Raymond Keene

There is something peculiarly tragic about a man who conquers everything except the temptation to cease conquering. Alert readers will already know that Magnus Carlsen has now enrolled himself amongst that melancholy fraternity of giants—Morphy, Alekhine and Fischer—who departed from the high throne before the final summons had been answered. While still wearing the coveted halo and laurels of World Chess Champion, Magnus Carlsen publicly announced that he would not defend his title in 2023. FIDÉ, the world governing body, accepted that this was no passing whim but an irrevocable judgment, for Carlsen had for years displayed little inclination to return to the arena that ought to remain the supreme theatre of chess.

The emergence of prodigious chess talent has always exerted a peculiar fascination. From Capablanca's youthful brilliance to the meteoric ascents of Fischer, Kasparov and Carlsen, every generation produces a handful of players whose progress appears to compress years of learning into mere months. The latest name to command worldwide attention is the 12-year-oldArgentinian wunderkind Faustino Oro.

Chess is one of the world's oldest games of war: a battlefield upon which armies fight without bloodshed, and where the victory belongs not to the strongest arm but to the most disciplined mind. It shares an antiquity with the Chinese encirclement game of Go, Chinese chess (Xiangqi), and the Japanese game of Shogi. Yet chess is generally said to have developed not in China or Japan, but in northern India at some period before 500 AD. Some experts, however, place its origins much further back, in Mohenjo-Daro of the Harappan civilisation, in what is now Pakistan, thousands of years BCE.

Member ratings World Chess Day on 20 July has become an increasingly important occasion in the international chess calendar, offering an

A curious contribution to the obfuscation of chess tradition and history appears in the current August issue of

The next two years belong, in a curious sense, to Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) and chess. Exhibitions, celebrations and...

Records have fallen at the biggest-ever British Chess Championships. The nine-day event in the University of Warwick ended with something almost too neatly symbolic to have been invented: two record-breaking young stars of the game carrying away the two greatest prizes.

This summer has been a stressful period for presidents and aspirants of world sporting bodies. The President of FIFA, the world football federation, Gianni Infantino remains under severe pressure. Similarly KIRSAN Ilumzhinov declared his candidacy for the presidency of FIDÉ, the world chess Federation, on Monday July 20, World Chess Day. Within days he had withdrawn, allegedly obeying a diktat from The Kremlin. Meanwhile, the incumbent Russian office holder, Arkady Dvorkovich has also suddenly resigned in ignominy, after being sanctioned by the EU. His place — as interim President — has been taken by former world champion, Vishy Anand, while Arkady's electoral campaign mantle has been inherited by Kazakhstan billionaire Timur Turlov. Meanwhile, no fewer than two separate aspirants from Germany have emerged.

I have been in Crete on vacation. Rather than leave my loyal readers in the lurch, with no weekly chess column, I hav...

Having completed last year my annual pilgrimage to Glyndebourne for their new version of