Levon Aronian

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Levon Aronian won the Amber tournament in Monaco this month. He will be known as the last winner. After twenty years, the combined blindfold and rapid chess event, featuring the world's top players, comes to a halt.

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?