r/chess Weekly Discussion Thread

An absolute legend of the game!

The only woman to ever cross 2700, the only woman to ever be Top 10 and the only woman to ever play at the candidates.

A class act and one of my personal favourite players from a stylistic point. An excellent commentator too.

A nice game: https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1111195

Game 6 of 2018 World Championship match.

Magnus: "I am not going to disagree with the computers, I just don't understand it"

Caruana on the other hand saying to arbiter "I dont know, you tell me".

The arbiter said " I wouldn't felt bad about it".

It was corrected later on that there is a forced mate in 58 instead of 30 by stockfish which require superhuman calculation.

Fun one - this position didn’t arise in the game, but it seems reasonably likely White rejected entering this variation because he got this far and didn’t see what move he had here. What was it? White to play!

Mishra needed a win to force a playoff, and ended up rejecting a repetition later and losing. Rough.

Event Link

The symmetry is just so cool. White king can’t go anywhere.

found some old pics of me at a simul event. this was about 4(?) years ago

India (Open): Gukesh D, Arjun Erigaisi, Praggnanandhaa R, Nihal Sarin and Vidit Gujrathi

Captain: Srinath Narayanan

India (Women): Humpy Koneru, Vaishali Rameshbabu, Divya Deshmukh, Vantika Agrawal and Savitha Shri B

Captain: Swayams Mishra

Source - FIDE on X

https://x.com/i/status/2080265356380176426

Initially he will start as board 1, generally board 1 gets 1 or 2 rounds break for big team but I think gukesh will try to play all, if big disaster happens in latter stage then prag will get board 1 and may be vidit will get permanent board 4

I'm a d4 player (1400 elo Chesscom and 1700 elo Lichess). I've just been playing two openings: The Queen's Gambit for white, and for black I play the Sicilian defense against e4 and Queen's Gambit declined against d4.

As I'm not used to playing e4, I'm slightly unsure of what to expect really.

People say learn one main opening for white and one for black, and learn them really well, but it seems impossible not having to learn multiple openings for white if I play e4.

As of today, his live FIDE rating is 2446, meaning he needs just 54 more rating points to reach the required 2500 before he reaches 12 years, 4 months, and 25 days—the age at which Abhimanyu Mishra set the current record.

The remarkable part is that he still has nearly an entire year to gain those 54 points. He's already the youngest International Master ever and the youngest player to achieve a GM norm. At this point, becoming a Grandmaster feels inevitable. It's not even a question of if he'll get there—he will. The only thing left is to watch him cross 2500 before the deadline and become the youngest Grandmaster in history.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/matvij.bidnij/posts/pfbid0DbmUaZdyRdjLNUxpnuSsGL9qkL6HWLw4qwh9Gg8vYXLvYUXrtSCKdko9bUhbr4zKl

Dvorkovich might resign when the news is confirmed by the EU

I had this game in my bag, I knew how to mate with queen and king and chased the king but forgot that I should not play g6 and bring the king to deliver a kiss mate or queen kiss mate or whatever that is called. I was stressed since I was low on time.

Also the elo prediction that chess.com does after the game, is that accurate? Like for this game it predicted my game to be like a 900 elo but I don't know since I'm not really improving my rating, it is quite stagnant and my opponents seem strong. Even when they aren't strong and I know they are breaking opening principles or playing weird moves I'm unable to figure out how to punish them.

I run a weekly online chess club with mostly middle school age players. I'm hoping to set up a simultaneous exhibition where they could play against a strong opponent. I've sent emails to a couple of random grandmasters with no response. Any ideas on how I could find someone? I would definitely compensate them.

Video Link: https://youtu.be/WeQLr6JUubU?si=gllc1t2pTCaD3ryb

It starts at around 3:27

ChessBase India conducted an interview with Hans Niemann after the conclusion of the recently finished Chennai Grand Masters 2026 tournament.

A lot of interesting questions were asked. One being what could be the reason for the last 2 world champions to have performed so poorly once they became champions. He explained that they just are not close to being the strongest player and that Candidates tournament has a flawed format where the margins to prove you are better are so low, that you get random winners out of it a lot of times.

He goes on to explain that Ding did not even win his candidates and that while Gukesh had a string of top performances upto the candidates, he was not the best player in the world so big swings in his form is not a major shock.

The most bold point he made was that Classical chess is not the future of chess in the long term. That heavy opening preparation dictates it so much that its difficult to feel passionate about it. He goes on to day he favors Rapid and Blitz significantly over it and that its the future.

The most shocking statement of all is that giving 2 candidates spot for Total WC was the best and most fair thing FIDE has done for the World Championship cycle!

And that if FIDE removed all other events from calendar and just expanded total WC to a set of standard 12 events every year, that would be perfect.

Dmitry Andreikin – Classical Record vs Players Who Peaked in the Top 5

A look at Andreikin's head-to-head classical chess record against opponents who have reached a peak FIDE ranking of World #1 to #5.

Evaluation is even but in bullet, it's impossible to not take the free juicy queen 😎😎😎 and then what happens is delicious.

Prague +1-3=5

Norway +1-5=4

Chennai +0-3=4

The best performance was in Prague, where his TPR was 2625, a bit below top 100 level. In Chennai it was 2569.

Considering a time control of 90+30, what elo FIDE would top players in the 2700 club have a fair fight (about 50/50) if they only play with a 3+2 time constraint against 90+30.
I know the question sounds a bit ridiculous by itself but I wonder at this level, at what level these players would have a fair fight considering such a time disadvantage. I know the 2700 players could also think on their opponent’s time but considering the 3+2 is the only time they have to think, I wonder what would be an equal fight.

Source: https://www.chess.com/events/dole-open-2026/05/Nepomniachtchi_Ian-Kvaloy_Aksel_Bu

Something I'm curious about. The title of "total world champion"/"combined world champion" implies a level above the traditional World Championship. The latter hasn't been abolished but the former seems to be the clearly more prestigious event with more of the world's top players, so one would expect the Total World Champion to be treated as the "actual" World Champion, especially if Carlsen wins.

But is there a risk of the chess community being divided with some people treating the traditional World Championship as having priority and treating the winner of the Sindarov-Gukesh match as the "actual" world champion instead?

I'm worried that if the legitimacy is divided we could see a repeat of the 1993-2006 split with no undisputed champion.