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Chess has been around since the 16th century and has recently started moving online. Teenagers today enjoy playing a digital version of the game in school. (AP News)

Use of the viral website Chess.com in classrooms has caused some school district administrators to ban the site, online users say.

The website Chess.com was launched in May of 2007 by Erik Allebest and Jay Severson, two friends and former BYU students who set out to create a better way to play chess online. Home to more than 10 million chess games every day and employing 650 team members from around the world, Chess.com is the number one chess-playing site on the web.

The virtual chess game made its way from the home computer to the classroom when pandemic restrictions were lifted and kids started going back to school. Playing the game in schools particularly has caused administrators to take action to ensure focus in the classroom.

According to administrators, some Utah districts have banned the website in schools altogether in order to ensure focus in school. Others allow use of the game with limitations.

Chess.com is available on a limited basis. We dont want it to be a distraction, but it is available on a limited basis, Sandra Riesgraf, director of communications at Jordan School District says.

Districts such as Iron County block non-educational games in general from student access, including Chess.com, according to Shauna Lund, communications and foundation coordinator of Iron County School District.

Chess.com would be one of many classified as games that are blocked to ensure students focus and are learning during the school day, Lund said.

Other districts, however, have reported no notable issues with the site and have not blocked it on school computers. Kirsten Stewart of the Canyons School District Office of Public Communications said teachers monitoring internet use in the classroom is sufficient regulation and they are content to see kids participating in the stimulating activity, on a regulated basis.

Cell phones can be a distraction in the classroom, but our schools and teachers are empowered to set boundaries on the use of cell phones in class we have no complaints about Chess.com, Stewart says.

According to Stewart, Canyons School District contains a nationally ranked chess champion in their school, a senior at Alta High School who recently won on a state level and regularly participates in esports chess tournaments.

Research indicates that using chess in the classroom proves to be more of a learning tool than a distraction. The use of chess in an educational setting can be beneficial for a students academic success.

A five-year study conducted in Alabama found that chess can improve students classroom performance when teachers incorporate chess instruction into their curriculum.

The majority of teachers who participated in the study reported that, with chess instruction, their students got better at problem solving, strategic thinking, decision making and critical thinking. They also reported that students who participated in chess learning activities expressed more interest in school. This data proved that using chess in school rather than banning it can lead to increased focus and learning when used correctly.

Link:
Chess website banned in schools - The Daily Universe - Universe.byu.edu

What is happiness? Some people believe it's finding true love. Others seek it by excelling in their careers. But for those who know what truly moves human nature, happiness lies in playing uniquely satisfying chess moves.

Below are the 10 best chess moves you must play before your time on Earth expires. It doesn't matter where you come from or where you areplay these moves, and you'll have lived a happy and fulfilling life.

You can also check out this video talking about the moves:

Forget about money; forget about fame. Deliver a smothered mate, and you'll experience genuine fulfillment. Proudly having your mighty stud single-handedly make your opponent's army look like fools is what true power looks like.

Though this mating pattern is not the most common, play enough chess, and you'll definitely have a chance to use it. Here's one of our members, @HessianWarrior, showing us how it's done:

Somewhere deep inside the virgin forests of Vietnam lives one of the rarest creatures on Earth: the saola. Also known as the Asian unicorn, it is critically endangered. To this day, scientists have only categorically documented this elusive creature in the wild on four occasions.

Equally as rare but vastly more enchanting is the en passant checkmate. Few are the lucky ones who will have the privilege of witnessing such an awe-inspiring move in the wild, let alone play it themselves.

And to prove to you that anyone can receive the gift of an en passant checkmate, I leave you with a game played by our member @likebrando.

It's hard to tell what's more satisfying: Getting promoted where you work or getting an underpromotion in chess to work for you.

Of course, anyone can produce eight knights to ridicule poor Martin. However, I'm talking about ultra-precise underpromotions. The ones that save you from stalemating or give you one crucial tide-turning tempo. That, my friends, is worth more than a thousand queens.

