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U.N. Secretary-General Antnio Guterres walks with security personnel as his visits Borodyanka, a town outside Kyiv, Ukraine, that was devastated by a Russian attack and occupation on Thursday. Russia sent a deadly attack into Kyiv as Guterres visited. Sergei Supinsky | AFP via Getty Images

U.N. Secretary-General Antnio Guterres had recently met in person with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and he was on a high-profile visit to Ukraine's capital but those circumstances weren't enough to prevent Russia from launching a deadly attack on a residential area of Kyiv while Guterres visited the capital city Thursday night.

Ukrainian officials are calling the attack a "postcard from Moscow" and an insult to the United Nations.

Five Russian missiles hit Kyiv "immediately" after Guterres and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy finished a meeting, Zelenskyy said. It was an intentional affront to the global diplomat, he added.

"This says a lot about Russia's true attitude to global institutions," Zelenskyy said Thursday night. "About the efforts of the Russian leadership to humiliate the U.N. and everything that the organization represents."

Guterres arrived in Ukraine after meeting with Putin on Tuesday, hoping to de-escalate the war and guarantee humanitarian aid for civilians whose lives have been upended by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. On Thursday, Guterres toured the ruined town of Borodyanka, northwest of Kyiv, which was bombed and occupied. For him, it evoked the evil and absurdity of war.

"I must say what I feel. I imagined my family in one of those houses that is now destroyed and black," Guterres said. "I see my granddaughters running away in panic, part of the family eventually killed. So, the war is an absurdity in the 21st century. The war is evil."

Guterres also spoke about the need to respect international law and about being at "ground zero" remarks that later took on a chilling aspect after Russia sent a new attack into the capital.

"It is a war zone, but it is shocking that it happened close to us," Saviano Abreu, a spokesman for the U.N.'s humanitarian office, told Agence France-Presse.

Before Thursday's strike on the heart of Kyiv, attacks on Ukraine's capital had mostly halted.

The Russian military says it used "high-precision long-range air-based weapons" to destroy buildings related to the Artem rocket and space enterprise in Kyiv. But a visit to the scene found that the most visible damage was to an apartment building nearby. The building stands next to a factory that makes missile parts, but also vacuum cleaners.

Rebar hung down like strands of hair from the bottom three stories of the towering apartment building. Officials say the residence was hit by a cruise missile that came out of Russian-controlled Crimea and knocked out the bottom. One person, a journalist, was killed in the attack, and nine people were injured.

The journalist was Vira Hyrych, who worked with U.S. government broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Ukraine and who lived in the building. The news outlet confirmed her death, saying her body was found under wreckage in the 25-story structure Friday morning.

Hyrych was also mourned by the Israeli Embassy in Ukraine, which said she formerly worked there. Radio Liberty said she worked in Ukraine's TV industry before landing a job in Radio Svoboda's Kyiv bureau four years ago.

The perception of the attack as an intentional slight was heightened by one of Guterres' main goals: to negotiate humanitarian corridors for civilians to leave Mariupol. People in that besieged port city, he said, "need an escape route out of the apocalypse."

As for what comes next in Ukraine, military experts see the Russians making a big push in eastern Ukraine and trying to seize control of the south. Analysts expect the Russians to engineer sham independence referendums in cities and towns so that Putin can present the invasion as a success to his domestic audience back home.

Ukraine's leaders have already said they'll reject the results of any such referendums.

Nobody expects a negotiated solution to end the war anytime soon including Oleg Ignatov, a senior Russia analyst with the International Crisis Group.

"They don't know how to stop this war right now, because both sides still hope that they can, or will, be able to win this war."

As Guterres visited Kyiv's ravaged suburbs on Thursday, he said that Ukraine's people are suffering the most.

