Anatoly Karpov

The former world champion Vladimir Kramnik won the London Chess Classic, a tournament that brought the English capital close to its former glory.

Those who play the Grunfeld defense know that it can turn into a nightmare in an instant. But the defense also brings them bright moments, tempts them again and again, and they cannot live without it.

"There is no perfect game in chess," Bobby Fischer said. After all, we are human and we make mistakes. But according to Tibor Karolyi, Anatoly Karpov came close to playing a mistake-free game at the 1974 chess olympiad in Nice, France.

Every year since 2005, the picturesque Slovak town of Banska Stiavnica stages a game of living chess. It is a powerful, almost mystical, spectacle with human chess pieces dressed into medieval costumes and armed with spears and swords.

World chess champion Vishy Anand visited Prague shortly before Czech president Vaclav Klaus celebrated his 70th birthday with a jazz concert at the Prague castle.

Levon Aronian's opponent in the Candidates Final for the world chess title was supposed to be the Bulgarian grandmaster Veselin Topalov. But both grandmasters are gone now, having lost the Candidates quarterfinal matches.

On the day the Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic won the Australian Open in Melbourne, the American chess grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura, 23, achieved the best success of his life.

As we enter the new decade, the chess world is ruled by a middle-aged man and a teenage girl. A twenty-something phenom presides over the world's ratings and a new book recalling one of the greatest chess magicians has been published recently.

Watching Kasparov and Karpov fight together for a common goal was an unusual sight, not seen too often. Kasparov writes again about their rivalry in his book On Modern Chess, Part Four: Kasparov vs Karpov 1988-2009.

A spectacular game was played between Russian GM Alexander Riazantsev and GM Sergey Karjakin. It was so complicated even the chess computers sometimes hesitated to suggest the best way.