Our member @CrackLionIX can attest to that:

Let me tell you a little secret. When loving caregivers offer the "it's not only about winning" advice, they don't always mean it. Sometimes, it is all about winningunless you're talking about the Rosen Trap. In this case, drawing can feel even better than victory itself.

So, the next time you're desperately moving your helpless king and wondering why chess has to be so cruel, remember this: If you do pull a Rosen Trap, you'll have a whole new appreciation for the game.

When I was just starting to play chess as an adult, a Chess.com lesson left me mesmerized by the windmill. A tactic so devastating that it should be named after something much less adorable. Since then, I've been chasing more windmills than Don Quixote.

Ironically, I always find myself enacting a twisted version of Cervantes' novel. Instead of mistaking windmills for monsters, I'm actually searching for windmills, but I always end up with nothing but ghosts.

Fortunately, some chess players have seen a windmill up close. Here's a game played by our member @Jimmy720 featuring a knight and bishop windmill.

While I advise you to stay away from the darkness, I do understand that many people still flirt with the prospect of playing dirty. Yes, a time will come when you want to cross the lineif only to see what it feels like.

My advice? Try the Lefongpremoving Bh6 and Bg7 (or equivalent) to leverage your opponent's premoves in the opening in case they fianchetto their bishop. It's one of the oldest and lowest trickeries you can pull when playing bullet time controls. And when you either win a game out of pure luck or sadly stare at the square where your bishop once lived, you'll still be able to say: "Well, at least I did it."

What should you do the next time you have two pawns about to promote? Definitely do the irresponsible thing and get yourself a bishop and a knight. Why? Because you can.

But what if you can't? Then you should head to our Endgames page and learn how to do it. And then you'll join the likes of GMs Daniel Naroditsky and Aman Hambleton and our member @LeeEuler.

I need to be honest. I feel weird writing about this. Everything I have to say makes me sound like one of the bad kids you've been warned about. But I guess I'll do it anyway.

Go ahead, try the Bongcloud! It's a lot of fun. Come on, all the cool kids are doing it. Don't you want to be cool, too? Give it a try. I promise it'll feel really good. Come on, just this once!

Ok, I'll stop now.

Castling to protect the king is (hopefully) common practice in your games. However, casting as an act of aggression is rarer but immensely satisfying. Forget about stars aligning. When you see the enemy king aligning with your rook along the d- or f-files, you won't need to see anything else for quite a few days. Trust me, I know:

Finally, the last part of this article is not about the what but the how. Many would argue that we have no say in what happens in the future. But chess players can sometimes bend the laws of time and become the masters of their destiny.

Premoving a long sequence of moves that lead to checkmate is a privilege only online chess can provideand one you should pursue.

And when you do have the chance to deliver this mate, there's only one way to do it. Premove as fast as you can, sit back, relax, and enjoy the inebriating and lethal dance of your pieces unfolding right before your third eye.

Now that you have a new goal in life (at least you should), it's time for you to chase these moves. Though some are incredibly rare, if you play enough chess, you'll eventually have the opportunity to play them, even if you're not a master.

So grab a snack and a beverage, go to our Play page, and start crossing those moves off your bucket list.

Which moves have you already crossed off your bucket list? Let us know in the comment section below, and feel free to share the game where it happened!

Read this article:
10 Chess Moves You Have To Play Before You Die - Chess.com

After an intense tournament, chess players usually relax on flights with the possible outcomes or moves still playing in their heads. Not 20-year-old Woman Grandmaster (WGM) Vantika Agarwal, though. Its not that she doesnt want to replay those moves in her head. She just cant afford to.

Instead of analysing the games or studying her next opponent, Vantika, Indias third-ranked womens player with an ELO rating of 2428, has had to study for exams, which she says were perennially around the corner. Pursuing her Bachelor of Commerce with Honours, studies are something that cant take a backseat even though her priority is chess.

