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Written by Olya Kaye

Playing chess simultaneously against 15 people was no easy feat. I admit, I was nervous. It was the fall of 2009 and I had not played much chess since 2001. My skills were rusty, but I was 25 and daring.

You only live once and what did I have to lose? I wanted to participate in the United Way Campaign, run annually by the place I worked at. So, I organized a chess simul to raise money for people in need.

Worst-case scenario would be to lose all my games, raise no money, become extremely embarrassed, and submit my resignation. The best-case scenario, on the other hand, would be for me to win all the games and raise lots of money. But, the event turned out to be much more prolific than I could have ever imagined!

After having won the Canadian Girls Chess Championship in 2001, I abandoned competitive chess to focus on my studies and career. Getting back into the game after such a long time was like learning to cross a road again. You look left and right, screening for cars and busses, and then boom! You get hit by an airplane!

In the weeks leading up to the simul, I joined a local chess club to brush off some dust. But to my horror, I was blundering left and right, Whoops, here goes my Queen. Whoops, I just missed a checkmate. Yikes!

Yes, getting back into chess after a long hiatus is no bike ride. It requires, first and foremost, courage to overcome your own ego. Will you be ok with embarrassing blunders? Will you tremble while playing far below the level you left chess at years ago? Will you give up to preserve the dignity of your past accomplishments?The moment I realized that my ego had very little power over my losses and embarrassing games, I had won my first psychological battle. The battle against my own fears and my burning dont-do-it demons. And thus, my chess prowess began to come back to me.

There was only one other problem: playing against 15 people at the same time is far different than playing against one person.

There was only one other problem: playing against 15 people at the same time is far different than playing against one person. It is a real burden on memory, focus, judgement, calculation, and quick thinking. It also hurts your legs after a couple of hoursespecially if you are a woman wearing heels. The simul is also a spectators game. Everyone is watching your every move. And in my case, being a woman, playing against all men doubled up the spectatorship and the pressure. Will she crack? my colleagues were wondering.

As 12 oclock rolled by the following day, I began my chess marathon. The room, where the event was taking place, was crowded with spectators who were my co-workers across the organization. There was lots of chatter and laughter as people were betting on their colleagues to see who would win. With my heart thumping and full of adrenaline, I began to maneuver in a circle across 15 chess boards set up in a U-shape, making one move at a time. My reputation and career were on the line. A few wrong moves and I would be temporarily unemployed, by choice.

As time went by, I started to win some games. The chatter was dying out, the room became emptier and everyone assumed a serious look on their face.

Thats when, for the first time, I really noticed the handsome man sitting at one of the chess boards. Each time I approached his board, John looked me in the eyes with a silent plea of dont be too hard on me, Olya. But his smile was something else. Did he see something in the position that I missed, while I was responding in haste? Was he bluffing? Its a trap!, I told myself, trying to keep my cool.

Normally, professional chess players do not display their emotions during chess games, contrary to what is shown in Netflixs "The Queens Gambit" series. But Johns smile was infectious. I would approach other chess boards wearing my poker face, but by the time I reached Johns board it would change to a smileI could not resist it.

John continued to make his romantic" moves on the chess board. First, he sacrificed his bishop, while getting nothing in return (oops!). Then, one of his knights fell, again without any compensation. But luckily for me, his charms did not distract me much during the game. Shortly after, I was able to break up the pawns that were hiding his king, exposing his Majesty to the deadly attack of my Queen and Bishop pair.

But then something strange happened: for the first (and only) time in my entire life, I did not feel like checkmating my opponent.

For the first (and only) time in my entire life, I did not feel like checkmatingmy opponent.

I didnt want to hurt this smiling mans feelings, or undermine his innocent way of playing chess. I decided to prolong this game just a tad bit longer and to discover what lay behind Johns mysterious smile.

As I approached other chess board to make my move, I took a quick peek at all of my opponents. They were all staring intensely at their chess boards, either scratching their heads, massaging their chins, or pulling on their eyebrows, deep in thought. All, but John who was gazing at me.I caught him! And I had my answer.

Checkmate, I told John, as I reached his board and he gave me the brightest and sincerest smile I have ever seen. I had no idea that while I thought I was conquering John on the chess board, I was apparently conquering his heart. When you smiled back at me, I knew I had to ask you out, he confided later.

The simul took several hours as there were a few fairly persistent players. I won 13 games and drew two. The event raised almost $4,000, and I got to keep my job! And if this wasnt amazing enough, I also met my future husband!

