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On Thursday, in celebration of Spirit Day, the worlds largest LGBTQ anti-bullying GLAAD hosted an inaugural Spirit Day chess tournament with Chess.com. Several high-level prizes were donated, highlighting the generosity and allyship of the chess community Chess.com gifted Diamond memberships, Chessable offered courses, and 8 coaches donated lessons.

The tournament was broken up into two arenas, one at 11AM ET and another at 8pm ET, with over 300 chess players tuning in to battle in the name of supporting queer youth.

The tournament chat was filled with messages of enthusiasm for the event, and positivity for the LGBTQ community, including many heartwarming comments about how enthralled queer participants were to have a chess tournament for them. Chess is for everyone! commented one user on a blog post announcing the tourney.

Another user expressed their gratitude on the chess.com Discord server:

The amount of chess communities Ive left for homophobic sh*t is crazy. so thanks for trying to educate the dumbest demographic there is, chess players. Seriously, this partnership is awesome. Good job!

The AM event saw a competitive back and forth performance by the top 2 finishers, National Master Emilio Castellanos and Trans Chess Club member International Master Jack Rudd. The two battled neck and neck until the very end, where Emilio eked out a 1 point victory over Jack, with a final score of 114 points. At second, Jack earned a total of 113 points and FIDE Master Javier Benitez came in 3rd place with a total of 84 points.

Emilio told GLAAD Its great to be an Official Streamer of a company [Chess.com] that gives visibility and support to these types of events that are very much needed today. It was a very fun and intense tournament!

After the event, players reconciled how much fun they had, and how much they enjoyed the LGBTQ Chess space. Trans Chess Club member Seraphina told GLAAD It feels nice to play with family, Ive been waiting for an event like that for a long time, I cant wait for the next one! Florian, another TCC member said It was a very good atmosphere with a lot of respect. It was a pleasure to play in that kind of event. There should be more like this in the future!

At the evening arena, Fide Master Javier Benitez placed again, this time winning 1st by a sizable margin at 140 points. User HoldUpLemmeThinkRq placed 2nd, with 106 points, and honorary Trans Chess Club member, internet chess personality, coach, and staunch LGBTQ ally JJ Lang aka Chess Feels won 3rd place at 84 points.

JJ told GLAAD It was a blast playing against a wide skill range of players, including many of my students! I hope to play in more events organized for the LGBTQIA+ community in the future.

In total, there were 300 individual players between the 2 events. It was a great turnout, especially for the short turnout we had for planning time. This demonstrates the immense potential for LGBTQ advocacy in the chess community, and we hope to explore more ways of doing so.

Lusa Leo, the Community Coordinator from Chess.com told GLAAD For the first time since I started as a Chess.com community coordinator, I had seen people using their own [chess] clock time to chat during the tournament and thank us for organizing an event. Our partnership with GLAAD made the queer youth in the chess community feel seen, heard, protected, and loved. We couldnt be happier with the feedback we received from them! It was a truly powerful day, and I hope we can continue spreading this message of acceptance in the world of chess. Chess is for everyone!

Read the rest here:
CHECKMATE! GLAAD x Chess.com host first-ever #Spiritday ... - GLAAD

Since the 1940s, Washington Square Park in New York City has hosted countless games of competitive chess every day, including matches dominated by Bobby Fischer, the legendary grandmaster who first made world headlines at the tender age of 14.

On a trip to New York City back in 2017, I took our then twelve-year-old son to the park to play. While far from being elite, Riley could and can hold his own. On this particular day, he sat down at one of the tables and began competing with a much older gentleman who bore all the marks of a true hustler. As the game went on, our son had the advantage. But then the older man began acting in a bizarre and erratic manner. Five or six moves later, Riley lost the match.

Or did he?

Im not sure what happened, my son lamented as we walked away. I had him. But then something changed.

What had changed was the chess hustler had somehow managed to steal back a key piece that Riley had won and had placed on the side of the board. In other words, the guy had cheated.