Balancing a professional chess career and studying for an Honours degree is no mean feat, but the Delhi girl has found a novel way of acing both. My mother reads the book to me on the flight. I just try to understand and grasp whatever I can. During competitions, she actually studies for me and then just explains the concepts. Since shes a chartered accountant herself, she knows most of the concepts I have to study, Vantika told The Indian Express on Saturday, a day after she finished her final sixth-semester paper, possibly the last exams shell give for a while.

Now, she says, her focus can finally be entirely on chess. Its taken tremendous sacrifices from my family to reach where I have, and now its time to pay them back for their effort, she says.

As an eight-year-old, Vantika wanted to try all sports. From cricket to football, badminton to tennis, even karate and skating, she tried her hand at everything. I loved to try out new things as pastimes. I went for art and piano lessons too. My parents encouraged me to try out new things and I took that rather seriously, she says.

Chess, however, wasnt a sport Vantikas parents expected her to get hooked on. I remember I started playing chess in school with my brother, whos a couple of years older than me. I learned some basics and then won a tournament in school. Thats when I asked my parents to enroll me in an academy, she says.

Thats when everything changed. She wanted to learn all the aspects of the sport. The various openings, pawn structure, middlegame, and anything that would help her. When she began applying those concepts and winning tournaments, she knew that playing chess is all she wanted to do.

After getting some great wins on the local circuit, she knew that the next step was nationals and other tournaments in the country. The only problem was with both her parents being chartered accountants, they seldom had time to take her to tournaments. Thats when her mother Sangeeta decided to make the ultimate sacrifice. She gave up her flourishing practice to ensure that she could travel with Vantika for all the tournaments and basically be her unending support.

Financially, too, it was a huge burden especially when it came to playing in international tournaments. Its only of late that she managed to get some sort of sponsorship and Vantika says its a huge relief to take the burden off her parents.

Shes set her sights on the Grandmaster title, a feat she hopes to accomplish this year. To be honest, I wouldve become a Grandmaster at 14. Its just that studies got in the way. I wasnt able to participate in many tournaments because of them. I even had to skip several fully-paid international tournaments because of them. Form is vital in chess but because of repeated breaks, I wasnt able to maintain that which is why my performance suffered at times. But now thats done, and I cant wait to hit peak form, she says.

While she enjoys playing the Classical format, its Blitz thats her favourite. You have no time to think. Even when we were training for the Olympiad last year, we just practiced Blitz. It helps to think and analyse quickly which helps in other formats.

Along with her goal of becoming a Grandmaster, she is also targeting a place in the Indian team for this years Asian Games. But at just 20, she already has her long-term goal set: getting a shot at the Womens World Championship title. 2023, she says, is going to be her year.

Continued here:
Juggling studies and chess, rising chess star Vantika Agarwal sets sights on Grandmaster title - The Indian Express

The all-Indian Team MGD1 and Indian Yogis prevailed over the Levitov Chess Wizards and Blitz, respectively, in contrasting styles in the last two Quarterfinals to move into the Semifinals of the 2023 Pro Chess League.

Though leading by a score of 7-5 at the end of the third round, the all-GM Team MGD1 was dramatically defeated 1-3 in the final round by the Wizards to set up an exciting tiebreak clash. The match went to the wire and was decided in favor of MGD1 only in the final game of the tiebreak as they won with a slim score of 2.5-1.5 to win the quarterfinals with a combined score of 10.5-9.5.

In contrast, Indian Yogis dominated their match against Blitz and won with a final score of 9.5-6.5. Though none of the players could escape defeat, young GM M Pranesh was the top scorer for the team with three points from four games, including a win over heavyweight GM Etienne Bacrot.

The Semifinals are scheduled on Saturday, May 13, starting with the India Yogis vs. Shanghai Tigers at 6:30 a.m. PT / 15:30 CEST, followed by the Gotham Knights vs. Team MGD1 at 9:00 a.m. PT/18:00 CEST.

With almost all the boards looking evenly matched on paper, this match was expected to be an even fight and the first two rounds seemed to confirm the judgment.

