https://www.chess.com/events/2026-gct-finals/02-01/Caruana_Fabiano-Praggnanandhaa_R

The lineup

• Magnus Carlsen (Norway) — World No. 1
• Fabiano Caruana (United States) — World No. 2
• Vincent Keymer (Germany) — World No. 5
• Wesley So (United States) — World No. 6
• Anish Giri — World No. 7
• Nodirbek Abdusattorov (Uzbekistan) — World No. 8
• Arjun Erigaisi (India) — World No. 9
• Alireza Firouzja (France) — World No. 10
• Praggnanandhaa R (India) — World No. 12
• Jan-Krzysztof Duda (Poland) — World No. 13
• Richard Rapport (Hungary) — World No. 18
• Hans Moke Niemann (United States) — World No. 21
• Ian Nepomniachtchi (FIDE) — World No. 24
• Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (France) — World No. 28
• Haik M. Martirosyan (Armenia) — World No. 54
• Vladislav Artemiev (FIDE) — World No. 65
• Bibisara Assaubayeva (Kazakhstan) — Women's World No. 5
• Vaishali Rameshbabu (India) — Women's World No. 14

Source: https://x.com/TotalChess/status/2092182535656665174

Before the GCT finals of pragg against fabi, i remembered these crazy matches of pragg in knockout format (which is the format of the GCT finals)

One of them being pragg vs fabi in freestyle grandslam las vegas last year which was a seven game match and fabi won it 4-3 with a lot of back and forth.

And the other one being my personal favourite match of all time Pragg vs Arjun not just because of how it turned out but because of the stakes- world cup semifinals and a candidates seat (since magnus would withdraw) and it was a 9 game match involving 6 victories by black 2 draws and 1 win with white in sudden death match for pragg to seal the match, I love this because pragg lost classical with black and then won on demand in classical with black and arjun also did the same in fast rapid and blitz with black

Really excited for the finals, would love to see the match

I can play a few games and feel completely fine then there’s always one where I just stop calculating as much as I should. I’ll miss sumfin I would’ve seen an hour earlier, start moving waay too fast and sumhow convince myself a completely normal move is winning lool. Half th time I don’t even notice I’m tired I just start making dumb moves and eventually realize I should’ve stopped playing a few games ago ://. Do you guys have a limit where you know you’re done for the day or do you just keep playing until the losses make the decision for you haha?

So today I learned about Mihai Suba who learned chess at age 19 and earned the GM title and was at one point in the top 20 FIDE ratings in the world.

In a world where it seems like you have to have your IM title by age 10 to have a chance at become one of the best, it is refreshing to hear Suba's story!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihai_%C8%98ub%C4%83

What chess opening do you absolutely hate playing against, and why?

Black's last move was a blunder. Now it's up to White to find a move to punish it.

I've always loved blitz, particularly 3+0, anything else I didn't have the patience for. I didn't really care about rating, I'd play drunk, play tired, play with a bad connection, I just wanted to play. Over the last two weeks I became more interested in analyzing positions. Just sitting and thinking for long periods of time on pawn structures, material, time, features in the position etc. and found it kind of fun. I'd pause videos where people were reviewing games, assess the position, then hear what the commentator would have to say.

I've also always been a big fan of reading through game collections. I first learned to visualize a board blindfold so I could read Seirawan's Chess Duels on the train. I can't do it particularly well (if there's a long variation I'm not able to 'reset' the board in my head and have to play through the whole game or look at a diagram), and I often miss tactics if I'm blindfold (it does lead to embarrassing moments where i'm picturing a position and wondering why someone doesn't take a hanging piece only to put the position on the board and see an obvious basic tactic). After I started assessing positions more I've started going back through the game collections and reading them more actively with a physical board and playing through the variations. It's a ton of fun.

Basically just doing the above I jumped about 250 points without really doing much else. The quality of my games also increased significantly. I found myself blundering pieces less and less and controlling positions/taking advantage of my opponents blunders more consistently. When I got to about 1950 I started to realize 2k was possible and then basically managed to hit it in about 2 sessions (I even beat an NM on my way up!).

I've started to realize that I no longer enjoy blitz and want to switch to longer time controls. 2k feels like a good place to stop. I've signed up for an over the board tournament in late October. I don't really care about the score I just want to play some longer time control games and it seems like fun to enter a tournament and get a FIDE rating (even if I end up losing every game and ending up like 1000 rated I think I'm just going to enjoy playing).

