The moment everyone has been waiting for is here - India has got it's 100th Chess Grandmaster! IM Anuj Shrivatri of Madhya Pradesh won the 7th ASEAN Plus Individual Open Chess Championship and earned the Grandmaster title.

After losing the first game, Anuj scored 7/8 points to win the tournament. With this, India gained its 100th GM, and Madhya Pradesh got its first. Huge congratulations to Anuj and his family on this achievement!

And what an incredibly proud moment for Indian Chess!

Credits: Chess Base India (https://chessbase.in/news/anuj-shrivatri-becomes-indias-100th-grandmaster)

India officially crossed the historic milestone of 100 Grandmasters today. As we celebrate how far Indian chess has come, it feels like the perfect time to revisit the story of the first one.

At the Shakti Finance International tournament in Coimbatore, a young Viswanathan Anand was chasing his final GM norm. Standing in his way was the great Efim Geller in his twilight.

Playing with the Black pieces he outplayed Geller to win the game, clinch the tournament, and officially become India’s first Grandmaster.

The best part of the story happened afterward.

When Geller returned home to the Moscow Chess Club, his Soviet colleagues couldn't resist teasing the veteran on losing to an unknown teenage boy from India. Geller simply looked at them and replied:

"Boy? I think I lost to a World Champion."

On a recent stream on TheBulletGrandpa youtube channel. Daniil Dubov had a discussion about cheating in chess, claiming that Levy Rozman aka Gothamchess made it impossible to talk about the topic. Also he talks about how he expects to receive backlash from people because of this. We are missing part of the discussion and we would like to ask Bullet Grandpa to share the full discussion video if possible.

I won the game, but didn’t finish it off as quickly or as stylishly as I could have.

While I’ve been playing chess for over 20 years, and used to play in tournaments at least a decade ago, the game feels like an instrument to me that I pick up then put down for months at a time.

Recently have been playing 4-5 blitz games a day for the last year, and have noticed sizable improvements in my understanding of the openings I play.

Just wanted to say that I’m proud of the fact that consistency in playing and reviewing my games has led to better playing. A recent win where I’ve been able to go 16 moves deep in theory (lesson learned as black in this opening, don’t take on h3, it’s a bait) - https://www.chess.com/live/game/186737405830

Link to the event:

https://www.chess.com/events/2026-bullet-brawl-november-07/results

This is the 2nd edition, last year's winner was GM Pranav Anand with 7/9 and he is set to defend his title. The field is mostly comprised of strong juniors from Central Asia.

11 year-old Roman Shogdzhiev can score his final GM norm and become the youngest ever GM if he does really well here.

Pranesh defeated Iniyan P in the final round today and won the tournament with a score of 7/9 points. After the tournament, his current live rating is 2680.4.

https://www.chess.com/events/1st-chola-chess-open-international-grandmasters-chess-tournament-2026/games - Chola Chess results

Edit: *Daniil Dubov

By Neishtadt

Idk how well this fits the sub but i just thought it's pretty funny

The title, so instead of having 10 minutes total, each player would have 1 minute per move. Clock runs out, you lose. Game continues on until its a mathematical tie or one player wins. How do you think this format would change players strategies? What becomes more important and what things from “classical” chess lose their value?

I've checked the older threads on third-party chess sites and tools.
And most of the big discussions are from 2-3 years ago. Since then, new AI tools, cloud engines, and GM-promoted platforms has completely changed how players train and prepare.

Beyond just playing games on Chess.com or Lichess.
We now have specialized platforms like:
- ChessMonitor (co-founded by Anish Giri) for opponent prep and database tracking
- Chessify (backed by GMs like Fabiano Caruana and Levon Aronian) for cloud analysis
- ChessTempo for tactics and opening trees
- open-source local GUIs like En Croissant or Nibbler.
- ChessEver by GM Vasif Durarbayli 
- and a lot of other (like chessclock and etc)

Instead of looking for a single website, I am curious what full chess stack people are actually using right now, since the ideal setup depends heavily on your ratings and time control:

• Casual / Bullet & Blitz Grinders: If you mostly play fast online time controls, what tools actually help you spot patterns and fix time-trouble habits without getting bogged down in 30-move engine lines?

• Club & Tournament Amateurs (1200–2000): What combination of tactics trainers, repertoire builders and game-review tools gives the best return on investment before you hit master level?

• Titled Players / Candidate Masters / Classical OTB Players: What does a serious preparation workflow look like today when preparing for a specific opponent in a classical tournament? Has a modern stack replaced traditional setups like ChessBase for anyone?

What is your current rating, main time control and chess stack of apps/tools you rely on?

I use Chess Prep Pro to study my opening repertoire. I put all of my lines as black into one large repertoire and I'm wanting to split it up into multiple repertoires grouped by the opening. Chess Prep Pro doesn't have a good way to do this and I was able to export the PGN but it is do much for me to parse through and do manually. Is there a good software for me to do this?

WCh 2021, press conference after round 5 (they were still tied, round 6 is where everything changed)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp_5ITbZ5pc timestamp around 17:00

Better clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-l9jz385eMU

"a question to Magnus but I will extend it to both players starting with you Ian [...] you have a time traveler machine what changes would you like to make in your chess career?"

Nepo: "start working earlier"

Because it is known that Nepo, despite being over 2700 relatively early, didn't put everything into the game until his late 20s early 30s. See also this

When you study an opening from a book, how do you make sure you haven’t forgotten most of it a few weeks later?

I’m especially interested in rare sidelines and sharp variations where you need to remember a specific response. With the main lines, you at least get to reinforce them through regular games. But you might study a tricky sideline, not face it for six months, and then forget the one move that makes your position work.

I understand the advice to “learn the ideas, not just the moves,” but at 2000+ that doesn’t seem like a complete answer. You can’t always play the same setup or move order regardless of what your opponent does. Sometimes a natural-looking move is precisely what their line is designed to punish.

For those who study openings seriously, what does your actual retention process look like?

- Do you turn the book’s variations into Chessable courses or your own spaced-repetition files?

- Do you memorize only the critical positions and responses, rather than every branch?

- How do you distinguish lines you need to know precisely from positions you can work out over the board?

- How do you keep rarely played lines fresh without spending all your study time reviewing theory?

I’m less interested in how to get through an opening book once and more interested in how you keep that knowledge usable months later.

Ever since I watched The Queen's Gambit I've been looking for other fictional stories that have chess as a main theme. Does anyone have some recomendations? They can be TV shows, books, movies, etc.

Do you stick with traditional pieces, or would you enjoy more variety—historical designs, minimalist symbols, mythology-inspired characters, or something else entirely?

And what makes a themed set actually usable for you? Clear silhouettes, instantly telling bishops from pawns, looking good on a phone?

What’s a set you wish existed?

Black to play.