Why would an old man cheat at chess to beat a twelve-year-old boy?

Cheating has been around forever, of course, a product of sin and a fallen world. Spouses cheat on one another, students cheat in school, adults cheat on their taxes, athletes cheat in competition and yes, old men cheat to beat young boys at chess.

Professional chess has been roiled and influenced by a variety of high-profile cheating scandals, including a match last week between Norwegian grandmaster Magnus Carlsen and 23-year-old Kazakh grandmaster Alisher Suleymenov.

Carlson, who has accused other challengers of cheating most notably American grandmaster Hans Moke Niemann last year lost to Suleymenov, a player most assumed the seasoned veteran would easily dispatch.

I was completely crushed in my game today, Carlson tweeted. This is not to accuse my opponent of anything, who played an amazing game and deserved to win, but honestly, as soon as I saw my opponent was wearing a watch early in the game, I lost my ability to concentrate.

According to the rules, Suleymenov shouldnt have been wearing any device. Thats because its been suspected that players are receiving suggested moves via watches and forms of implanted technology from people watching via video elsewhere and relying on artificial intelligence to advise.

These days,cheating is so easybecause anyone with access to the internet has the capability to load technology capable of stomping the best chess players on the planet, writes Andrew Beaton and Joshua Robinson in the Wall Street Journal. It simply takes a few taps on a smartphone to pull up whats known as a chess engine on a website or an app, and instantly discover the perfect move in every situation. No human stands a chance against the worlds best engines.

As a result, officials are now inserting delays when broadcasting chess matches, hoping that will eliminate the ability for a player to receive ill-gotten intel from the outside. Russias Ian Nepomniachtchi has half-jokingly recommended competitors play naked in a locked room to guarantee a fair match.

Such is just one of the consequences of the loss of character in culture. Once considered a gentlemens game, suspicion and paranoia have now gripped the sport.

Our character is who we are when nobody is looking and its developed amid an ongoing series of personal decisions, both big and small.

Whether competitive chess remains a viable sport given the ease and proliferation of cheating remains an open question, but theres zero doubt our world desperately needs to develop, encourage, and champion individuals of high character.

Legendary basketball coach John Wooden, who directed a metaphorical game of chess on another type of hardwood, once urged, Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.

Whether youre playing basketball, checkers or chess thats good counsel.

Photo credit Paul Batura.

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Cheating, Chess and The Search for High Character - Daily Citizen

In the heart of Budapest at Judit Polgar's ninth Global Chess Festival 2023, the Hungarian duo, Team Mighty Fox, claimed victory in the festival's invitational triathlon event, bagging $4,000 in prize money in the process.

The winning team, comprised of GM Ferenc Berkes and WIM Zsoka Gaal, scrimmaged through three chess disciplinesPuzzle Battle, tandem chess, and finally, bullet chess, and finished atop the leaderboard ahead of GM David Howell and WFM Alessia Santeramo's Team Crazylandia.

Also running during the two-day celebration of chess were the online #ChessConnectUs Open and Scholastic tournaments, which were won by the 15-year-old FM Syvatoslav Bazakutsa and 13-year-old Will Moorhouse, respectively.

Creative crossovers between IRL and online play are all the vogue in chess right now and Polgar has continued to elevate the entertainment value of the Global Chess Festival with each edition.

In 2023, the Triathlon event took center stage, and with a star-studded lineup, including several of Hungary's top players as well as world-renowned content creators, viewers were in for a spectacle.

Speaking about the format of the triathlon, Polgar said the following: "Well, it was my idea to come up with something that might be very entertaining for chess enthusiasts and chess lovers. So the idea was to have mixed pairs and to have three kinds of chess activities where the players can show their focus, how they make decisions, what their intuition is all about, and how they can play in pairs. So to mix things up and have fun!"