When the simul was over, I got back to my office desk to check my emails. From a hundred new ones, one of them stood out. It was from John: Great game, Olya. Wanna go grab a drink?

By that point, I started to realize what was happening and my heart skipped a beat in excitement. Johns charms started to work their magic on me, at last. And while I always avoided office romances, I decided I could keep a secret with this one, at least for a little while. After all, we worked in different teams and on different floors.

I replied to Johns email with: Yes, Id love to Followed by I do three years later. Weve been happily married ever since and even enjoyed a chess-themed wedding cake.

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How I Found Love Over The Chess Board - Chess.com

After Netflix released its miniseries The Queens Gambit this fall, a buzz began to grow around chess, exciting people who had never before been interested in the game. But the perception of what a competitive chess player looks like has largely remained the same; perhaps you picture a bunch of old white men in suits sitting around tiny tables, with a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other.

According to College fourth-year, former Chess ExCo instructor, and competitive chess player Greg Gillen, this portrait isnt too far off from the real chess world of the 60s and 70s.

I know that a lot of the players in the 70s had this reputation of going down to the tournament, playing their games, and smoking while playing, Gillen said. Then, they would go back to their hotel room and have several drinks.

Since The Queens Gambit was released on Oct. 23, 2020, Chess.com has reported millions of new users to the site, and numerous game companies report massive increases in the sales of chessboards, with Goliath Games claiming a 1000 percent increase in its sales.

The seven-episode series, which is set in the 1950s and 60s, portrays a competitive old guard of chess competitions. What viewers might not realize, though, is that the game has evolved since the time period portrayed in the series.

These days, if youre a serious player, drinking and smoking are no longer a part of the routine; many chess enthusiasts approach the game with the same dedication to physical fitness as elite athletes.

Though the average person would not consider sitting around a chessboard for hours on end to be particularly strenuous, performance experts have proven just how taxing chess competitions can be. According to Stanford professor Dr. Robert Sapolsky, top players in the world can burn up to 560 calories in one 2-hour game. That is the equivalent of Roger Federer playing one hour of tennis.

Head Womens Tennis Coach and Chess Club Advisor Constantine Ananiadis has noticed the strain games can have on his players, attributing it to the exceptional mental focus required for chess compared to other sports.

In a sport like tennis, you can botch the first full hour of a match, lose the first set, and still easily come back to win the second set and the match, Ananiadis said, Youre pretty much always in it until you lose the last point. Inchess, one small lapse in concentration and youre done. You can play 39 great moves, but if you botch the 40th one, you lose the game. Theres no coming back.

This mental strain can have a drastic effect on the health of players. During tournaments, players can burn an astonishing 6,000 calories per day, three times what the average person consumes in a day. With this caloric deficit on top of the elevated stress and fatigue, competitive players can lose anywhere between 10 and 20 pounds in one tournament.

To combat the intense mental and physical stress that high-level chess can put on the body, players are now optimizing their diet, nutrition, and even the way they sit to gain an advantage.

Akshat Phumbhra, College fourth-year and member of Oberlins chess club, has noticed this evolution.

Every athlete is always looking to be in the best shape possible, Phumbhra said. As science advances and we know more about how to keep our bodies healthy, diet [and] exercise invariably become a part of an athletes life. Withchess, one of the things that is more popular is yoga. It really helps players stay calm and be able to sit at a chair for hours on end.

For Gillen, this shift is the result of the competitive nature of chess players.

I think now you see a lot less of that hedonistic lifestyle at the upper echelon of chess, Gillen said. If someone else is trying to get an advantage by exercising discipline in all their habits, then, if you want to be the best chess player, you know youre going to have to do that too.

Players have modernized every detail of their preparations and are more devoted to optimizing performance than ever before. Constant physical activity, nutritional optimization, and forgoing all drugs and alcohol are the minimum requirements to be competitive as a chess grandmaster in the modern age.

In short, chess has modernized whether it be the training and diet of competitive players, or The Queens Gambit popularizing the sport for a whole new generation. As a result of these shifts, this declining sport could be moving into a new and unprecedented golden age.

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The Queen's Gambit and The Modern Era of Chess - The Oberlin Review

Chess has captured the imagination of humans for centuries due to its strategic beautyan objective, board-based testament to the power of mortal intuition. Twenty-five years ago Wednesday, though, human superiority on a chessboard was seriously threatened for the first time.

