India's first chess features print magazine published quarterly from Lucknow since 2004 by Aspire Welfare Society.

Friday, October 17, 2025

Fide, Norway Chess Quest for Total World Champion

Fide & Norway Chess pact
Press Release: Norway Chess Launches New World Championship – Approved by FIDE The new championship, titled the Total Chess World Championship Tour, will consist of four events each year and crown a combined champion across three disciplines – Fast Classic, Rapid, and Blitz chess. “We expect this to become one of the most prestigious events in the entire chess Calendar,” says Kjell Madland, CEOof Norway Chess and of the new championship

Key Highlights:

A brand-new World Championship format in chess, organized by Norway Chess, has been officially approved by the International Chess Federation, FIDE.

The Total Chess World Championship Tour will crown an overall champion across three disciplines: Fast Classic, Rapid, and Blitz. The winner will be crowned FIDE World Combined Champion. 

The tour will consist of four tournaments per year in various global cities. 

Minimum $2.7M annual prize pool across the Tour ($750k per event for the first three events; $450k for the Finals), plus performance bonuses. 

A pilot tournament is planned for fall 2026, with the first full championship season in 2027.

The initiative comes from the organizers of the prestigious Norway Chess tournament, and the official World Championship status agreement was signed with the International Chess Federation (FIDE) in early October. The vision of the Total Chess World Championship Tour is to find the player who best masters the disciplines Fast Classic, Rapid and Blitz combined. Fast Classic is an innovation of classical chess, featuring a time limit as short as 45 minutes plus a 30-second increment per move. This will receive rating as classical chess. 


“We are looking for “The Total Chess Player” – a versatile, tactically intelligent, and technically skilled athlete who seamlessly adapts to multiple time controls,” says Kjell Madland. 

The tour will take place in various cities across the globe and during the final stop an overall winner will be crowned: the official FIDE World Combined Champion. 


Fide 

Tuesday, October 7, 2025

Hikaru King Throw: Chess Marketing or Vandalism?


What happened in Dallas, Texas Sunday night was not showmanship but criminal disrespect to chess, writes Shilpa Mehra

Thousands of parents introduce their children to chess every year hoping the game will teach them discipline, etiquette, emotional management and how to control aggression. As Indian folklore goes, chess was invented to help warring Kings find catharsis on the board instead of in the battlefield. 

Thanks to what happened in Arlington, Dallas Sunday night, a lot has been undone for these parents. Grassroots-level arbiters and coaches are left grappling with damage control. A majority of chess players are children and youngsters with Internet access and impressionable minds.

For those who came in late, here's the background — In an exhibition chess match between five Indian and five US players, in an E-Sports stadium full of more than a thousand fans, World No. 2 Hikaru Nakamura tossed World Champion D. Gukesh's King to a boisterous crowd after winning. As the videos went viral, eliciting intense reactions, one of the players and streamers Levy Rozman - surely in attempts to save the players from disgrace - came forward to reveal the truth: The players had been told to do so by the organisers! In fact, Rozman added, at one point the players were even expected to break the opponent's King. Rozman, on his part, upon winning had congratulated his opponent and applauded before leaving the stage. The organisers - surely chess-illiterates — had no clue what they were doing. They were just out to create hype at any cost and Nakamura possibly fell into the trap. 

These ideas of vandalising chess sets is so pedestrian that it is unlikely to strike even the most ordinary of chess players. Surely, the organisers had no clue about what chess really needs.

GM Jacob Aagaard said it short on X: You entirely missed the point of chess...... (sic).

Grandmaster Nakamura's act is akin to football players slicing open the ball itself and strewing strips around the field. That's putting it mildly. 

Carlsen Incident 

A few months ago when World No. 1 Magnus Carlsen, in an involuntary human display of emotion, slammed the table on losing a won game against Gukesh, he became raw fish to salivating wolf marketeers. 

