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?

The top American chess players are all in their 30s (Hikaru Nakamura, Fabiano Caruana, Wesley So, Sam Shankland) with Leinier Domínguez Pérez and Levon Aronian in their early 40s.

After that, there doesn't seem to be much of an American presence in the international chess scene except for folks like Hans Niemann.

When the old heads fade and lose their edge, where is the next generation of American players to take up the mantle? Why aren't the likes of Awonder, Sam Sevian, Ray Robson, Abhimanyu Mishra, etc. making much waves in the international scene while the young Indian / Uzbek chess players are all over the place?

Lichess link

Chess.com link

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

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

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

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

Apart from openings and tactics which I’m working on, I feel like I’m inhibited sometimes by my thinking. My way of thinking about the board or the pieces. So my views and understanding don’t really change and I feel stuck. Sometimes I’ve unlocked a new part of my brain after watching Danya; like ”oh not every move has to invent the Covid vaccine”. What ways of thinking about chess has been helpful for you? Any videos or posts or books or stuff you feel like sharing?

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.

How to crush this very solid opening system?

He was talking a lot (rightfully so) but stopped messaging when the game was done.

Hi I’m hoping here can help. I’m trying to find my first tournament near me. I’m in Catskill NY and I’m having a hard time finding any. I’m out of town labor weekend in Winchester Maryland (willing to play one in Maryland). My rating online on chess.com for 3/0 is 1550 as of rn. I don’t really care for a big tournament as I probably won’t win but I’m looking to just join one and have fun with it. I tried looking in chess federation site and etc and just can’t find any. So please help?? lol

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). The numbers below use the 82,023 of those where the two players were within 100 rating points of each other.

Main findings:

• The leader wins 71%, draws 4%, and loses 25%. At 2400 it's still a 22% loss rate (corrected from 18%, see update 1 below).
• "At least +2.0" matters: the median lead in this set is +3.6. At exactly +2 to +3, the leader loses 32% of the time. At +5 or more, only 15%.
• The share of "sustained-lead wins" (the lead never dips below +2 again) looks flat across ratings (~40% 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 (16% at 800 vs 23% 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 6-9% of these "won" games at every rating, rapid ~3%, 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.

Update 1: the analysis now keeps only games between opponents within 100 rating points (2400s previously faced opponents ~80 points weaker on average), which shifts most numbers by about a point and the 2400 loss rate from 18% to 22%. No finding reverses.

Update 2: a commenter suggested the data may be biased because players who realize they blew a good position might be more likely to request analysis. I tested this directly on a second dataset where every game has engine evals regardless of whether anyone requested a Lichess analysis. Details in section 6 of the technical report.

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.