Hikaru Nakamura

A comparison between the Preakness Stakes horse race held in Baltimore, Maryland, and the 2012 U.S. Chess Championship in Saint Louis, Missouri, may seem out of place, but both races had a lot of things in common.

Six moves into the game Hikaru Nakamura-David Navara, the top-rated American grandmaster dented his position with a strange pawn move. He didn't create a crater, but the gap was big enough for a little chipmunk.

I share the same birth year with Bobby Fischer and helping him to became the world champion in Reykjavik 1972 became one of the highlights of my chess life.

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

They flew from Europe to Brazil, played five rounds in Sao Paolo, crossed the equator again on the way to Bilbao, Spain, where they played another five rounds -- and yet the outcome of the Chess Masters Final was still up in the air.

"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.

This contest consisted of three parts: a trivia question, a chess study and a chess problem. And the winners are...

He predicted the opponent and the outcome with these words: "It will by Short and it will be short." He also likes the movies Casablanca, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Godfather. Who is this grandmaster?

Gelfand's match against Anand could be interesting. Both players have vast opening knowledge, strive for initiative, can defend well and love to play dynamic chess. It could be the last time players over forty play for the championship.

The 2011 U.S. Chess Championship begins today at the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis, Mo., with 16 players, including the defending champion Gata Kamsky, the 1996 world championship challenger.

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.

Are chess players becoming robots by repeating moves approved at home by their computers?

Who actually won this tournament? Magnus Carlsen doesn't have to worry. According to the rules set up by the London organizers, the 20-year-old grandmaster from Norway finished first and will collect 50,000 Euros for his efforts.

The former U.S. champion Hikaru Nakamura is fast. The quicker the pace on the chessboard, the more he seems to enjoy playing.

Imagine a sporting event, in which the visiting team gets more chances to score, but when time expires and the score is tied, the championship trophy goes to a home team. That recently happened in St. Louis.