The top 5 best scorers of the Olympiad are: 1. M. Tal (8 Olympiads, 101 games) +65=32-2 or 81,2%; 2. A. Karpov (6 Olympiads, 68 games) +43=23-2 or 80.1%; 3. T. Petrosian (10 Olympiads, 132 games), +70=50-1 or 79.8%; 4. Isaac Kashdan (5 Olympiads, 49 games), +52, =22, -5 or 79,8%; 5. V. Smyslov (9 Olympiads, 113

The rivalry between Kramnik and Topalov has gone to such an extend that each player refuses to shake the other’s hand and to speak together before and after the game. In this game played for the World Championship in 2006, Topalov made one of the biggest blunders of the chess history by missing 32. Rxg4!

Max Euwe was not yet a World Champion in 1920 but he was already known to be a talented player despite this little accident against his countryman Gerard Oskam.

Geroge Marco, the editor of the Wiener Schachzeitung from 1898 to 1916, was claiming that the game between Bernstein and Nimzowitsch, St. Petersburg, 1914 was the most brilliant draw game ever played. Was he right?

It is not rare to see passed pawns in a chess game but nine of them is not too frequent. You can find such position after the 55th black’s move in the game between V. Smyslov and M. Botvinnik in 1941.

Once the famous chess historian Ken Whyld was asking in his chess column if the following game was not the most boring ever played? In that game the first capture of any kind was on White’s 57 move…

Let’s start with some great upset results by top players. The shortest lost of Garry Kasparov in a chess game:

One of the shortest victories of Viktor Korchnoi was on 06.08.1983 in Passadena (USA) for the Candidates match against G. Kasparov. He played 1. d2-d4 then wait one hour before to be declared by FIDE the winner of the game and the match. His young opponent was still..in Moscow waiting for a visa! Later, FIDE

They are few top players who never won a title of national champion (senior). Among them: V. Kramnik, V. Ivanchuk, S. Karjakin, S. Mamedyarov, R. Fine, J.R. Capablanca…who else?

Today, it becomes very difficult if not for many impossible to beat chess computers or chess software but this is not new, in September 1988, the American Grandmaster Arnold Denker was already their first victim. He lost the match 3,5-0.5.