"This horrendous scenario demonstrates something that is unfortunately always true,"

Wherever there is war, the highest price is paid by civilians, @antonioguterres said today after visiting towns around Kyiv impacted by the war. pic.twitter.com/aL2LHrDqT6

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Why Russia's rocket attack on Kyiv is seen as an insult to the U.N. - Houston Public Media

Online chess website

Chess.com homepage

Type of site

List of languages

Afrikaans, azrbaycanca, Bahasa, Indonesia, Bahasa, Melayu, bosanski, Catal, etina, Dansk, Deutsch, eesti, English, Espaol, Franais, Galego, Hrvatski, slenska, Italiano, Kiswahili, latvieu, lietuvi, Magyar, Nederlands, Norsk, Ozbekcha, Pilipino, polski, Portugus, Portugus, (BR), Romn, shqipe, slovenina, slovenina, suomi, Svenska, Tagalog, Ting Vit, Trkmene, Trke, Vlaams, , , , , , , , , , , , , , (bal), , , , ,

Chess.com is an internet chess server, news website and social networking website.[3] The site has a freemium model in which some features are available for free, and others for accounts with subscriptions. Live online chess can be played against other users at daily, rapid, blitz or bullet time controls, with a number of chess variants available. Chess versus a chess engine, computer analysis, chess puzzles and teaching resources are also offered.

One of the largest chess platforms in the world,[4] Chess.com has hosted online tournaments including Titled Tuesdays, the PRO Chess League, the Speed Chess Championships, PogChamps, and computer vs computer events.

Chess.com operates a freemium business model: main site features are free but others are limited or unavailable in some respects until a subscription is paid.[17]

Visitors to the site can play on a live chess server and correspondence style games, called "daily chess" on the site. Players may also play against chess engines (computer chess), and participate in what the site calls "vote chess", in which players form teams and vote on the best move. Additional features include tactics training, puzzle rush, chess forums, articles, videos, lessons, chess news, downloads, opening databases, groups, live broadcasts,[18] daily puzzles, team matches, online coaching and a game database of over 2 million games.

The company publishes a large number of articles on a variety of chess-related topics, including chess strategy, opening theory and history. Regular contributors include Gregory Serper, Bruce Pandolfini, Sam Shankland, Dan Heisman, Jeremy Silman, Simon Williams, Daniel Naroditsky, Natalia Pogonina and Daniel Rensch.[19] The Financial Times rated it as having the best news coverage of any chess website.[20]

Users can play a number of variants on the live server, including crazyhouse, three-check, four-player, king of the hill, chess960, Racing Kings and bughouse.

Chess.com has a policy against the use of chess engines in all forms of the game, except where "specifically permitted (such as a computer tournament)".[21] It utilizes algorithms and statistical data to catch players using engines in games and bans many on a daily basis,[22] and employs six moderators to prevent cheating.[4]

Chess.com also runs the subsidiary site chesskid.com for chess players of all ages. ChessKid focuses on a child-friendly environment aimed towards chess improvement for beginners to club players. It also has a guardianship program in which parents and authorized coaches can overlook the child's progress over time, to see statistics about their progress in tactics or how many videos they watched so that they can give encouragement and tips on how to improve.[23] ChessKid features no advertising.

ChessKid.com has run a yearly online championship called CONIC (the ChessKid Online National Invitational Championship), since 2012 which is recognized by the United States Chess Federation.[24][25] According to David Petty, the event organizer in 2013,

The online component [of CONIC] makes it unique because, normally, national championships require the players to fly in and stay in the same place. We had to ask special permission for the tournament because it is a rated tournament and there is a much higher chance for cheating.

ChessKid has made agreements and partnerships with chess associations to bring the educational benefit of chess to children in schools. In 2014, for a trial period, all signups to the ICA (Illinois Chess Association) included a free gold member subscription to ChessKid.[23] They also have a long-term partnership with the NTCA (North Texas Chess Academy) which gives children access to online instructors.[26]

The USCL was a nationwide national chess league in the United States between 2005 and 2016. Chess.com hosted the event in 2013.[27]

The PRO Chess League was the result of the US Chess League changing its name and format, with faster time controls and a focus on the flexibility of forming and managing teams.[28] Chess.com has hosted the PCL twice starting in 2017, having a regular and a summer series.[29]