The first segment on the schedule was Puzzle Battle and from these matches, two frontrunners would emerge Team Crazylandia and Team Mighty Fox, who both finished on four points. Individually, the most outstanding performance in the section went to Howell, who won all his battles with scores over 44 and a high score of 46, with only IM Gellert Karacsonyi (42) coming close. Howell was all smiles after each clash.

The English GM's partner Santeramo was unlucky not to put their duo in front after striking out on a score of 29 in her match with Team Maglat's WGM Dana Reizniece-Ozola. With 30 seconds on the clock, Reizniece-Ozola was able to make up the ground between them and finish two puzzles ahead of Santeramo on 31.

Meanwhile, Berkes and Gaal got off to a flying start and both managed to win two of their three Puzzle Battles. For Berkes, accuracy was prioritized over speed and, thanks to this, he was able to clutch up against GM Miguel Illescas by two puzzles.

Despite starting slowly in the Puzzle Battle segment, the tandem chess rounds were a raging success for Illescas and IM Olga Alexandrova, also known as Team DragonChess. After securing a draw with Howell and Santeramo in round one, the duo was unstoppable.

A helpmate against Berkes and Gaal from an equal position followed by a rook blunder by Karacsonyi and Reizniece-Ozola catapulted Team DragonChess into second place on seven points.

Still ahead of them however was Team Mighty Fox, who managed to win their other two games and take a commanding three-point lead over the field. The duo's success could be attributed to their teamwork throughout and their decision to play double-fianchetto systems paid off, particularly in their game against Team Maglat.

The final leg of the triathlon was bullet chess, a fitting sprint to the finish for the four teams. Unsurprisingly, the top seed Howell was the most dominant of the male players, scoring 2.5/3 for his team and only conceding a draw to Berkes (2/3) while Santeramo managed to add just one point to Team Crazylandia's tally.

Alexandrova and Gaal were equally impressive and finished in a tie on 2/3. Due to Berkes and Gaal adding a combined four points to their total, in the bullet segment, Team Mighty Fox's final score sat at 12, spelling a comprehensive victory for the Hungarian team.

In a post-tournament interview with Polgar and Sachdev, Berkes cordially spoke about the naming of their team, stating: "I used to be tricky and I think for sure that Zsoka [Gaal] was a part of this [in reference to the fox]." Berkes went on to suggest that his favorite segment was tandem chess while Gaal gave an alternate response, indicating that she enjoyed bullet chess.

For their efforts, the pair received $4,000 while Team Crazylandia walked away with the $3,000 prize for second place.

Standings - Triathlon

All Games - Tandem/Bullet Segments

On the first day of the Global Chess Festival, two winners were crowned in the #Chessconnectsus online Swiss finals. In the open event, Balakutsa, a familiar name to eagle eyed fans of Chess.com's Junior Speed Chess Championship, won with a perfect 11/11 score having defeated multiple titled players in a clinical fashion.

The road to victory was a little tougher in the scholastic division for Moorhouse and after losing his fifth and sixth rounds, the "Go Magnus Chess Academy" student recovered sensationally with a hack-and-slash 13-move victory over his 1800-rated opponent.

Moorhouse then finished the event with five wins on the fly to assume his rightful place at the top and claim the year of free diamond membership along with a 150 Chessable voucher.

Judit Polgar's Global Chess Festival, now in its ninth edition since starting in 2007, is one of the true highlights of the chess calendar. Held in Budapest, Hungary, and also online, it attracts thousands of chess fans from around the world. The triathlon was the focal point of the event and with a $10,000 prize fund and live coverage provided by Chess.com, the festival is back and bigger than ever.

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(Global Chess Festival 2023): Berkes, Gaal Win Judit Polgar's First ... - Chess.com

The Judit Polgar Global Chess Festival 2023 (JPGCF) is a series of chess events and activities hosted by the legendary GM Judit Polgar. The festival runs across two days, October 14 and 15, with the first day happening live in Hungary and the second day happening online. The festival also features two online tournaments, one open to the public and one invitational.