Carlsen remedied the action in a split second by patting the young grandmaster but floodgates had already opened to reels and memes online even as countrywide-arbiters scrambled to announce that this "trend" was not acceptable in tournaments. Random players with little understanding of the sport in random local tournaments had started banging tables much to everyone's dismay.

Vaishali Incident 

In January, 2025 Uzbek GM Nodirbek Yakubboev declined to shake hands with Indian GM Vaishali Rameshbabu before a game at the Tata Steel Challengers tournament due to religious reasons. Vaishali said she understood this and had not taken offence. But a witch-hunt had already started for Yakubboev eventually leading him to apologise on camera. No compensation for what he may have suffered or how ridiculous Vaishali may have felt dragged into an insane unnecessary controversy. This opened the floodgates to not-required religious debates

What do you want to see here? Kids throwing pieces and smashing clocks?
(c) Chess Club Black & White, Lucknow

Or, was that also marketing strategy? 

Who is coming up with all these ideas?

Who wants to earn money off chess without being an honest part of the community?

Who is so desperate to sell chess? 

Do we need to sell our chess soul to popularise the game? 

Who are the organisers of the match in Arlington?

Can one justify vandalism as exhibition and promotion?

Nature of Tournaments The very nature of chess tournaments requires large groups of people playing in close proximity in a closed hall. Managing that is a task by itself what with cheating being a monster the chess world is already grappling with. How can chess tournaments be conducted if young people start destroying chess sets and then possibly furniture? 

Already there have been incidents in India - This same Sunday, a player, during the last round at a rating tournament in Goa, intentionally swept off pieces from the board and started trash talking in a losing position when his opponent was low on time. Some time back, in the city of Vrindavan, players ransacked hotel rooms before checking out after a tournament. This is not cool. This cannot be acceptable behaviour by any account. 

After all, what stars do, fans copy.

Fourteenth World Chess Champion Vladimir Kramnik, responding to the controversy, said on X: 

"These people, "chessgrowers", are trying to hide, that majority of chess fans prefer watching serious chess. It is clear by stat reports. Yet, private interests are driving them to pretend and try to convince us that the opposite is true, by throwing pieces  in particular 😊." (sic)

CEO of Fide (the world chess federation) could not have said it better on X: 

"The event was a show. Fans were ecstatic. Players were encouraged to behave accordingly. All true.
Now, for better or worse, name me one top player who would do what Hikaru did." 

Royal Game 

There is a reason chess is called the royal game. It's not about being a purist. Creative marketing strategies keeping the sanctity of the sport alive are possible. The very reason people do chess is because of what chess is. Same goes for any sport. After all, we do have chess boxing now.

Would Gukesh have thrown his King to the crowds even if paid to do so? Why is the world's youngest world champion being portrayed as a hapless victim left rearranging his pieces? His act is of tremendous respect for the game and impresses the real chess audience far more than tossing the opponent's King into the crowd.  

The current World Champion D Gukesh, from Chennai, has brought class, values and respect to the game. It was tragic to see him reduced to a bewildered theatrical prop in a marketing gimmick.  

This is not even marketing. This is vandalism and desperate vandalism to ruin a traditional sport for a few more online views. No sponsor is coming to support such crass behaviour. No parents will be sending their five-year-olds to chess class to learn aggression. 

(c) Chess Club Black & White, Lucknow

 The organisers of Dallas event advertised: This isn’t your quiet library chess match. It’s a full-throttle arena spectacle with the biggest names in chess, lights, anthems, interviews, and a crowd that’ll shake the walls.

Was that not enough to market the sport? Did they really have to add damaging the chess set? What qualifies as crass behavior? Where do we draw the line?

The next edition of this show, as the organisers claim, will be in India. What can we expect? Maybe, right now, the organisers are exulting that they succeeded in more viewership. For them, there has been no harm and the critics are old fools. 

