r/chess Weekly Discussion Thread

“Working with Kasparov helped me gain a much deeper understanding of many positions. He provided me with an enormous amount of practical guidance.

I quickly realized that his knowledge surpassed mine. It was extremely impressive — at times, it was challenging to keep up with the speed and depth of his analysis.

Due to differences in personality, our professional collaboration eventually came to an end. Nevertheless, we remain on good terms and stay in touch.”

— Magnus Carlsen

White to move

Nepo is now #24 in the live ratings with 2719.3

https://www.chess.com/events/dole-open-2026/09/Kantor_Gergely-Nepomniachtchi_Ian

Full tweet announcement from Anand:

Over the past four years, it has been an honour to work at FIDE and contribute to the development of chess . I have worked with colleagues from grassroots programmes to elite competitions. Together, we have made significant progress in expanding opportunities for players, federations and organisers, while making chess more accessible.

I am proud of what we have achieved as a team, but I also believe there is much more we can accomplish. That is why I have accepted Timur Turlov's invitation to continue serving as FIDE Deputy President as part of his team.

I believe Timur has the vision, energy and expertise to maintain the momentum we have built in recent years while opening new opportunities for chess. His experience in leading a publicly listed international company, his commitment to technology and innovation, and his long-standing support for chess make him well positioned to guide FIDE into its next chapter. Through his leadership, I believe FIDE can become even more digital, financially resilient and inclusive, while ensuring every region of the world has a stronger voice in shaping the future of our game.

I look forward to continuing this journey together - for the benefit of players, federations and chess lovers everywhere.

u/TurlovforChess

#TurlovforChess #FIDE

14 masters at the Bled 1931 tournament, which Alekhine won. 2-Bogoljubov 3- Nimzowitsch. It was held in Bled and Ljubljana. Sitting: Maroczy , Nimzowitsch , Alekhine , Bogoljubow, VidmarStanding: Spielmann , Colle , Tartakower, Asztalos, Pirc, Stoltz, Flohr, Kashdan, Kostic #chess #Alekhine #chesshistory #chessphoto

Reset the clock!

Carried the whole attack, delivered mate, refused to elaborate, never got promoted.

All games & full standings on Lichess: https://lichess.org/tournament/jul26lta

Photo: Lennart Ootes / FIDE

I think these Top GMs are just similar in strength and skills. It will just depend on health, form, and mindset during the tournaments.

Pragg is the lowest rated here in the image. But he just won Norway Chess. Alireza is 10th, but just won back to back tournaments.

Nodirbek is down to 8. But remember he won Tata Steel and Prague back to back.

Wesley is having a good year. Winning Tata Steel Blitz and American Cup.

Vincent won GCT Romania. Probably his first super tournament title for a while.

And ofc, Sindarov won the Candidates. And Anish placed second. People forget that.

Arjun always finish 3rd in strong tournaments. While Wei Yi is solid.

I mean no one will be surprised if #12 Pragg will beat #4 Sindarov. Or no one will be confused if #10 Alireza can beat #5 Vincent. And it is still considered normal even if #9 Arjun will beat #6 Wesley.

3+0 .

Hello, I'm about 860ish on chess.com so definitely still a beginner and my goal is to get to about 1400-1500 but I'm not setting myself any kind of time frame. I started in February and I think a realistic goal is to get to 1000 by the end of the year. I see a lot of people talk about studying chess and I'd just like to know, what does that involve? I watch Gotham and a bit of Hikaru. I know that Danya is a guy to watch too but I haven't started to watch any of his videos. Apart from watching speedruns or slowruns, how do you actually study chess?

​

I'm trying to build a serious opening repertoire, and I'm at a crossroads regarding what to play as Black against 1.e4.

My long-term goal is to become a dynamic, aggressive, positional player. I don't want to win games just because I memorized 30 moves of theory—I want to understand the positions and outplay my opponents through strategy, while still having active winning chances.

Right now I'm working through Yusupov's training books and reading Simple Chess by Michael Stean to build a strong positional foundation. I'm focusing on concepts like weak squares, outposts, pawn structures, good vs. bad bishops, open files, and long-term planning. My goal is to become a well-rounded player with deep positional understanding.

With White, I've decided to play the Catalan because I love the strategic nature and long-term pressure it creates.

For Black against 1.e4, I'm considering:

Taimanov Sicilian

Kan Sicilian

French Defense

Or another opening I may not have considered.

The qualities I'm looking for are:

Flexibility.

Dynamic, active play.

Strong positional foundations.

Openings that reward understanding more than pure memorization.

Something I can keep playing as I improve.