Titled Tuesday is a 11-round Swiss-system 3+1 blitz chess tournament held on every Tuesday.[33] Grandmaster participants include Hikaru Nakamura, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Alexander Grischuk, Dmitry Andreikin, Wesley So, and Fabiano Caruana.[33] The first event was held on October 28, 2014, with a prize fund of $500 and was won by Baadur Jobava.[34] The prize fund was eventually upgraded to $1500.[33] GM Hikaru Nakamura has won the most events with a total of ten tournament wins, followed by GM Georg Meier with seven,[35] Magnus Carlsen has won three of the events in which he has partaken.[36]

In June 2018, Chess.com held a special version of the tournament for which the winner would go on to participate in the Isle of Man International which had a prize fund of 144,000.[37] Iranian GM Pouria Darini won the event.[38]

Chess.com has held six Speed Chess Championships since 2016, all involving a single-elimination tournament featuring some of the world's best players in matches that continue on in the vein of the Death Match format, with the addition of one chess960 game each time control. Nakamura has won four championships, while Carlsen has won two.[39]

Death Matches were introduced in January 2012. They feature titled players taking part in a series of blitz games over a non-stop 3-hour period (5-minute, 3-minute and 1-minute, all with a one-second increment).[46] There have been 38 deathmatches, participants including the grandmasters Hikaru Nakamura, Dmitry Andreikin, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, L Quang Lim, Wesley So, Fabiano Caruana, Judit Polgr and Nigel Short.[47]

In November 2017, Chess.com held an open tournament, called the Chess.com Computer Chess Championship (CCCC, later CCC), with the ten strongest chess engines, with $2,500 in prize money. The top-two engines competed in a "Superfinale" tournament between the two finalists - Stockfish and Houdini. In the 20-game Superfinal, Stockfish won over Houdini with a score 10.5-9.5. Five games were decisive, with 15 ending in a draw. Of the decisive games, three games were won by Stockfish, and two by Houdini.[48][49]

In August 2018, the site announced that the Chess.com Computer Chess Championship has returned, this time as a non-stop tournament for chess engines.[50][51]

Chess.com has hosted PogChamps, an amateur online tournament featuring Twitch streamers, since 2020. The first PogChamps featured notable streamers including xQcOW, moistcr1tikal, Ludwig Ahgren, and forsen. Notable new participants from PogChamps 2 included itsHafu and Hafr Jlus Bjrnsson.[103] PogChamps 3, beginning in February 2021, debuted with a wider range of Internet personalities and celebrities, with new competitors including MrBeast, Neekolul, Myth, Pokimane, actor Rainn Wilson, and rapper Logic.

After publishing two articles that were critical to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and replacing the flags of all russian users of the website with their links, chess.com was blocked in Russia.[104] [105]

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Chess.com - Wikipedia

The I'M Not A GM Speed Chess Championship (IMSCC) is back for its 2022 edition, starting on May 9. The competition is once more bringing fan-favorite IMs and other masters to vie for their share of the $10,000 prize fund and bragging rights among their non-GM colleagues.

Last year, Chess.com streamer IM Roberto Molina faced YouTube's greatest, IM Levy Rozman, in a thrilling final. In true Speed Chess Championship fashion, swindles and mouse speed played a major role in the match, with the cunning Molina eventually taking the crown.

This year, Rozman is back to fight for the title. As last year's finalist, he is undoubtedly among the favorites to win the event. However, the YouTube star will not have an easy road ahead of him as other powerful masters are joining the competition. Among them is the talented IM Polina Shuvalova, who had a great run during the 2021 Women's World Blitz Chess Championship and currently boasts one of the highest blitz ratings in the field.

Another player to watch is the IM Bibisara Assaubayeva. The young Kazakhstani talent showed she's comfortable with the SCC format when she defeated GM Humpy Koneru in the 2021 Women's Speed Chess Championship. Assaubayeva then made the news again after winning the 2021 Women's Blitz Chess Championship with a round to spare, showing she's more than ready to face this new challenge.

Other well-known players joining the field include the superstar streamers WGM Nemo Zhou, IM Eric Rosen, FM James Canty, and the IMs from the ChessDojo Kostya Kavutskiy and David Pruess. They will be joined by the always-strong IM Greg Shahade, current US Women's Champion IM Carissa Yip, IM Tania Sachdev, and more!

