Since Friday, Norway’s Magnus Carlsen and Russia’s Ian Nepomniachtchi have been spending their days in a glass box in Dubai, vying for the 2021 World Chess Championship. It’s a title that challenger Nepomniachtchi is hoping to wrest from Carlsen, the world No. 1, who has held it since 2013. But neither has yet yielded any […]
A game, the philosopher Bernard Suits wrote, is “the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.” It’s one thing to shove a fistful of chess pieces across the board to surround the enemy king. It’s quite another to get them there in accordance with the ancient game’s intricate rules, and while your grandmaster opponent tries to […]
The auditorium in Dubai hosting the 2021 World Chess Championship is reminiscent of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Each features a grand, darkened room with a glowing diorama, filled with motionless drama. And in both, a squid and a whale remain deadlocked in their boxes, caught in the middle of […]
With a tense draw lasting four hours and 45 moves, Magnus Carlsen on Friday began the latest defense of his World Chess Championship title. The Norwegian grandmaster has been No. 1 in the world for a decade and has held the sport’s top title since 2013. His challenger, Russian grandmaster and world No. 5 Ian […]
It has been 1,090 days since the last World Chess Championship. In the meantime, the ancient game has seen a modern resurgence, a swell in popularity driven by technology and a global pandemic, a dramatic prologue to the game’s marquee event. Beginning this week, at long last, Magnus Carlsen of Norway will once again defend […]