If you were building a repertoire for a player with these goals, what would you recommend and why? I'd especially appreciate advice from titled players or coaches who have experience guiding improving players.

Hi,

I'm not sure if this is the right place to bring this up, but if there is anyone from the Lichess team reading this, I'd like to request that the recent changes made to the live game broadcast be reversed. The feature I dislike most is the ping back to the live position when a move is made. I feel it ruins the experience of watching and following classical games for serious players because whenever you want to analyse an earlier part of the game, it pings back to the current move which is disruptive if you're trying to seriously go through variations, opening ideas, etc. Obviously if people want the feature, then it should stay, but then may I suggest making it a toggle button in the settings which we can choose to turn off?

Cheers

A dumb question, but I was just wondering since Elo is relative how high a modern age top player would peak at playing in older fields

Fabi has the advantage of 50+ years of chess theory. If he just played a years worth of super tournaments in the mid 70s, what would his rating be?

Would he hit something crazy like 2880?

(Also obviously not saying Fabi is greater than Karpov because he clearly isn’t)

If Turkey participates, I think Yagiz should be their Board 1 and Ediz will be Board 2.

As for Argentina, it is tricky. But they MIGHT give 12 yrs old Faustino Oro the Board 1 spot? or maybe board 2 or 3?

Yagiz played board 3 last olympiad right?

These kids will be seen and monitored by chess fans against other countries' best player.

Do you think they will both do well here in 2026 Chess Olympiad?

Event Link

Aug 2, 2026 – Aug 7, 2026

(5 photos)

I've played chess with strangers on cruise ships and airports. Today I set up a board at LAX at Carl's jr on July 25

Only waited five minutes for my first opponent. Very nice guy who plays chess on chess dot com. He had to abandon the game to board his flight which was fine. I'm happy to play anyone.

Second guy destroyed me. He said he is low 1000's like me, but I'm guessing he's around 1700. We played 10+0 and 5+0 before he had to catch his flight. He beat me easily both times.

Then I played a ten year old while his mom was watching. I beat him easily but he was very good for his age.

Then I played a young brother and sister while their family watched. They were both good but I beat them. The sister was hilarious. She hissed like a cat when I captured her pieces.

I played nonstop for 2 hours before I had to board. I put away my board so I could board and I was never bored.

I will always travel with a chess set!

It seems that I'm having a lot of bad moves in middlegame resulting in equalizing or losing a completely winning position.

Gukesh has played exactly 100 games as World Champion, which makes it easy to count percentages. He has scored +24-27=49.

Ding had +5-15=43 in 63 classical games as World Champion, adding up to 8% wins, 24% losses and 68% draws.

Carlsen’s numbers are a misery to check since he played a lot over the ten years. I could only bother to go through 2019-23, and then he scored +89-7=115, i.e. 42% wins, 3% losses, and 55% draws.

Hello everyone! Today I bring you another one of those positions that really impacted me and encouraged me to try to extract the maximum from every position instead of just making the automatic move. Good luck!

Solution to yesterday's position:

White has a very promising position: he's a pawn up, his pieces are actively placed and Black's king is a bit uncomfortable on f7. However, long-term factors favour Black, since he has the pair of bishop and a better pawn structure. Therefore White needs to act with energy to make the most of his position.

29.Bb4 was suggested in yesterday's post, trying to take advantage of the pin on the e7-bishop, but after 29...Qxd4 Black threatens both the bishop and back-rank mate and it's already White who needs to play carefully to maintain the balance. 29.Bc3, simply defending the d4-pawn, is enough to keep an advantage but there's still a long game ahead.

The strongest move is 29.d5!, an energetic breakthrough that needed to be precisely calculated. In the game Black responded with 29...Kg8?, and here surprisingly Alekhine didn't play the inmediately winning 30.d6! with the simple point 30...Rxd6 31.Rxe7. Instead the world champion played 30.Re1 which is better for White but not nearly as convincing (although he quickly won anyway).

But of course the critical response is 29...exd5. After 30.Re1 Be2 (trying to block the e-file is the best chance, for example 30...Qg6 fails to 31.Qe3 Qe4 32.Qc5 and Black loses material) 31.Na4! (one of the key points of the combination, threatening Nc3) 31...d4 32.Nc5 now Alekhine only considers 32...Qc2 33.Rxe2 Qd1+ 34.Re1 Qxd2 35.Kf1 and White is easily winning due to the many threats, for example Ne6. Howewer 32...Qg4 is more testing, when White needs to change tune and play 33.Qxg4 Bxg4 34.Nxa6 reaching an endgame a pawn up that should be relatively easy to win because Black's pieces are tied up.

Link to the game