British Chess Magazine May 2025

Chess has a new cast of stars — and most of them aren’t grandmasters. In recent years, chess has undergone a big transformation – not just in how it’s played, but in who its biggest stars are. Moving from over-the-board to online events, the audiences and the interaction with chess have shifted from earlier times. As in most sports, chess’s brightest stars have traditionally been its top players. That’s no longer a given – influencers now outshine even the elite. Influencers like GothamChess (Levy Rozman), Agadmator (Antonio Radić), the Botez sisters and Anna Cramling all have far larger social media followings than many elite professionals. Even Magnus Carlsen, the most recognisable name in chess probably in history, trails behind Rozman on platforms like YouTube and Twitch. On YouTube, Rozman has…

Ju Wenjun won the match with a crushing 6.5-2.5 score and became only the fourth woman to have five World Championship titles under her belt, after Vera Menchik, Nona Gaprindashvili and Maia Chiburdanidze. The World Championship match between Ju Wenjun and Tan Zhongyi took place in China, in Shanghai and Chongqing from 3-16 April, ending ahead of schedule. In a way, this match resembled the Candidates final match in Buenos Aires in 1971 between Fischer and Petrosian: the final score was the same, as was the fact that the winner won four games in a row to decide the match in convincing fashion. This was not the first time Ju and Tan played in a World Championship match. They met in 2018 and then Ju won 5.5-4.5. In Ju’s words,…

Most championship stories begin with a confident start and build from there. Teodora Injac’s didn’t. The Serbian number two seed opened her campaign in Rhodes with a painful loss to a lower-rated opponent, missing a mate in two—a psychological blow that ends many a tournament before it begins. But what followed was one of the most remarkable comebacks in modern chess: nine consecutive wins, a title clinched with a round to spare, and a performance that didn’t just win a trophy, but signalled the rise of a player stepping confidently into the World elite. The European Women’s Chess Championship took place from 31 March to 11 April in Rhodes, Greece. With no players rated above 2500, perhaps the European championship loses a bit of its allure. Still, given that the…

To the wider world, Levy Rozman is better known under his social media name – GothamChess. Born in New York in 1995, Rozman started playing chess at the age of six and – by 2018 – he became an International Master. But his breakthrough in chess happened not over the board but – online. The chess Batman from New York has caught the public’s attention in 2020, when COVID and The Queen’s Gambit Series launched a wave of global interest in chess. His YouTube channel, GothamChess, quickly grew to become the most-subscribed chess channel in the world, with millions of followers across platforms. Known for making chess accessible and fun, Rozman has helped spark a global wave of enthusiasm for the game, especially among younger and newer players but also…

Consider the following position. It will recur later in this column Rescuing oneself from a seemingly hopeless position forms part of the armoury of every strong chess player. The current political situation in Ukraine reminds me ineluctably of the chess player’s ability to salvage a draw from an inferior position. And of the various ways to achieve a draw, Stalemate is by far the most emphatic. It is no accident that both Trump and Putin have associated themselves with chess in the past and that both have earned a reputation for strategic thinking, when, for example, compared with the current crop of western leaders. Stalemate is a situation in chess where the player whose turn it is to move is not in check and has no legal move. Stalemate, therefore,…

It began as a clever chess study buried in a Reddit post. Four years later, it was being solved by grandmasters, dissected by YouTubers, and racking up hundreds of thousands of views—while its creator had no idea it had gone viral. The “Trojan Horse” puzzle, designed by Australian chess composer Ben Schultz, is now something of classic—an engine-breaking, knight-sacrificing gem that demands both human ingenuity and a bit of nerve. When Ben Schultz contacted BCM a while back with his Trojan Horse puzzle – not many people were happy to open an email with such a headline, given the ominous reputation of Trojan horses when it comes to emails. Still – after he got in touch with our editor via LinkedIn, we were delighted to read the email and to…