GM Arjun Erigaisi looked in form from the beginning and he briskly started with a win over GM Alexandra Kosteniuk with a creatively played middlegame from the black side of a messy French Defense. His kingside knight danced all around across g8-h6-f7-d8-c6-a5-b3 in the middlegame, and Arjun's victory is our Game of the Day, annotated by GM Rafael Leitao below.

Two more games of the round were decided in dramatic fashion:

The Wizards struck back in the very next round. After GM Baskaran Adhiban vs. Kosteniuk ended in a draw, GM David Paravyan held a huge advantage against GM Dronavalli Harika and was expected to win. Erigaisi once again scored a facile win taking advantage of a tactical point:

In the crucial game of the round, GM Diptayan Ghosh committed hara-kiri while playing with the final seconds on his clock:

Ghosh allowed the mate in one move, sending the commentators into a tizzy; though Sachdev kept her balance, Canty almost didn't!

The third round was the most pivotal of the match, with Team MGD1 scoring a decisive 3-1 result to take a crucial 7-5 lead. Ghosh finished his game beautifully, checkmating Kosteniuk's king in a dramatic fashion:

The final round proved to be the most dramatic of all, when the "Wizards literally came back from the dead," as Sachdev remarked. It went all the way to the wire, and the Wizards showed that extra gumption to score a 3-1 victory to level the scores at 8-8 and force a tiebreak.

It proved to be the Waterloo for both Erigaisi and Adhiban, as they both played uncharacteristically passively and were soundly defeated by Sarana and Paravyan respectively in two heavyweight clashes.

Paravyan had a surprisingly smooth win over Adhiban in the final round from the word go. After Adhiban's weakening of the kingside in the early middlegame, Paravyan conducted a simple kingside attack and it looked like Adhiban crumbled under the pressure of competition after trying an unsound exchange sacrifice for which he never achieved complete compensation:

This well-conducted game prompted Canty to dub Sarana as "Sarana the Piranha" who played too powerfully.

Even though Dronavalli defeated Kosteniuk, the Wizards equalized the match score thanks to the following dramatic endgame full of twists and turns:

Thus, the match reached the tiebreak games, when the teams played again with the same pairings of the fourth round with swapped colors in a 3+2 time control.

Erigaisi scored a win in a topsy-turvy game where the balance shifted on either side. With Adhiban-Paravyan ending in a draw and Kosteniuk defeating Dronavalli, the final game to end was GM Denis Lazavik-Ghosh, which was a well-played game by the latter:

All games | Quarterfinal 3

Results | Quarterfinal 3

Blitz certainly seemed to miss the services of their star GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, as they had a tough time against another all-Indian young team, the Indian Yogis. Comparatively, the Yogis never seemed to be tested enough by the Blitz, and their path to the Semifinals was a smooth affair.

Yogis defeated Blitz with a score of 3.5-1.5 and 3-1 in the first two rounds, thus starting off with a formidable 5.5-2.5 lead.

Joining the commentary team on the first day of the quarterfinals, GM Magnus Carlsen was asked by Rensch, "Of all the boards, people you saw performing in the PCL, who impressed you the most this year?" Carlsen answered, "Pragg's sister Vaishali. She did pretty well in a few matches."

From the beginning of the match, IM R Vaishali (sister of GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu) lived up to the praise from Carlsen, scoring a dramatic win over Bacrot in the first round itself. Though he looked in control, Bacrot erred in the middlegame and came under pressure himself during Vaishali's time pressure, allowing the youngster to make her most in an advantageous endgame:

GM Vidit Gujrathi proclaimed that "this is Vidit 2.0," and it was certainly refreshing to watch him play sharp chess in almost all the games:

By the end of the third round, Yogis had widened their lead to 7.5-4.5 and they coasted to a win in the match as expected.

