Top Chess News
Legendary British GM John Nunn won the World Seniors. “Nunn scored nine out of 11, and won all his six games with White, including a vital win in what had seemed a drawn final round queen and knight v queen and bishop ending.” (Leonard Barden for the Guardian)
GM Alexandra Goryachkina has taken the lead over Kosteniuk in the Women’s Candidates Quarterfinals with an instructive win in the endgame. Meanwhile, GMs Lagno and Tan Zhongyi are deadlocked. (Peter Doggers for Chess.com)
NM Vanessa West on the Chess.com Speed Chess Championship. Among other highlights, Caruana awaits the winner of Carlsen-Gukesh in the Quarter-finals (Chess.com News)
GM Christopher Yoo won a star-studded US Masters in Charlotte. “In the end, five grandmasters tied for first place with 7/9. By virtue of having the highest tiebreaks, GMs Christopher Yoo and Alejandro Ramirez squared off in a blitz playoff for the title, trophy, and a $300 cash bonus.” (Grant Oen for CLO)
IM Saravanan with a nice rundown of the TataSteel India Rapid tournaments (Chess.com News)
In what will surely be remembered as the highlight of is career, GM Magnus Carlsen won the prestigious Mr. Dodgy Invitational! (Colin McGourty for Chess24News)
Catching up on one more tournament, China won the World Team Championshop (Shahid Ahmed for Chessbase News)
Chess Improvement/Book Review
Braden Laughlin on his quick rise to 2000+ online ratings- “You don’t need a close examination of the topic to see that both book and video learning can be both active and passive and that attaching the label of passive learning to videos seems unfair.” (The OnoZone Blog)
New in Chess Books has started a Blog! (New in Chess)
‘SimaginFan’ on the genius of Rubinstein. Some great games are featured here… “A while ago in the comments to one of my blogs I was asked why Rubinstein had such a reputation as possibly the greatest player of rook endgames of all time. I answered that it was because he won many Rook endgames where it seemed impossible to win.” (Chess.com Blog)
FM Richard Webb reviews GM Anish Giri’s book on the Dragon “I am impressed with this colourful book, which is an accessible, lucid introduction to the Sicilian Dragon.” (Adapted from his Chessable Course) (British Chess News)
Lawsuit/Misc.
Chess.com and Magnus Carlsen have each filed motions to dismiss Hans Niemann’s cases against them. Peter Doggers provides more info. (Chess.com article) (Magnus’ Motion)
Martin Justesen bravely tackles an eternal chess mystery… What, exactly, does World Chess do? (Say Chess Blog)
That’s all for this week, hope you all have a good weekend- Ben