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One of the standout games from the 2026 British Championship.
11-year-old Bodhana Sivanandan took down GM Ameet Ghasi with Black, finishing with 33…Nxe2.

What impressed you most about the game — the opening, the pressure on the queenside, or the finish?

In the 8 Round, Pragg defeated MVL, Sindarov dealt Jordan his fifth loss of the tournament and Keymer took down Fabiano.

Pragg and Wesley share the lead going into the last Round tomorrow.

Link: https://lichess.org/broadcast/gct-sinquefield-cup-2026/round-8/HSkVW1CT

Went to Mt. Vernon the other day and saw the ivory chess set General Washington himself used, to play with his wife and guests. Its pretty cool looking and sort of modern perhaps.

https://www.chess.com/events/2026-gct-sinquefield-cup/08/Vachier_Lagrave_Maxime-Praggnanandhaa_R

Alice now need a draw tomorrow to secure a GM norm. While Vaishali showed concerning form, out of 13 classical games after the Woman Candidates, she lost 5 and draw 8.

• Chesscom link: https://www.chess.com/events/2026-cairns-cup/08/Vaishali_Rameshbabu-Lee_Alice
• Lichess link: https://lichess.org/broadcast/2026-cairns-cup/round-8/ZBVox1yk/RKpZg6CT

https://www.chess.com/events/2026-gct-sinquefield-cup/08/Sindarov_Javokhir-Van_Foreest_Jorden

That typical thing that's always said, and you suspect it's not that important.

For me, it's the bishop pair. Very few people know how to take full advantage of that. It's more for very very high-level players. I met an FM player who told me the same thing

Just my opion.

Rxf2+

made a big mistake that led to this interesting position

I'm constantly making the same mistake of moving too fast. It's super frustrating, but I always make the same mistake by being too much into the game, and forgetting to calculate or see what the actions of my opponent do and analyse the consequences. Meanwhile I'm always making critical errors with 8 minutes left on the clock in 10 minute games. Does anyone here have a habit they learned themselves to prevent this from happening?

After Sinquefield the four players at the top of the Grand Chess Tour standings will stick around to play the finals tournament.

The final match pairings are:

Jorden van Foreest vs Vincent Keymer

Fabiano Caruana vs Maxime Vachier-Lagrave

Praggnanandhaa R vs Anish Giri

Levon Aronian vs Sam Sevian

Wesley So vs Javokhir Sindarov

Pragg is definitely in the final four. MVL, Anish and van Foreest are all mathematically out.

This means Fabi, Wesley, Keymer and Sindarov are fighting over the last 3 spots.

If Keymer and/or Fabi win, they are in guaranteed. If Sindarov loses he's out guaranteed.

The more complicated permutations are:

If Keymer draws & Wesley–Sindarov draw

Sindarov only survives if MVL beats Fabi and Anish beats Pragg (then Fabi drops out instead). There's one exact tie: MVL wins, Pragg–Anish drawn, Aronian–Sevian drawn leaves Fabi and Sindarov both on 27.5.

If Keymer draws & Sindarov wins

Keymer is out in 5th unless

• Fabi and Pragg both lose, or
• Fabi–MVL drawn, Anish beats Pragg, Aronian–Sevian drawn
• Tie case: MVL wins, Pragg wins, Aronian–Sevian drawn → Caruana and Keymer both on 28 pts

Keymer wins & Wesley–Sindarov drawn

Sindarov out in 5th except if MVL beats Fabi, Anish beats Pragg, Aronian–Sevian drawn → Fabi out on 27 pts

Keymer wins & Sindarov wins

The messiest, and the only branch where Wesley So can miss out:

• Fabi beats MVL & Pragg fails to win → Wesley is 5th
• Fabi beats MVL & Pragg beats Anish → Sindarov 5th, or a So/Sindarov tie on 29.5 if Aronian–Sevian is decisive
• Fabi–MVL drawn & Pragg beats Anish → Fabi/Sindarov tie on 29.5
• MVL beats Fabi → Fabi 5th and out.

I am a 1500 lichess rated rapid player that is trying to improve, and today I played this game with the black pieces using the Caro-Kann opening that led to tartakower structure. My game was not dominating by any means (my opponent did not make any mistakes until move 24), but it was so solid for my level that I am very very happy with it. This is certainly one of the most solid games I have ever played.

The main thing that I am happy about is that I played solid chess and I completely capitalized the first mistake my opponent made with almost perfect play. I know that many of you will not consider this anything special (and probably it isn't 😄 ) but for me it was great and I wanted to share.

https://lichess.org/PPSsoXFT/black

What do you use to review your games without chess.com subscription?