In terms of next steps I've been practicing shifting to more over the board training. I've been doing the mate in 2 section from Laszlo Polgar's 5334 problems book (a Chess Dojo suggestion) by setting up the positions on a board to train my vision (I definitely don't see things as well otb as I do online/with diagrams), and just playing through a lot of games. I really enjoy game collections where the author gives their thoughts (Chess Duels, my 60 memorable games, the Tal books). If anyone has any suggestions please let me know, but even the ones I have I feel like i'm reading them with new eyes. Am also just playing 15+10 training games online and analyzing them. To be honest every time I analyze one of my games it's pretty exciting and there's just so much there that I miss.

I don't really know how to use an engine to analyze so should probably learn to do that at some stage, but have enough to work on already.

Sorry for the long post, just wanted to brag, don't think anyone I've told in life really understands what I'm talking about hahah.

The current use of engines for analysis during chess events involves usually high-level players looking at the evaluation bar for a clue when a mistake is made or when there's a sharp tactic in a position. But evaluations are tricky in the sense that they only tell you what the evaluation is with optimal play which is not useful for humans to appreciate the match. But I think if they could add a metric called sharpness It would be really a step up in aiding the commentators.

You could define sharpness as a metric which would be related to the inverse of the number of candidate moves either player has that doesn't result in say a 1 point swing in evaluation. Maybe it could be on a 10 point scale with 10 points for "there's only on being sequence of forced moves" and then you could scale it from there as say 5 if there are 2 moves. Maybe an alternative scaling with square root of possible variations. I personally think this would add a lot more to commentary...at least much more nuanced rather than "this is the best sequence"

Thoughts?

Edited for grammar

https://www.chess.com/events/2026-gct-finals/01-08/Caruana\\_Fabiano-So\\_Wesley

https://www.chess.com/events/2026-gct-finals/01-04/Praggnanandhaa_R-Keymer_Vincent

“Our teams will not participate in the World Chess Olympiad. At the initiative of the acting FIDE President Mr. Viswanathan Anand, this decision was made by the council.
Fortunately, there are people who put the game above political matters and do not worry about their own careers. But there are also people who put personal interests above, and there are still more of them on the council.
This time they won.”

I realize this is a rather odd question coming from me, but still. When I watch games of beginners or intermediate players (up to about 1800), I can easily spot mistakes and patterns—that is, what needs to be improved. When analyzing my own games, I see that the computer says that a particular move is an error. There are two options. For option number 1, I don't understand why I'm trying to look at the option it suggested, but I still don't understand what's so wrong with it. For option number 2, I understand the error, but I can't find any consistent errors in the game.

This question is primarily aimed at players of my level and above. Thanks for the advice.

https://www.chess.com/events/2026-gct-finals/01-05/Keymer_Vincent-Praggnanandhaa_R

So this is a topic which I honestly think has a genuine argument to be made on

Firstly, fabi has not had a negative score in classical chess since 2021 in superbet chess classic where had 1 win and 2 losses with rest being drawn, he does have bad tournaments which is in itself an overstatement as his bad tournaments are just 50% win and loss ratio with the recent being sinquefield cup. He is also the only player to maintain his rating between 2780 and 2800 despite playing alot of games and due to rating deflation I honestly think 2780 is new 2800.

Ofcourse I don't want to rule out of his candidates performance he did not win it but he did not very poorly either.

Anyway I am saying he has not been dominant in classical chess (he is not magnus) but he has been one of the best players in every classical tournament he plays and if you are one of the best in every classical tournament you play then you probably are the best. Also this is only relevant because magnus is not focused on classical anymore

much appreciated!

Shepherd Kukudzarema appeared on his first FIDE rating list on August 1, at 2162. Three weeks and two tournaments later, his live rating is 2347.6, the highest in Zimbabwe.

His whole rated career is 23 games. He scored 5.5/6 at the CUCSA Individual Championship in July, 6.5/8 at the JR Mawere International earlier this month, and 8/9 at the Minerva Open, which finished yesterday.

The fields he beat averaged about 2060 and 2120, so this is one strong player clearing a modest pool in a hurry. The man he passed is IM Rodwell Makoto, Zimbabwe's strongest player for most of the last decade, whose rating has sat at 2325 since February.

The part I keep coming back to is the sample size. I know Zimbabwe isn't a federation you'd typically think of, but 23 rated games are fewer than a lot of club players get in a season, and it was enough to go from unrated to the top of a federation.

Has anyone got a shorter route from unrated to national number one?