chess Page 3 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Complete Guide To Understanding Chess

You probably remember the rules of chess, but what’s actually happening there on the board? How many moves are Grandmasters really thinking ahead? Why do they never actually checkmate the opponent? Is my life just like a game of chess?...

Baltimore's Famous National Chess Champion Isn't A National Chess Champion<em></em>

The biggest chess story of the year is uplifting—and bogus....

The Most Powerful Man In Chess Is Maybe A Lunatic

The sports world is replete with notably wacky commissioners and leaders, and for all the wild shit that the Sepp Blatters and Oleg Tinkovs of the world get up to, the World Chess Federation’s president probably has them all beat. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov has been the top dog at FIDE since 1995, and for m...

Top-Ranked Chess Grandmaster Throws Game In Protest After Just Five Moves

Hou Yifan is the highest ranked women’s chess player in the world. She became the youngest woman to reach the rank of grandmaster when she was 16, and she already had four World Championships under her belt by age 22. Her nickname is “Queen of Chess” and last year, she declined to defend her women’s...

Federal Judge Rejects Chess Federation's Sicilian Defense, Allows Media To Report World Championship Moves<em></em>

I’ve watched most of the World Chess Championships without ever actually witnessing Magnus Carlsen or Sergey Karjakin make a single move. As fun as it would be to watch the two grandmasters squirm and fret while contemplating their moves, you only need to know where each player’s pieces are to follo...

Chess Grandmaster Storms Out Of Press Conference After Grueling World Championship Match

The World Chess Championship is being held in Manhattan this month, and defending champion Magnus Carlsen has been playing challenger Sergey Karjakin since Nov. 11. The Norwegian and the Russian danced their way to seven straight draws to open the match, which is the longest such streak to begin a c...

I Tried Chessboxing And I Will Never Do It Again

BERLIN – Let me say something obvious: fighting someone is exhausting. The switch—or whatever you want to call it—that flips when the lizard part of your brain tells the rest of you to hold off on metabolizing or thinking is inescapable. When you’re a novice fighter like me, the only thing you can t...

The Most Compelling Athlete In America Right Now Is Here To Play Chess

Magnus Carlsen has been in St. Louis since last week and will be staying through next weekend. If you're not up on your FIDE ratings, this is something like 2006-vintage Roger Federer doing a tennis residency in Toledo. ...

What The Fuck Does This Thomas Friedman Hockey Metaphor Mean?

Thought leader Thomas Friedman of the New York Times has written a column about the Ukraine crisis, in which he argues, well, who knows. A good quarter of it is just an extended excerpt from a 16-year-old interview with George Kennan, who didn't think that committing to wage nuclear war on behalf of...

Garry Kasparov Battling Post-Soviet Alien Abductee For Chess Presidency

Garry Kasparov, the former World Chess Champion, Pussy Riot supporter, and probably the most famous living chess player, is running for the presidency of the World Chess Federation. His opponent—the incumbent—is a guy who believes in aliens....

Searching for Bobby Fischer

In the mid-1980s, Bill Nack went searching for the chess master and recluse Bobby Fischer. He wrote about his experience for Sports Illustrated:...

Our old pal Dave McKenna goes long on how cheating in chess is growing....

Yes, Chess Grand Masters Are Still Being Randomly Drug-Tested For Doping

Aside from the boring/kick-ass/boring nature of chessboxing, as well as the occasional airing of Searching for Bobby Fischer on Starz, we can't say chess comes across our radar very often, but the 2012 World Chess Olympiad is underway in Istanbul. Tipster Jay L. brought to our attention that Grand M...

Chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov Arrested, Allegedly Beaten Outside Pussy Riot Trial [UPDATE: With Video]

Russian grandmaster Garry Kasparov, in attendance at the Pussy Riot trial in Moscow, ran afoul of police and was assaulted today according to his Facebook page, which includes this image and the update:...

European Women's Chess Tournament Bans Excessive Cleavage

The introduction of a dress code limiting the cleavage of lady chess players at first seems repressive....

The Most Intellectual Of Intellectual Property Disputes

The organizers of a chess tournament are suing a website for reporting the results of the matches, live. I think it's too much to ask people to wait for SportsCenter to report the results that night. [ChessVibes]...

Alcohol Is Not A Performance Enhancer (Especially In Chess)

Vladislav Tkachiev, a French grandmaster by way of Moscow and Kazakhstan, was disqualified from a tournament in India when he fell asleep at the table. To be fair, chess is very boring. And he was drunk....

Doping Scandal Threatens To Destroy The World Of ... Chess?

Vassily Ivanchuk of the Ukraine is the third-ranked player in the world, but he faces a two-year ban from his game because he failed a drug test. A drug test. In chess....

Breaking: Russia Years Ahead Of Us In Remote Control Flying Penis Technology

Garry Kasparov’s love-hate relationship with technology continued on Saturday, as the former World Chess Champion was buzzed by a remote controlled flying penis during a political speech in Moscow. As reported by Gizmodo yesterday, Kasparov seemed bemused by the brief encounter, which ended when an ...

Bobby Fischer's Endgame

"What is chess, do you think? Those who play for fun or not at all dismiss it as a game. The ones who devote their lives to it for the most part insist that it's a science. It's neither. Bobby Fischer got underneath it like no one before and found at its center, art." — Searching For Bobby Fischer. ...