Lubomir Kavalek

They fought gallantly and when it was over on Saturday afternoon, the horse, I'll Have Another, and the chessplayer, Hikaru Nakamura, 24, were declared winners almost at the same time. The comparison between the Preakness Stakes horse race held in Baltimore, Maryland, and the 2012 U.S. Chess Championship in Saint...

Lurking in the background, hiding their identity, they seem mysterious, magical, beautiful. At first, they observed the game from a distance, but as centuries went by, women were drawn closer to the chessboard. Still, for ages they could not play chess in public and...

How much do you have to know to become a strong chess player?

According to Russian folklore you have to know 300 chess positions to become a grandmaster, but nobody knows what exactly these positions are.

There is something in the number 300 that attracts chess writers. Siegbert Tarrasch,...

In January 2004, I called Magnus Carlsen the Mozart of Chess for the first time. It was a spontaneous, last-minute decision to meet a deadline for my column in the Washington Post. The name was picked up immediately and spread around quickly. It was used, misused, overused. Even the television...

Imagine a marathon athlete puffing on cigarettes during the 22.38-mile run. But chess was the only sport where smoking was not only possible; it was quite common. For some mental athletes, such as the late world chess champion Mikhail Tal or the legendary grandmaster Viktor Korchnoi, performing without cigarettes was...

Levon Aronian's brilliant victory at the prestigious Tata Steel tournament in Wijk aan Zee, the Netherlands, would normally be the topic of our conversation. But it was a young Chinese girl, Hou Yifan, 17, who stole the limelight. The women's world champion shared first place at the powerful Tradewise Chess...

It was not surprising to see the world's top two rated players, Magnus Carlsen of Norway and Levon Aronian of Armenia, sharing a lead at the 74th Tata Steel Chess Tournament at the Dutch coastal town of Wijk aan Zee. They amassed a 5.5-2.5 score and with five rounds...

The World Chess Hall of Fame celebrated the 10th anniversary this month in a new location in St. Louis, Missouri. The history of the Hall and portraits of inducted chess players are available on the impressive web site.

When it first opened in Miami in December 2001, I...

President Vaclav Havel died last Sunday and the sad news spread quickly. The Czechs lost one of their best statesmen - a good, modest man who was respected throughout the world. Thousands walked on Wednesday behind his casket from the center of Prague, across the Charles Bridge to the Prague...

The former world champion Vladimir Kramnik won the London Chess Classic, a tournament that brought the English capital close to its former glory. London was the world chess center in the mid-19th century when the first two important...

Reckless sacrifices were not his style, but for one day, one game and one moment in 1959 Bobby Fischer threw caution to the wind, went va banque and played like Mikhail Tal. His opponent was the Czech grandmaster Ludek Pachman and the game was played in Santiago de Chile.

Tal...

Christian Hesse's book The Joys of Chess: Heroes, Battles & Brilliances, published by New in Chess, was endorsed by the world champion Vishy Anand and Vladimir Kramnik. It is a compilation of chess stories, biographical sketches, games and fragments with references to art and science. The author is a...

They flew from Europe to Brazil, played five rounds in Sao Paulo, crossed the equator again on the way to Bilbao, Spain, where they played another five rounds. After the world's best chess grandmasters have done all this traveling and playing, the outcome of the Chess Masters Final was still...

Named after the Austrian master Ernst Grunfeld, the defense has been around for nearly 90 years. At first, it was looked upon with suspicion: giving white a strong pawn center that could only be tickled by black's dark bishop and other pieces didn't seem to be a fair deal. Those...

It was the most amazing move of the 2011 Chess World Cup in Khanty Mansiysk, Russia, a wonderful coup de grâce you don't see every day. And it could have been enough to play it, go home and enjoy it for years to come. But it was not all Peter...

A quarter of a century ago, the phenomenal Argentinian soccer player Diego Maradona scored a goal with his hand during a quarterfinal match against England at the 1986 FIFA World Cup in Mexico. The referee didn't see the hand-play, allowed the goal and Argentina went on to win the Cup....

Asked to name his best game, the legendary Bobby Fischer pointed to his encounter with Donald Byrne from the Rosenwald Trophy in New York in 1956, but admitted it wasn't perfect. "There is no perfect game in chess," he said. After all, we are human and we make mistakes. But...

Chess sometimes becomes a beautiful game even in the eyes of those who don't play it. Find a charming town, bring back its glorious past, turn people into chess pieces, invite kids and a jester and you can evoke magical moments.

Every year...

The International Master Yochanan Afek, 59, is an Israeli chess composer who lives in the Netherlands. He plays in tournaments but is better known for his witty endgame studies, full of magical spins. He is also an entertaining...

The world chess champion Vishy Anand visited Prague in mid-June shortly before Czech president Vaclav Klaus celebrated his 70th birthday with a jazz concert at the Prague castle. Chess was always close to the president's heart and nobody was surprised when he showed up at Anand's simultaneous exhibition to see...