At a nondescript convention center in Philadelphia, a meticulously constructed supercomputer called Deep Blue faced off against Garry Kasparov for the first in a series of six games. Kasparov was world chess champion at the time and widely considered to be one of the greatest players in the history of chess. He did not expect to lose. It was perhaps understandable; 1996 was an age of fairly primitive computer beings. Personal computers were only just becoming a more affordable commodity (35 percent of U.S. households owned a computer in 1997, compared with 15 percent in 1990), the USB had just been released, and it would be another five years until Windows XP made its way onto the market.

But Deep Blue was no run-of-the-mill computer. It was a behemoth built with the sole intention of being very good at chess. And it fulfilled that mission. On Feb. 10, 1996, the reigning world chess champion lost a game to a computer for the first time in history. Kasparov would win the 1996 match four games to two, but in May 1997, an upgraded Deep Blue would defeat Kasparov 32.

The 96 match nonetheless demonstrated that the tide was starting to turn in the chess world, and the tide was deep, blue, and electronic. It introduced chess computers to the world, sparking conversations about a rise of automation in the famously romantic field.

Some version of computers had been playing chess even before the emergence of artificial intelligence as an official field in the 1950s. Alan Turing, the famous cryptographer, had developed a handwritten chess algorithm in 1950 called Turochamp. In 1957, Alex Bernstein, a researcher and chess enthusiast from the Bronx, created the first complete chess program with the help of a number of his IBM colleagues.

Computer chess changed in the 80s. says Jonathan Schaeffer, president of the International Computer Games Association and professor of computer science at the University of Alberta. That decade, pioneering American computer scientist Ken Thompson released a paper proving something that now seems intuitive: If your computer was faster, your chess program would perform better. Programs could thus analyze more and more moves per second, increasing their chances of finding the best move possible.

Accordingly, computer chess became about getting the fastest technology. When I started in the [computer chess] game, we were using a single computer. Then it became 16, then 210, and so on to chips and supercomputers, says Schaeffer. In 1988, students at Carnegie Mellon University developed a sophisticated chess computer called Deep Thought. In January of that year, Deep Thought became the first computer to beat a grandmaster in a regular tournament game when it triumphed over Bent Larsen, a Danish GM. The next year, IBM hired three of those Carnegie students, Feng-hsiung Hsu, Thomas Anantharaman, and Murray Campbell, with the express aim of building a chess computer to rival the world champion; they would be joined by Chung Jen-Tan, Joseph Hoane Jr., and Jerry Brody later in the project. In October 1989, Kasparov played two games against Deep Thought, winning both of them with ease.

The first match demonstrated that the tide was starting to turn in the chessworld.

The loss to Kasparov in 1989 demonstrated the amount of work that needed to be done, says Schaeffer, so they took it to the extreme. They went off for seven years and built new computer chips that were faster, building a system that was scaled up to not just four computer chips, but 500. They added more knowledge to it as well as a book of openings, and eventually the brain of chess grandmaster Joel Benjamin helped provide expertise. This was a very long project involving many, many people, and significant financial expense, but it paid off for IBM in the form of media clamor.

The 2,800-pound Deep Blue, complete with special-purpose chess computer chips, was the end product. It was capable of processing 200 million moves per second, or 199,999,997 more than Kasparov could manage, according to IBM. This produced a chess machine that was stronger than any of its automated predecessors, and the outside world was stunned at the eventual resulta human had been outdone by a machine in this game of intellect, wit, and judgment. At the 1997 match, Kasparov and Deep Blue would go toe-to-automated-toe in front of numerous television cameras and a large crowd.

But Kasparovs loss was not as devastating as casual observers might have expected. Computers had beaten grandmasters before; it was inevitable that someone of Kasparovs stature would fall too. And though Kasparovs loss certainly came earlier than expected, the competitive chess world continued to go about its business relatively unfettered.

I dont think it affected chess players too much, says Matthew Sadler, chess grandmaster and co-author of Game Changer, a book about modern chess engine AlphaZero, Firstly, Kasparov was probably stronger than Deep Blue at the time, despite the loss. Secondly, it didnt really inspire any chess players with its play.

It helped that Deep Blue, at the time, was the exception rather than the rulemachines of its strength werent widely available. In 2006, though, a chess computer called Deep Fritz beat thenworld champion Vladimir Kramnik. I think thats really when chess players sort of thought, Oh, my goodness, the machines really are getting stronger than us, says Sadler, when they were beating us not on supercomputers, but on relative commodity hardware.

