Nathaniel Green is a staff writer for Chess.com who writes articles, player biographies, Titled Tuesday reports, video scripts, and more. He has been playing chess for about 30 years and resides near Washington, DC, USA.
The game of chess didn't have a world championship until 1886. It took an additional 41 years for there to be a women's world championship, first held in 1927. Despite the shorter time period, there have been as many women's champions, 17,...
If you've enjoyed our previous data visualizations of the most accurate chess players over time and the countries with the most grandmasters over time, then you'll want to check out our latest: The top women over time! With the 2023 FIDE Women's...
What unites us as chess players? No matter where we live or what we do for a living, we have a game that each of us enjoys. In fact, every chess player is a little bit like Batman: It's not who we are underneath, but what we do that defines us. An...
By now you've seen our ranking of every opening move and our ranking of every possible response by Black to 1.e4 from White. Naturally, here comes every possible response by Black to 1.d4 from White. As in the e4 article, moves are given with th...
You sit down at the board or your computer and wait to see how your opponent will start the game. As they reach for the e-pawn, in your mind you roll your eyes and mutter, "Here we go again." With that quick sulk out of the way, it's...
There are 20 possible first moves in chess: each of the eight pawns can move one or two squares forward, and each of the two knights has two squares it can go to. But not everything that is equally legal is equally advisable as a course of actio...
The month of May brings with it the Pro Chess League playoffs! An exciting regular season that began with 16 teams is down to eight playoff squads. It is now time to crown a champion, who will receive a $25,000 first-place prize. Of the original $...
GM Magnus Carlsen won't be the official world champion of classical chess for much longer, but he has proven again and again in events outside of the FIDE-managed classical world championship that he is the best player in the world. Carlsen's re...
GM Ian Nepomniachtchi entered the 2023 FIDE World Championship as the number-two player in the world. You don't get to that position or win two Candidates Tournaments in two years (2021 and 2022) by only playing mundane moves. Sometimes you have t...
The Main Event of the Pro Chess League begins on February 14. Sixteen teams will vie for a championship worth $25,000 for first place and $150,000 overall. Each team has six to ten players on the roster. Four will play each week, including at le...
Today we bring you the players who won the most prize money in the major international chess events of 2022. Back in August, we revealed which chess players had won the most prize money throughout history for their performance in major matches and...
Chess is a simple game, really. Queen moves here, horsey moves there, checkmate. Okay not quite, but it is true that the hard part is playing well, not learning how to play. At least, in most cases. Some rules in chess are easy to get wrong&mdas...
As we approach the year 2023, the same distance from the year 2000 as the original theatrical release of Star Wars, the chess world chugs forward to the next world championship and another year of fun, excitement, and growth. They say that age i...
Chess, like any form of competition, has always seen its fair share of unfair play. From prearranged draws to computer cheats, where there's the will for ill-gotten gains, players have found the way. Whether the side being cheated can prove it or ...
If you are someone who has only started playing chess in the last year or two, you may already know about The Queen's Gambit or GM Hikaru Nakamura's stream. But if you want to understand chess culture at a deeper level, there are many more referen...
Few would question that, in an ideal world, the best chess player would be the world champion and vice versa. We can agree that GM Magnus Carlsen, who has been world number-one by rating since 2010 and world champion since 2013, is both. But at so...
Today, half a century ago, was a historic day for chess, and the whole world was watching. GM Bobby Fischer had done it! He fought, almost single-handedly, against the Soviet chess machine, and emerged as the first American world champion of chess...
Have you ever wondered how much money the top chess players can make by winning games? There are so many tournaments and matches run by various organizers that it's extremely hard to track how much prize money the best chess players have won in th...
GM Magnus Carlsen made waves with his recent decision not to play in the 2023 World Championship. However, he is hardly the first world champion to quit or criticize the championship system, or otherwise tire of the role or leave its acquisition t...
Game 13 was ultimately the most chaotic, bizarre, and epic game of what was a chaotic, bizarre, and epic 1972 World Championship match. From Alekhine's Defense on move one to the unusual final endgame position of three pawns overwhelming a piece o...
When we last left the 1972 World Chess Championship, GM Bobby Fischer had just won game six in brilliant fashion to take the match lead. By game 11, the situation was only deteriorating further for defending champion GM Boris Spassky, and his back...
In honor of the 44th Chess Olympiad, we at Chess.com asked the question: If you could put every country's best five players ever on the same team, how good would those teams be? Now there are many arguments, and not just in chess, about how good...
If there's one thing The Queen's Gambit proved, it's that chess can be dramatic. Just ask those who have played or observed the Candidates Tournament, where one game can be the difference between playing for the world championship or becoming...
No other tournament in chess combines the tradition and importance of the Candidates Tournament, which determines who plays the reigning champion in a match for the title. Depending how you count, it has been around for at least 70 years and up ...