One day, when a ten-year-old boy picks up a King and throws it at his little girl opponent in class as other kids cheer him on while coaches watch in horror, these chess organisers would have pulled the final Faustian deal — sold our chess children's soul to the devil and undone all the work the thousands of unsung unknown heroes of the chess community have done across the world to teach respect, honour, dignity and gender equality.

Hopefully, FIDE will widely publicise and seek to endorse it's etiquette rulebook more strictly protecting the sanctity of our royal sport for all the children and the genuine practitioners of the art of chess.

Somewhere, a classroom of chess kids will again learn to respect their opponents and shake hands. Somewhere, a 64-year-old Grandmaster Gregory Kaidanov will again get up to stand in acknowledgement as a former world champion, decades younger than him, walks up to start a game. Chess is about honour and always was. So, it shall remain. 

If you're reading this and are associated with chess in any way, please call out all bad behaviour for the sake of our children and chess generations to come. 

(The writer is a journalist and chess player with a Masters in Child Psychology. As founder-director of Chess Club Black & White - Lucknow, her research papers are on developing analytical and lifeskills in children through chess and screen detox through board games for children.)

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Chess Club Black & White stands for honourable combat on the chessboard. Our monthly tournaments focus on themes of respect, discipline and love. Here are some of our tournament themes.

(c) Chess Club Black & White, Lucknow


(c) Chess Club Black & White, Lucknow

(c) Chess Club Black & White, Lucknow

(c) Chess Club Black & White, Lucknow

(c) Chess Club Black & White, Lucknow

(c) Chess Club Black & White, Lucknow

For response to the article, email editor@blackandwhiteindia.com.

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Friday, September 26, 2025

No Junk Food for Better Chess: Fitness Expert Dr Saranjeet Singh


Lucknow: Fitness and sports medicine specialist Dr Saranjeet Singh advised chess players to give up junk food for better tournament performance. He also spoke on how a high-sugar food intake, a few hours before a tournament game can influence a player's decision-making at the chessboard. The player, he said, does not even know, why he blundered.  But a sugar spike and fall has silently ruined his mental efficiency during the game. 

Dr Singh was speaking as chief guest at the Strategy Sunday Chess tournament hosted by Chess Club Black & White, Lucknow. 

Dr Saranjeet has served as a resource expert for the Sports Authority of India and the Indian Toxicological Research Institute. Notably, he has been the physical trainer for the National Junior Hockey Team and the Punjab Cricket Team. Over the past two decades, he has trained more than 50,000 individuals, earning recognition from luminaries such as former President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, and the late Sports Minister Sunil Dutt.


Dr Singh advised the players about proper nutrition, giving up junk food and controlling sugar spikes, protein and good fat intake. He also taught the players a basic breathing exercise of 3-4-5 seconds (inhale-hold-exhale) to improve game performance.

Dr Saranjeet Singh delivering a brief speech to the players and parents

Teenager Dibbyan Chakraboty
On a question by Teenager Dibbyan Chakraboty on mental preparation for tournaments, Dr Singh advised mediation and suggested various modalaties including yoga, pranayam etc... as available to a chess player from India's great culture and heritage. 

Tournament results:  

Tournament Hall

Open Category Champion Arif Ali

Veteran Arif Ali won the CCBW Chess Open with 6.5/7 points. Pawan Batham (State Tax Office) was a close second with 6 points after a draw with Sayeed Ahmad (Lucknow Chess Centre), 6 points, took home the senior citizen’s trophy. Talented youngsters Aarav Garg, Abhigyan Katiyar and senior coach Mayank Pandey all tied for 3rd place with 5 points each. 

Under 16 Overall Champion Aadi Saxena
The star of the tournament was Aadi Saxena who played excellent attacking chess to win the junior section with 6.5 points. Vedant Mishra was second with 6 points.

Under 9 Champion Kunwar Pranav Singh
Kunwar Pranav Singh becomes champion in the under 9 section with perfect score 7/7 points.

More photos in Facebook album (including newspaper clippings): 

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