Chess.com's Chief Chess Officer and IMSCC veteran IM Danny Rensch is another master playing in the event. Danny, who was once the highest-rated junior in the United States, feels excited to once more return to the IMSCC arena in a quest to survive past the first round.

"The IMSCC is always one of my favorite events both as a player and a viewer," he said. "It's such a great opportunity for many players like myself who love competitive chess but have careers that don't focus on chess competition to enjoy the thrill of battle. I'm excited to dust off my Dvoretsky, hone my tactics, trash talk on Twitter, and ultimately get flagged repeatedly by my opponents."

I'm excited to dust off my Dvoretsky, hone my tactics, trash talk on Twitter, and ultimately get flagged repeatedly by my opponents. IM Danny Rensch

Don't forget to tune in to Chess.com/TV or to our Twitch and YouTube channels to watch the 2022 I'M Not A GM live on May 16!

Who do you think will win this edition of the IMSCC? Let us know in the comments below!

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Announcing The 2022 I'M Not A GM Speed Chess Championship - Chess.com

Morphy. Capablanca. Fischer. Most chess fans know these legendary names. Other young players,like GM Abhimanyu Mishra or ChessKidFM Tani Adewumi, are known to chess fans right now and we await to see just how good they will become. And with the2022 Junior Speed Chess Championship presented by SIG underway, chess fans will get to watch many of these prodigies.

But who have been some lesser-known top chess prodigies whose exploits have nearly been lost to the sands of time? Read on, and then don't forget to share what you've learned with your family and friends!

You may know FM Jeff Sarwer better as "Jonathan Poe" from the filmSearching For Bobby Fischeras future IM Josh Waitzkin's opponent in the climactic scene. Other than the fact that Sarwer played Waitzkin in the final game of the 1986 Primary Championship, the movie took several liberties. It modified his name, understandably. But for narrative purposes, they also changed the result of their game and tournament and made Jonathan into a very intense character.

One thing the two had in common in real life: like Waitzkin, Sarwer was a student of NM Bruce Pandolfini. The yearbefore the tournament from the movie, Jeff in fact beat the older Josh:

Another thing that is true about Jeff Sarwer: his upbringing was unusual, even by chess prodigy standards. Sarwer was the World Under-10 Champion when he was just eight, but he played no chess for about 20 years from roughly ages 10 to 30.

As he toldCard Player magazine in 2010, "My dad taking me away from chess was one of the worst things that happened to me in my childhood. As usual, he had his own issues which took precedence over my chess career." That same year he told WGM Jennifer Shahade at U.S. Chess, "Our dad was... our alternative culture, one that may have been abusive but one that we understood." The "our" is Jeff and his sister Julia, who was a great young player in her own rightthe year Jeff was under-10 champion, Julia won the same title for girls.

Jeff Sarwer reemerged in 2007 and eventually became a FIDE Master in 2015. With that kind of success, despite 20 years of no competitive chess including the extremely important teenage years, there really is no telling how good he could have become with an uninterrupted childhood career. He turned out to be an excellent poker player as well.

GM Tal Shaked (pronounced shah-KED) was actually born the same year as Sarwer, 1978, making both of them younger than the more famous Waitzkin (born in December 1976). No one made a movie about Shaked, even though he eventually became the only one of the three to achieve the grandmaster title.

Shaked didn't start playing until he was seven but was the 1987 U.S. Primary Champion at nine years old (just after Waitzkin and Sarwer shared the title in '86) and a USCF masterby age 14. From there Shaked went on to become the 1997 World Junior Champion, the last American to do so until GM Jeffery Xiong in 2016.

Later in '97 Shaked was invited to a major chess tournament, Tilburg Fontys, along with established stars like GM Garry Kasparov and GM Vladimir Kramnik. Against Kasparov, Shaked got his queen trapped and resigned on move 20, but still. The 1990s version of Garry almost never played someone 15 years younger than him outside of a simultaneous exhibition, so being in the same field was itself a sign of just how good Shaked was.

Shaked left professional chess at 21 years old to study computer science at the University of Arizona, and his decision paid off. He's spent most of his adult life as a top engineer for Google, a company you may have heard of.

