New in Chess 2022/8

6 Perpetual Rivalry
Annie Leibovitz immortalized Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo sitting at a luxury chess board.

8 Your Move
The plan was to let Humphrey Bogart play a lot more chess in Casablanca.

10 NIC’s Café
Mystery and intrigue surrounds a strange ‘fall’ that befell Anatoly Karpov in Moscow.

12 In Fischer’s footsteps
Fifty years after the fabled Fischer-Spassky match, another American ruined a Russian dream in Reykjavik as Hikaru Nakamura defeated Ian Nepomniachtchi in the final of the Fischer Random World Championship.

15 Celeb64: Guy Ritchie

26 Interview: Hikaru Nakamura
‘Not having to deal with nerves and pressure has changed everything for me.’

32 Interview: Magnus Carlsen
The Norwegian hopes for a serious future for Fischer Random, that is with a classical time-control.

36 Pipe dream turns into reality
Showing great chess and remarkable survival skills, Wesley So cleared all hurdles to win the Chess.com Global Championship.

54 Magnus’s magnificent encore
With nothing more than honour and money left at stake, Magnus Carlsen turned the Final of the Meltwater Champions Tour into a demonstration of his formidable strength in rapid chess.

60 Fair & Square
Elon Musk admits that Garry Kasparov plays chess almost as well as his iPhone, but...

68 The shadow of Hans Niemann
At the 2022 US Championships in St. Louis, Fabiano Caruana and Jennifer Yu both won their second national title. And what about Hans Niemann?

78 Maximize Your Tactics
Find the right moves.

80 Adult improvement
Chess is the worst thing ever, concludes James Altucher. Certainly compared to birdwatching.

83 What would you play?
Test your decision-making skills with Thomas ‘Toolbox’ Willemze.

88 State of the art
Judit Polgar shares her impressions of the 2022 Global Chess Festival.

92 Sadler on Books
Matthew Sadler read four captivating books about chess players flourishing and suffering in turbulent historical times.

98 Secret training games
The appearance of Lubomir Kavalek’s memoir Life at Play reminded Jan Timman of his stint as the American GM’s second back in 1976.

105 They are The Champions
Catherina Kaslan is the national women’s champion of Suriname.

106 Just Checking
Where is Jeroen Bosch’s favourite place in the world?