The change here wasnt just that a computer could win, but that a computer could help human players win if incorporated into their training regimes effectively. Computers were adept at judging the quality of moves and positions accurately, particularly during opening sequences. Some found this easier than others. Sadler says: I think a lot of competitive players took a while to adjust to the new reality. For example, if you werent really computer-literate, and all of a sudden you found yourself in a world where having a computer really makes a difference, thats a difficult thing.

Despite initial resistance from certain parts of the community, the advantages that computers afforded chess players eventually made them impossible to ignore. Sam Shankland gained his international master title in 2008, right around when computers started to become a necessity. There was some backlash, but honestly, those people are mostly gone now, Shankland, now a grandmaster and 2018 U.S. chess champion, says. They either got tired of losing and quit chess or they got tired of losing and adapted.

The sheer wealth of knowledge chess players now had access to meant that determination was increasingly rewarded. I think that chess is essentially a subset of talent and hard work, says Shankland, and as training resources like computers become better and more accessible, talent tends to become less important compared to hard workwhich suits a workhorse like myself.

Such accessibility has also led to chess, once reserved for rich families who could afford tutors and other training, to become a markedly more democratized pursuit. Take India, for example, says Shankland. Apart from Vishy [Anand], they werent a particularly strong chess nation historically. Now, theyre clearly the fastest-growing country in the world in terms of rising stars, and I think a lot of that is down to training resources becoming more widely available.

The availability of advanced chess analysis at the flick of a smartphone has caused a bizarre balance of power in the media and a certain trepidation among top-level players, as Peter Heine Nielsen, coach of current world champion Magnus Carlsen, points out:

When I started working with Vishy Anand, at a postgame press conference the players would explain the games, and everybody would look at them with excitement and think, Wow, these guys are clever. Now, the player in the press conference is a bit nervous because they have only calculated themselves, while all the journalists have been using advanced technology. So they are afraid to say, I thought this wasnt a strong move in case theyre wrong.

So sometimes before a press conference I speak to Magnus and tell him the computer said this or that, just so he knows. The spectator-player dynamic has changed a lotsome of the mystery has gone.

However, while certain human aspects of the games have disappeared, recent developments have caused professional players to rethink what they know about their beloved board game. In 2017, a team of scientists at Google-owned DeepMind created AlphaZero, a self-learning neural network program that surpassed the strongest chess program after just four hours of playing against itself.

Before the computer boom, and before the neural network boom, we were thinking quite dogmatically, says Nielsen. After both occurred, we were forced to rewrite our own solutions. It led to the game becoming more exciting. Moreover, the two strongest chess enginesLeela (which is based on AlphaZero) and Stockfishare available online, which signifies a remarkably more distributive and collaborative approach to chess innovation than that which was pioneered by Deep Blue, a closed circuit.

Despite all their progress, there are still some goals to which innovators in the chess world can aspire. The next step is for engines to explain what theyre doing, says Sadler, so that the average player can understand why an engine says, No, trading that piece is a bad idea. The relationship remains one of reciprocity.

One thing is certain: Chess programs will remain the most important piece of a professional players preparatory arsenal. Not using a computer to do chess would be like not using a calculator to do math, says Nielsen, I like itbut it doesnt matter if I like it or not. Its the right way to do it.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.

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25 Years Ago, Chess Changed Forever When Deep Blue Beat Garry Kasparov - Slate

Wherever Sultan-Diego LeBlond goes, a chess club follows. Or maybe thats just how it feels. Chess is that significant a part of the 25-year-olds identity.

Instead of asking his parents for video games for his birthday in middle school, LeBlond wanted a new chess board. At Northwest High School in Germantown, joining the chess team helped LeBlond make friends and competing in tournaments took him out of Maryland for the first time. While studying for his associates degree in business at Montgomery Colleges Germantown campus, LeBlond revived the schools dormant chess club and became the teams president. In 2015, he co-founded the Germantown Library chess club, where he would teach the game to children.

I know what chess has done for me in my life, LeBlond says. And I knew what it has done for me, it could do for other people.

By the time he arrived at Howard University as a transfer student in the fall of 2017, LeBlond had established himself as a seasoned chess player and organizer, but he didnt immediately join the schools chess club. Thats because one didnt exist. It didnt take long for LeBlond to change that.

