chess Page 4 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Tom Wilson Is At It Again
I’m so annoyed that after the pure mainline rush that was Game 1, I have to think about Tom Wilson’s dirty-ass play. Imagine how Jonathan Marchessault feels:...

All Hail Sir Jonathan Marchessault
According to the numbers, home ice in the NHL isn’t that big a deal, and I’m never been one to argue with hard data. However, playing in the desert does seem to mean something to the Vegas Golden Knights, who beat the Jets 4-2 Wednesday night to take a 2-1 lead in the Western Conference Finals. The ...

The Golden Knights Found Success With A Slowdown
The Golden Knights chalked up their Game 1 loss to effort. “They outworked us,” coach Gerard Gallant said. “We have to compete harder. We got to battle harder.” It’s the sort of thing a coach says all the time, but it’s also just about the only thing a team can try to change when they’re up against ...

Fabiano Caruana Tells Us What The Life Of A Chess Grandmaster Is Really Like
Fabiano Caruana is the No. 2-ranked chess player in the world. He achieved Grandmaster status just before his 15th birthday back in 2007. In the 2016 Chess Olympiad he represented the United States on the first board as the Americans took home the gold for the first time since 1976. In March, he wil...

New World Chess Championship Logo Says, "Hey, Let's Fuck"
Have you heard? Chess fucks. And chess wants you all to know that it fucks, so it has graciously made it very clear in the logo for the upcoming 2018 World Chess Championship....

Jonathan Marchessault Was Trapped In The Penalty Box
Here’s Vegas Golden Knights center Jonathan Marchessault trying desperately to exit the penalty box in the third period of last night’s game against Carolina, as boxmate David Perron tries to yank the door open and the officials seemingly argue about whether he should be freed or not. This seems lik...

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. ...

Machers And Rockers: Jews And The Blues
From Rich Cohen's winning book, The Record Men, here's an excerpt about Leonard Chess and Muddy Waters:...

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...

The Grierson & Leitch Best Films of 2013: Nos. 10-6
It's the final week of 2013, so we're wrapping the year up the way movie people are supposed to wrap the year up: Lists! Friday, we each gave our five worst movies of 2013. Today, we each count down our No. 6-10 best movies of the year, and tomorrow, we finish off with each of our top five....

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:...

Brit Olympics Hero Jessica Ennis Leaves Kate Middleton Hanging On Awards-Show Handshake, Sparks National Outrage
The BBC's Sports Personality Of The Year awards were televised today, with special guest presenter the Duchess of Cambridge in her first public appearance since being hospitalized with severe morning sickness two weeks ago. The drama of a pregnant Kate's emergence became multiplied, though, when S...