The winner’s name mirrors the 9th World Champion, Tigran V. Petrosian, nicknamed “Iron Tigran”, a great player known for his nearly impenetrable defensive playing style and his brilliant positional exchange sacrifices.
Kick off the summer with these checkmate puzzles composed by GM Pal Benko. Can you solve all six?
Most of us of have seen Mikhail Tal’s daring yet inaccurate sacrifices blow his opponents off the board. We’ve seen Fischer’s “Sac, sac, mate!” to tame the once fire-breathing Sicilian Dragon. We’ve seen the mind-boggling calculation abilities of Garry Kasparov in his attacking brilliancies. Yet, when it comes to our own games, attacking play can be a different story. What brilliant attackers seem to do effortlessly can be unimaginable to most chessplayers.
Congrats to 14-year-old Awonder Liang, who earned his second GM norm on the way to winning his section of the 2017 Spring Chess Classic. A trio of…
Levon Aronian recently won the Grenke Classic, which featured a top-notch field, including Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, Maxime-Vachier-Lagrave, and Hou Yifan.
After winning the exceptionally strong Gibraltar Open for the third consecutive time in February, Hikaru Nakamura has now also managed to win the Zurich Chess Challenge 3 years in a row.
In round 7, Sevian faced second seed GM Vladmir Belous on board 1. Sevian had the black pieces and trailed Belous, who led the tournament by half a point. Sevian won the game, taking over clear 1st, and he never relinquished the lead!
Wesley So, our new US Champion and current World #2 ranked player, dazzled with his queen sacrifice against Jeffery Xiong, one of the most brilliant…
GM Pal Benko recently contributed Apri Fools problems to the April edition of Chess Life Magazine, in which you are challenged to construct checkmates. Here…
When I first started playing chess, I spent a lot of time studying the opening. Inspired by the World Champion at the time, Garry Kasparov, I spent hours memorizing lines in the Sicilian and King’s Indian and dreamed of catching my opponent with my opening “preparation.”
However, twenty years later, older and perhaps a little wiser, I find myself preferring to study the endgame.