In the spring of 2019, he helped Howard University officially re-activate its chess club, which had not been operating for years, with assistance from Nisa Muhammad, the schools assistant dean for religious life (who is now the clubs adviser), and other chess enthusiasts LeBlond met on campus.

Last month, the fledgling team competed at the 2020-2021 Pan American Intercollegiate Championship, the biggest collegiate chess tournament of the year, and finished at the top of its division and 45th out of 59 teams overall. The three-day event was held virtually on chess.com and at a later date than usual. One of Howards members, senior Azeezah Muhammad, an unrated player heading into the tournament, scored the largest upset of the championships by beating a player with a rating in the 1200s. The United States Chess Federation uses a rating system ranging from 100 to nearly 3000; the higher the number, the stronger the player.

It came by like a shock, says LeBlond, who graduated from Howard last year and now serves as the clubs volunteer head coach. We were just playing to have fun and coming in with no expectations. And so we was caught like way off guard. But at the same time, I was confident in everybodys capabilities Anything can happen in a game of chess.

The history of chess at Howard University dates back more than a half-century. Digital copies of the schools yearbook, The Bison, reveal that students participated in a chess club as early as the 1940s. Theres been an official chess club at the school off and on for decades, says David Mehler, president and founder of the nonprofit U.S. Chess Center located in Silver Spring.

Mehlers father taught at Howard and Mehler himself has seen several iterations of the Howard chess club, including a team that reached reasonably high levels in the early 2000s. That club eventually dissolved due to lack of interest, Mehler says. And according to the university, before this year the team last competed at the Pan-Am Championship in 2005.

Im hopeful that with the success that the team just had, that will generate a lot more interest, Mehler says.

Michele Bennett didnt know about this history when she arrived at Howard University. Bennett, a sophomore, learned how to play chess from her father around the age of 8 and competed in a couple tournaments in her hometown of Las Vegas while in elementary school. She didnt play once she got to middle school and hadnt really thought about chess until she started college.

During her freshman year, Bennett was reading messages on the schools GroupMe when a post about a chess club caught her attention. She reached out for more information and eventually attended the weekly practices. Less than a year later, she was elected the clubs president.

I kind of forgot how much I love chess, she says. It awakened my love for chess.

What started as a group of around a half-dozen members has evolved into a club with a group chat of more than 100 people and weekly meetings and practices that draw around 20 active members, Bennett says. Even during the pandemic, the club has held weekly gatherings on Google Meet that last more than an hour.

Bennett was one of the four players who competed at the Pan-Am Championship, along with Azeezah Muhammad and seniors Toni Anthony and Malcolm Wooten, the vice president of the club. Shortly before the tournament, organizers at the Pan-Am Championship contacted Nisa Muhammad about Howard participating in the virtual event. The club put together a team within a months time and called its former coach, Zahir Muhammad, for help.

Zahir is a celebrity in the D.C. chess world. A Ward 7 native, his father taught him how to play chess when he was 3 by defeating him like 500 times in a row, Zahir recalls. His competitiveness motivated him to keep playing. Zahirs singular goal at the time was to beat his dad and finally, four years later, it happened. He was just getting started.

In 2018, the D.C. Council presented Zahir with a ceremonial resolution after he won the District of Columbia Scholastic Cup Chess Tournament the year prior. During his senior year at DeMatha Catholic High School, Nisa, a family friend, asked if he could help coach the newly re-activated Howard University Chess Club.

Having grown up in D.C., Zahir enjoyed visiting the Howard campus during festivals or homecoming and was familiar with the school. At 6-foot-4, he blended in with the college students. He happily agreed to be the chess clubs coach and soon became the expert voice that the players relied on.

Zahir, a Class A-rated player with a rating in the 1800s, hasnt been as involved this past school year but was pulled in to act as a barometer for the team in preparation for the Pan-Am Championship. He watched the games online with pride. Throughout the tournament, Zahir thought back to the weekly practices, where members would often ask him to stay longer so they could practice more.

It would be dark outside, cold and dark, he says. And we would be playing.

As Zahir has gotten older, his motivations for playing chess have evolved. It began with wanting to beat his father. Then, Zahir wanted to win tournaments. And now, the freshman at Louisiana State University hopes that he can inspire other Black kids to pick up chess to compete in an environment that doesnt have many Black faces. Howard University was the only HBCU that participated at the Pan-Am Championship.