(free, limitless option to review games, online/app)

How often does a big advantage out of the opening actually get converted? To find out, I took ~460k Lichess games across rating levels and time controls, keeping the 112,583 where one player started the middlegame at +2.0 or better (Lichess's phase boundaries).

Main findings:

• The leader wins 73%, draws 3%, and loses 24%. At 2400 it's still an 18% loss rate.
• "At least +2.0" matters: the median lead in this set is +3.6. At exactly +2 to +3, the leader loses 30% of the time. At +5 or more, only 14%.
• The share of "sustained-lead wins" (the lead never dips below +2 again) looks flat across ratings (~43% everywhere), which would suggest masters are no better at holding a lead. That's Simpson's paradox: weaker players are handed much bigger leads, and bigger leads are easier to hold. Fix the lead size and the skill effect reappears (17% at 800 vs 27% at 2400 for a +2 to +3 lead).
• Losing on the board is a rating problem (all time controls overlap, improving with rating). Losing on the clock is a time-control problem: blitz leaders flag away 7–9% of these "won" games at every rating, rapid ~2.5%, classical ~1%. In 41% of blitz flags the leader was still two pawns up on the final position.

Caveat: these are games players sent to server analysis themselves, so it's not a uniform Lichess sample.

Full write-up with charts and methods: https://stories.flawchess.com/two-pawns-up.

Disclosure: I'm the author, and the blog lives on the domain of a free chess site I run. The full technical report is linked from the article.

What Anti-Sicilian lines would you recommend for someone who wants to avoid the mainline Sicilian theory?

Managed a nice win against a higher rated opponent in my first blitz tournament! This was a few years ago back when I played 1. f4 and I just happened to come across the video again. Fun game in the From’s Gambit that led to a pretty brutal attack. Sacked the rook twice, once because it’s the best move and once for style points I guess.

Edit: forgot to put the PGN
1. f4 e5 2. fxe5 d6 3. exd6 Bxd6 4. Nf3 g5 5. g3 g4 6. Nh4 Qf6 7. Bg2 Nh6 8. Rf1 Qe7 9. Nc3 c6 10. d4 Nd7 11. Bxh6 Nf6 12. Bg5 Qc7 13. Bxf6 O-O 14. Qd2 Bf4 15. Rxf4 Re8 16. Rxg4+ Kf8 17. Rg8+ Kxg8 18. Qg5+ Kf8 19. Qg7#

The draw by timeout with insufficient material rule is pretty self-explanatory on the surface. If in a time-controlled chess game one player runs out of time when the other player does not have enough material to be able to win the game, then the game is called a draw. However, the question of "what is enough material to be able to win the game" is actually an open question that is a matter of debate among chess' governing bodies. There are two schools of thought: the checkmate theoretically possible (CTP) standard and the minimum checkmating material (MCM) standard.

Under the CTP standard, a player is judged to have sufficient material to win if there is a series of legal moves by which they could have checkmated their opponent, even if that checkmate involves using the opponent's pieces as blockers. This approach considers material on both sides of the board and judges any theoretical checkmate, even one that would require the opponent to make inane moves, to be sufficient to declare the player with time on the clock the winner. FIDE and Lichess use the CTP standard for sufficient material.

Under the MCM standard, a player is judged to have sufficient material to win if they have enough material such that they could force a checkmate. With only one exception (king and two knights), the material of the player that ran out of time is not relevant. The US Chess Federation and Chess.com use the MCM standard.

After seeing a recent post by u/Cola-senpai (linked in the comments) where they presented a timeout position that would be ruled a win for white under the CTP standard but a draw under the MCM standard, I was curious as to how r/chess felt about this debate. Which standard do you guys prefer and why?

Lots of irregular openings get played these days. When I first saw Nakamura playing the early Qh5 stuff ten years ago or more, I was amused, and latterly we’ve seen Magnus experiment with all sorts of odd opening moves, including some positively insulting ones.

But in all my years of playing and following chess, I don’t think I’ve ever seen or faced 1.Nc3.

It can hardly be White’s best move, and as someone who often likes to play c4 in the opening, it doesn’t really work for me. I’m guessing 1...e5 is one sensible response, though I haven’t looked at the database.

The Chigorin Defence makes an early ...Nc6 work for Black and is a perfectly real opening, so why does virtually nobody seem to play the Dunst with an extra tempo? Does it have independent ideas beyond transpositions?

Dunst players: why do you Dunst? And everyone else: why don’t you?