If you have heard of GM Parimarjan Negi, it's possible that's from his excellent and popular books on 1.e4 openings in theGrandmaster Repertoire series rather than his playing career. ButNegi achieved the GM title at age 13 in 2006, which made him the second-youngest grandmaster ever at the time. He's still theseventh-youngest ever as of April 2022.

India is a place that produces a lot of young chess talent. In just the 2022 JSCC, there are GMs Nihal Sarin, Arjun Erigaisi, Raunak Sadhwani, and Praggnanandhaa R. Average age: 17 (in an event where 20-year-olds are eligible). The legendary GM Viswanathan Anand, for his part, earned his title at 19 and, of course, later became the country's first undisputed world champion in 2007. And of all of them, Negi was the first to reach grandmaster before age 14.

Despite his tremendous early success, Negi has only played one chess event since 2017. Like Shaked, Negi found computer science to be a more viable career option. It's no secret that making a living on chess alone requires getting absurdly good, otherwise secondary skills are needed (which can still be chess-related, like streaming or coaching). There are, as just one example, probably more starting quarterbacks in the NFL than there are people who make a living purely from playing chess. So when you can become a PhD student at MIT(yes, that MIT), you take it.

Negi was profiled in Chess Life in 2017 (also picked up here by ChessBase India) along with some other names you might have heard of: GM Robert Hess and GM Daniel Naroditsky, as well as GM Darwin Yang. In the piece he explains more about his decision to leave pro chess.

It's not fair to call her the "forgotten" Polgar sister, but it is true that of the three of them, Sofia stayed with chess the least amount of time, largely retiring by 2002, and in the meantime "settled" (in giant scare quotes) for the international master title instead of grandmaster like her older sisterSusan and younger sister Judit, the latter of whom became by far the highest-rated female chess player ever.

All three of them helped lead an all-under-20 Hungarian women's team at the 1988 Chess Olympiad (which also included WGM Ildiko Madl) to a half-point win over the GM Maia Chiburdanidze-led Soviet teamthat had won the event 10 of the past 11 times. Two years later, the Soviets brought their other top woman into the fold, GM Nona Gaprindashvili, but the Hungarian team won again. In that 1990 Olympiad, Sofia scored 11.5/13 on board three.

Between those Olympiads, Polgar scored a victory that came to be known as the "Sack of Rome", which is easily her best-known accomplishment. Polgar won a tournament in Rome in 1989 with a score of 8.5/9. Not only was she nearly perfect, but it was a strong tournament with several Soviet grandmasters. As Polgar writes on her website:

The first two games were against lower-rated players then, in round three, I faced Palatnik a strong Soviet GM. He was my first "victim," followed by grandmasters Chernin, Suba, and Razuvaev. Dolmatov was the one to "save the honors" in the last round by playing the only drawn game against me in the tournament.

For some IMs, beating one grandmaster in a tournament makes the event a success. To defeat several without a single loss makes it one of the greatest lesser-known accomplishments in chess history.

No one knows what happened to this precocious youngster from Arizona, who actually broke a record once held by Shaked as the youngest national master from Arizona, and was also once the highest-rated junior player in the United States. He managed to become an international master in 2009, but his chess did not progress much further from there. Last we heard he had turned to obscure business ventures.

Ok, obviously we're kidding. Love ya, Danny!

The Romanian-American Gabriel Schwartzman was FM at 12, IM at 15, and GM at 17 in 1993, all what was a rather typical progression of a young chess talent's career. At the time, you could count on your own hands how many players had been a grandmaster by 17. These days, you would need many people's hands. In a pattern that should be recognizable by now, Schwartzman switched professions away from chess early. In his case, he did so in his mid-20s.

FM Jorge Sammour-Hasbun was born in 1979 and obtained his FIDE Master title in 1988, making him the youngest ever at the time. Imagine playing a game like this at any age, let alone 12:

William Napier was one of the few teenage players to hold his own with masters at the turn of the 19th into 20th centuries, and in 1897 at the age of 16 he defeated Wilhelm Steinitz in a tournament game.Chess historian Edward Winter shouted out Napier and several other longer-ago prodigies here.