The fact that the school exceeded expectations at the tournament gives him joy. Zahir believes it will inspire other Black students to pick up chess.

It makes me feel, I would say validated, but not for me personally, but for them, because theyre all extremely talented. And theyre extremely smart, he says. And it makes me feel validated for them, because they can show on their level that, yeah, Im Black, and Im talented, and Im smart.

Daaim Shabazz has been writing about Black chess players for 20 years for his online magazine, The Chess Drum. An associate professor of business at Florida A&M University, Shabazz is considered by some to be an amateur historian of Black chess.

Being in D.C. gives the Howard University Chess Club certain advantages that other HBCUs may not have, Shabazz says. The chess tables at Dupont Circle have drawn some of the games most legendary players, and beyond that, the D.C. area has a chess culture that few cities rival.

You have a chess history in the D.C.-Maryland area that is very well-established in terms of producing master-level players, Shabazz says. Particularly in the Maryland area, but D.C. as well. D.C. has a lot of pockets of activity. So Howard has an advantage in that they have the infrastructure. If they want to play in local tournaments, they can do that. It wouldnt be a problem.

Members of the Howard University Chess Club hope that will be the case.

Their success at the Pan-Am Championship has led to a spike in interest from students. Fascination in chess has increased during the pandemic, and the recent popular Netflix series The Queens Gambit contributed an even bigger boost. YouTube and Twitch have also given the centuries-old game a modern twist when it comes to spectating matches.

One thing that chess players have been trying to do is trying to make chess look cool, LeBlond says. And so like, The Queens Gambit did a phenomenal job on that. It broke down that barrier that chess is boring, that chess is like for people that are strange or socially awkward. Thats not true. Theres cool people that play chess. And so that movie opened the door [to] what is chess.

Nisa looks to the University of Maryland, Baltimore County as a model she hopes the Howard chess club can emulate. One of the teams long-term goals is to give out scholarships for chess, like UMBC does.

We want Howard Universitys chess club to be seen as an intellectual sport, Nisa says. We want the chess club to grow to where we have it endowed and funded so that we can offer chess scholarships to students who have the chess skills.

LeBlond has the same vision, and although he is no longer a student at Howard, he intends to stay involved with the schools chess team. Bringing back the club was only the first step. He wants to see it grow.

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How a Recent Howard University Alum Revived its Chess Program - Washington City Paper

GM Peter Svidler won his first ever Titled Tuesday on February 9. Helped by his beloved Grunfeld, the eight-time Russian champion grandmaster was the only player to score 10/11 and finished ahead of GM Aleksandar Indjic (@Beca95) and IM Liam Vrolijk (@LiamVrolijk).

This week's Titled Tuesday tournament had a total of 729 participants. It was an 11-round Swiss with a 3+1 time control.

The live broadcast of the tournament.

On paper, one of the favorites was definitely GM Alireza Firouzja. Early in the event, the Iranian prodigy was fortunate (twice!) in his game with the Ukrainian GM Vladimir Onischuk (@Onischuk_V).

It was Svidler who defeated Firouzja when both players were on 5.5/6. Svidler played the Grunfeld and followed an old recommendation of his against a sideline with Bg5. Interestingly, he then maneuvered his fianchetto bishop from g7 to d6 and played as if it were an Exchange Queen's Gambit.

After nine rounds, the Kazakh grandmaster Rustam Khusnutdinov (@RD4ever) was the sole leader with 8.5/9. With the black pieces, Svidler, who had dropped two half-points, defeated the leader, again following his trusted Grunfeld repertoire.

Svidler pulled through with yet another Grunfeld win with the black pieces in the final round. This time he defeated GM Rasmus Svane (@rasmussvane), who was slightly better in an endgame when he played a few inaccurate moves in a row.

Feb. 9 Titled Tuesday | Final Standings (Top 20)

(Full final standings here.)

Svidler won $750 for first place, Indjic $400 for second, Vrolijk $150 for third, and GM Kirill Alekseenko $100 for fourth. Vrolijk's result was especially excellent; we also mentioned him last week for coming in 10th place twice.

The $100 prize for the best female player went to the Peruvian WIM Ann Lindsay Chumpitaz Carbajal, who scored 8/11.

Titled Tuesday isChess.com's weekly tournament for titled players. It starts each Tuesday at 10 a.m. Pacific time (19:00 Central Europe).

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Titled Tuesday: Svidler Winning With Grunfeld - Chess.com