to hint at its long-term strategy. Kasparov and many others thought the move was too sophisticated for a computer, suggesting there had been some sort of human intervention during the game. “It was an incredibly refined move, of defending while ahead to cut out any hint of countermoves,” chess grandmaster Yasser Seirawan ...

On Chess: Game not as hard as many think — Chess has an undeniable mystique. It is often thought to be the game of games — too difficult to master and best admired from afar. In fact, the rules are quite simple. It’s possible to learn them in less than a half-hour. Expertise is largely a matter of familiarity and practice. With only modest guidance, it’s possible to advance significantly from the beginning stage. Even advanced chess skills aren’t as difficult as one would think. In his book Lasker’s Manual of Chess, Emanuel Lasker (1868-1941) — a world chess champion, creative mathematician and philosopher — expressed his conviction that a young chess player, “even if he possesses no talent for chess,” can attain master strength with a mere 200 hours of application. How is ...

Women's Champion Cements Her Status at Grand Prix — There is no off-season in chess, but the past week was unusually busy, with three world-class chess events being held at the same time. One was the sixth and final tournament of the 2011-12 Women’s Grand Prix series. The tournament, in Ankara, Turkey, wrapped up on Friday and was won by Humpy Koneru of India. The Grand Prix’s top player was supposed to win the honor of playing for the world title next year. That turned out to be Hou Yifan of China, who is currently the chess champion but first has to defend her title at another tournament this year. If she does that, she would face Koneru, who was the Grand Prix runner-up. If she does not win the tournament, she would have to play the winner of the chess event. As the women’s ...

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