Ringo Starr's "It Don't Come Easy" began playing just as it came time to write this conclusion. He was talking about love and trust and stuff or whatever, but the title is an apt description both of chess and of growing up. Being great at chesswhile growing up can only be more difficult, except for the part where you easily defeat all your peers at the game.

But at a certain point, the competition does get tougher. For instance, in the Junior Speed Chess Championship.

Watch the main event of the 2022 JSCC presented by SIG and ChessKid, starring two-time champion Nihal and 15 young challengers hoping to take his throne every Monday, Thursday, and Friday beginning on April 11!

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5 Amazing Chess Prodigies You've Never Heard Of - Chess.com

GM Hikaru Nakamura won a Titled Tuesday event for the third straight week on April 26 and was joined in the day's winners' circle by GM Baadur Jobava after the late tournament. For the second time in three weeks, no one played quite consistently enough to earn prizes in both tournaments.

Nakamura worked his way through a 356-player field without a loss to claim the early tournament with a score of 10/11. He finished half a point ahead of GM Jose Martinez, who himself finished a half-point above three players on nine points: GM Oleksandr Bortnyk, GM Andrey Esipenko, and Chinese NM Yuan Qingyu.

Broadcast of the early tournament hosted by WFM Alessia Santeramo.

After starting 5/5, Nakamura drew his next two games and actually fell a half-point behind three players. One of them was GM Sam Shankland, making a rare but welcome Titled Tuesday appearance, who drew his first game before winning six in a row. While GM Kirill Alekseenko was defeating Esipenko to move to 7.5/8, Nakamura won a very even game against Shankland on the final move to achieve the same score.

Nakamura never looked back, winning his last three games as well and winning the tournament outright. The heavyweights never stopped coming as he dropped Alekseenko in round nine, Bortnyk in the 10th round, and GM Daniil Dubov in the final round.

All of Nakamura's last four games seemed to have a similar theme: Nakamura played well above 90% accuracy and took advantage of a final, decisive error by his opponent. Dubov, for example, expected a pawn recapture when Nakamura instead pushed toward inevitable promotion.

Martinez finished in outright second place with 9.5/11 by defeating Shankland in round nine, Alekseenko in round 10, and GM Jeffery Xiong in the last round.

April 26 Titled Tuesday | Early | Final Standings (Top 20)

(Full final standings here.)

Nakamura won $1,000 for his efforts and Martinez earned $750. Bortnyk won $300, Esipenko $150, and Yuan $100 to round out the top five. Bulgarian IM Nurgyul Salimova was the high scorer among women and won $100.

The late tournament was joined by exactly 300 players as Nakamura attempted to win both Titled Tuesdays in one day for the second time, but he was 1.5 points short, behind Jobava and GM Sam Sevian. It was Jobava's second Titled Tuesday victory of the year, following one on February 22.

Broadcast of the late tournament hosted by FM James Canty III.

Well before it was apparent that Jobava would win the tournament, Canty pronounced his round four win the "game of the tournament," a swindle and checkmate of GM Alex Rustemov.

Jobava would defeat Sevian in round seven to stay perfect but drop his next game to GM Hrant Melkumyan. He then drew his round 10 game.

Competitively, then, the game of the tournament came in the final round when Jobava defeated Nakamura to claim the tournament after an early draw offer from Jobava was rejected.

Meanwhile, Sevian defeated Bortnyk with a beautiful checkmate in a minor-piece endgame. That kept him in pace with Jobava, but the Georgian player's tiebreaks were better than the American's.

April 26 Titled Tuesday | Late | Final Standings (Top 20)

(Full final standings here.)

Jobava's victory earned him $1,000 while Sevian settled for $750 in second place. GM Dmitrij Kollars won $300 in third place while Xiong took $150 for fourth. The $100 for fifth went to GM Rasmus Svane while the $100 to the top woman went to GM Alexandra Kosteniuk.

Titled Tuesday is a weekly event for titled players on Chess.com. Each Tuesday there are two 11-round Swiss tournaments, commencing at 8:00 a.m. Pacific Time/17:00 Central European and 2:00 p.m. Pacific Time/23:00 Central European.

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Nakamura Wins Titled Tuesday For Third Straight Week, Jobava Victorious In Late - Chess.com