Experimental draw at Dutch Championship

During his game against FM Benjamin Bok at the Dutch Championship in Eindhoven, GM Loek van Wely today was involved in an experiment to measure his stress levels. And indeed, in a game that saw a repetition of the position between moves 14 and 37, clear signs of arousel on the side of Van Wely were measured, but for an unexpected reason… Read more

What Your Body’s Thinking About

There’s a picture of Mikhail Tal that has always seemed to me the ultimate chess player’s pose: Tal’s looking at the board, chin on his thumb, his other arm folded under his fist, utter determination in his eyes. But what was Tal actually thinking at the time the picture was taken? Read more

What baby names can tell you about chess openings

If you have kids, you’ve probably thought hard about how to name your child. Should you choose a ’special’ kind of name, or rather a very trendy or well-known one? Popularity is an important aspect when it comes to choosing virtually anything. The same goes for chess openings: do you want to go for popular main lines or for ‘off beat’ variations? Read more

Why we play chess

Why do we play chess at all? Why bother? Today is an exceptionally good day to ask yourself that question. You’ll probably answer: ‘ Because I like it!’ Well, yes, but that was not the kind of ‘why’ I meant. Why do people have sex? Because they like it – doh! But why do they like it? This is the question Charles Darwin, who was born exactly 200 years ago today, tried (and succeeded) answering. Does his explanation also apply to chess? Read more

25-27 Feb: International conference on Chess in School

25, 26 and 27 February in Turin (Torino – Italy) there will be an international conference on Chess in School. The opening ceremony will be attended by FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov and among the speakers there will be many GMs and representatives of FIDE and federations, and obviously Italian teachers and experts. Announcement. Read more

Nature: ‘cognitive enhancement’ is not a dirty word

Should mind drugs be allowed or forbidden in chess competition? Less than two weeks after super GM?Ǭ†Vassily?Ǭ†Ivanchuk missed a doping test at the Olympiad, scientists in Nature published an article that says ‘cognitive enhancement’ should be allowed in modern society. Read more

What do we think of chess skill?

What are the effects of amount of practice, coaching and age of starting chess on chess skill? And how do we chess players view such notions as skill and talent? Dr Robert Howard of the University of New South Wales in Australia carried out a survey and its preliminary results answer a few of these questions. Read more

A scientific standard for chess writing?

It’s well-known that chess is not only a game, not only art, but also science. I myself became fascinated by chess not because you could beat your granddad with it, or because you could play beautiful attacking games, but because you could look things up afterwards. Read more

Chess and math: a happy couple?

Chess and math have always slept side by side. But are they a happy couple? I think every chess player has had the experience of someone asking you, in high school, if your math grades were as good as your chess results. Sadly, for me the answer was often ‘no’. Read more

[lang_nl]Preview Biel[/lang_nl][lang_en]Preview Biel[/lang_en]

Being a chess fan can be quite tough. We've already had so many super tournaments this year, the latest of which, Poikovsky, just having finished. And so many are yet to come: Sochi, Mainz, the Tal Memorial, the Grand Slam Final in Bilbao, the Olympiad and God knows what else. Read more

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