You can watch the event's live broadcast on Chess.com/TV and on our Twitch and YouTube channels.

The festival is open for anyone to attend. Participating clubs held tournaments to decide who'd play in the #ChessConnectsUs tournament. They could sign up two players for the open and two for the scholastic section, one female and one male in each. The following google sheetlists the qualified players.

The chess Triathlon is the only invitational tournament, with confirmed participation of the following players:

The in-person activities of the JPGCF start on October 14 at 4 a.m. ET/10:00 CEST, while the online #ChessConnectsUs tournament happens on October 14 at 11 a.m.ET/17:00 CEST. The rest of the online portion of the festival starts on October 15 at 4 a.m. ET/10:00 CEST. Check out the full schedule below:

You can check the full schedule of the festival on its official website.

The festival features a series of in-person activities (click here for more details), an online Educational Chess Sumit, and two online tournaments. Below, you can learn more about the two online tournaments:

The Triathlon is an invitational event featuring three segments, each a round-robin. Players are divided into teams of two and earn points according to their results and are later ranked based on their total points.

Puzzle Battle

Tandem Chess

Bullet

Clubs ran tournaments to determine who would play in the #ChessConnectsUs Finals. Clubs could sign up one man and one woman to the Open Finals and one boy and one girl to the Scholastic Finals. The Finals consist of an 11-round Swiss tournament in the 3+2 time control. Standard Swiss tiebreakers apply.

The chess Triathlon counts with a $10,000 prize fund, distributed as follows:

Community members playing in the #ChessConnectsUs tournament can also enjoy the following prizes:

This year, the in-person portion of the JPGCF will happen in Polgar's hometown of Budapest, Hungary. People from all over the world will gather at the breathtaking Hungarian National Gallery to take part in the festival. The online tournaments will be played on Chess.com's servers.

This year's JPGCF is the festival's ninth edition. You can see the highlights of last year's festival in the video below:

Link:
Judit Polgar's Global Chess Festival 2023: All The Information - Chess.com

RIVER HILLS, Wis. A battle between two siblings rages on quietly. A younger sister squares up against the older brother in a game of intellectual mastery with family pride on the line. Even though neither talks, their actions speak loudly.

Hersh Singh and his younger sister Aradh Kaur are in a game of wit and strategy trying to beat the other in chess.

Hersh Singh

The two are chess prodigies attending the University School of Milwaukee in River Hills.

I started with it at a really young age, and liked it, and I improved fast. So I wanted to keep going with it," 17-year-old senior Hersh Singh said.

Hersh is a FIDE Master. That's the third-highest title the international chess governing body can give. The next are international master and grandmaster.

Older brother Hersh Singh is a FIDE Master. Thats the third-highest title the international chess governing body can give. The next are international master and grandmaster. He's one of only a handful in the state to hold the title.

Hersh is a senior at the University School of Milwaukee in River Hills. Hes just 17 and is the 140th-best chess player in the country. Even though Hersh is soft-spoken, he's competitive.

His main focus in chess is, Doing good in prestigious tournaments," he said.

That is a humble way of saying winning. He has won four national titles, gotten 2nd 5 times, and recently got 2nd at the Pan American Chess Festival this past summer to earn his title of FIDE Master.

He practices for anywhere between one and a half to four hours a day. Its a grueling regime, but there is a big goal in mind to become a grandmaster.

His sister, Aradh is also a chess prodigy. When she was 14, she tied for 1st in the Pan-American games and now at 16 she recently won a national tournament in Florida.

James Groh

It started out when my grandfather taught me and it seemed like an interesting game and I kept playing, and I realized I was kind of good at it. So I kept playing, and it was fun," Kaur, a sophomore at the University School of Milwaukee, said.

Like her brother, her favorite part of chess is winning.

But only one can come out on top of a game between these two siblings. While it's not a formally ranked game, the winner gets the title of champion of the house.

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Milwaukee chess prodigies and siblings keep winning national and ... - TMJ4 News