Wilhelm Steinitz was dethroned in 1894, in a series of games played across North America. There are some grumbles about the man who would beat him, Emmanuel Lasker, namely that he hadn’t played either of the other potential challengers before squaring up to Steinitz. However, this seems to be sour grapes as the other two […]
Believe it or not there’s a sport that takes the glamour of chess and combines it with the brutality of boxing. In fact the World Chess Boxing Association has held over a dozen international events since it was formed in 2008. A Chessboxing match is composed of 11 rounds – switching from a 4 minute […]
We’re not talking about a chess set swap shop here – though that would be kind of cool, but rather the exchange of pieces of equal value for each other. Obviously the ideal in chess is to take your opponents pieces for free, but in most cases your opponent is likely to be quite stingy […]
We don’t encourage gambling, but we do think that it’s interesting that you can take a flutter on your favorite players. In fact as with almost everything in the British Isles there’s always a bookmaker willing to take your bet. Despite the fact that the “cold war” excitement has vanished from the game and thus […]
We’re going through our series of world chess champions from first to last, but as the current world championship begins this month it’s perhaps a good idea to have a quick peek at what’s going on. The current holder is an Indian national, Vichy Anand who is being challenged by Boris Gelfand. Vichy is one […]