GM Nihal Sarin was a solid performer for the Yogis, his win over GM Alexander Grischuk being a significant fight between two of the best-ever blitz players in the world. It was a gutsy fight between two blitz specialists, and Grischuk even held the upper hand for most of the game:

The Yogis wrapped up the match with a 2-2 tie in the fourth and final round. Terming the team a "Powerhouse," Rensch reminded the audience of Carlsen's prediction about the team's potential:

Both the Levitov Chess Wizards and Blitz are awarded $7,500 for reaching the Quarterfinals.

All Games | Quarterfinal 4

Results | Quarterfinal 4

Playoffs Bracket

The Pro Chess League (PCL) is the number-one online global chess league for teams from all over the world. The Playoffs feature eight teams playing rapid games for their piece of the $150,000 prize fund.

Eight teams compete in a single-elimination knockout. The time control is 10+2. The first team to score 8.5 points wins the match.

Previous coverage:

Go here to read the rest:
Dramatic Tiebreak Win For Team MGD1 Over Levitov Chess ... - Chess.com

The 2023 FIDE World Chess Championship in April was a thrilling back-and-forth match, but it didnt determine the worlds best player. Did it even crown the worlds second-best player?

Ding Liren of China and Ian Nepomniachtchi of Russia were tied after 14 games of classical chess before Ding prevailed in the tiebreaker. Sports betting sites had the match as nearly 50-50 before the first game was played, with Nepomniachtchi listed as a slight moneyline favorite.

Those pre-match betting odds turned out to be spot on, as either player could have won.

Norwegian Magnus Carlsen, the undisputed best chess player in the world, had been the world champion since 2013 but decided in 2022 to vacate his title. Carlsen cited a lack of motivation. Carlsen convincingly beat Nepomniachtchi in the 2021 World Chess Championship, and Nepomniachtchi qualified again for the 2023 match. Carlsen wasnt in the mood to play the same opponent in back-to-back world championships.

In case youre wondering: The alleged cheating scandal involving American Hans Niemann in the fall of 2022 didnt have anything to do with Carlsen walking away from the most coveted title in chess.

Ding beat Nepomniachtchi, so you might be wondering why he isnt the undisputed No. 2 player in the world. The reason is that the Elo rating system complicates things.

Just a handful of days after the world championship, Ding and Nepomniachtchi joined other top grandmasters in a tournament in Bucharest, Romaniaand through eight over-the-board games, theyve lost a bunch of rating points. Iranian Alireza Firouzja beat them in classical games, leapfrogging Ding and Nepomniachtchi in rating, according to 2700chess.com, which updates player ratings after every contest.

Firoujza was No. 2 globally in rating through the first four months of 2022, but he performed worse than expected in the candidates tournament last summer and didnt qualify for the world championship. Carlsen said he would have defended his title if Firoujza qualified.

In late 2021, Firoujza became the youngest player in history to crack the spectacular 2,800-rating mark. Only 15 players in history have been rated above 2,800, with Carlsen holding the highest ever.

Also in the conversation is American Fabiano Caruana, who had been a perennial No. 2 or No. 3 player in the world before a lackluster 2022 that saw him slide as low as No. 9. Caruana has rebounded over the past several months and is currently No. 6 in the world. Caruana famously took Carlsen to tiebreaks in the 2018 World Chess Championship. At peak form, he could be the worlds second-best.

Hikaru Nakamura, also of the United States, is currently No. 5 globally based on rating. However, he hasnt been No. 2 in the world since 2015, and it would be hard to argue that hes No. 2 right now in classical chess. Nakamura has never played in a world championship match.

The same applies to American Wesley So, currently No. 8 in the world, with a peak of No. 2 in 2015. Like Nakamura, So hasnt played for a world title in classical chess.

A case can be made for Ding, Nepomniachtchi, Firoujza, and Caruana as the worlds second-best. For the sake of competition, we could argue that itd be good news if the 19-year-old Firoujza separated himself from the pack and emerged as the clear-cut No. 2 before the next candidates tournament. If he can become a formidable No. 2, perhaps Carlsen, who has not retired from chess, would look to reclaim his world title.

Read the original post:
Who Is The Best Chess Player In The World After Magnus Carlsen? - Forbes