Advertise on podcast: Masters and Matches: A History of Chess

He came to Europe in 1929 and left in 1933. In just four years time, Sultan Khan, from the Punjab (current-day Pakistan), ended up winning three British Championships and beat top players such as Capablanca, Flohr, Marshall, Rubinstein and Tartakower in international tournaments and matches. These were absolutely remarkable results from a player who was not chess-educated the traditional way. In fact, Khan initially learned Indian chess, with its distinct rules that were very different from how the game was and still is played in the West. Hosts Arne Moll and Peter Doggers discuss Sultan Khan's short but sensational chess career and discuss two important books: - Sultan Khan. The Indian Servant Who Became Chess Champion of the British Empire by Danny King (New in Chess, 2020). - Endgame of Empire. Sultan Khan, Asias’s First Grandmaster by Ather Sultan and Atiyab Sultan (Fordham University Press, 2026). The game Khan-Capablanca: https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1135510 The Miss Fatima interview: https://youtu.be/zUOOQUMUdJA?si=gpliSIIuxtPStbEM&t=374 Hope you enjoyed the show! Please subscribe and spread the word about this podcast. About the hosts: Peter Doggers has played chess for over 30 years and written about it for almost 20. He regularly writes for Chess.com and New in Chess. He is the author of The Chess Revolution and also hosts The Chess News Podcast. https://peterdoggers.com/ Arne Moll has played chess even longer than Peter and also loves to write about it. He contributed many thought-provoking articles to the website ChessVibes.com between 2007 and 2013 and recently published his first book as well, called The Center Game. https://www.newinchess.com/the-center-game

The AVRO 1938 tournament was one of the strongest in history, with the top eight players in the world participating: Alexander Alekhine, Mikhail Botvinnik, José Capablanca, Max Euwe, Reuben Fine, Salo Flohr, Paul Keres and Samuel Reshevsky. It was intended to function as a Candidates Tournament, with Alekhine playing the next world championship match against the winner (although he did not agree to this without setting some conditions). Hosts Peter Doggers and Arne Moll discuss the situation in the chess world in the 1930s, the grueling schedule of the tournament (with every round held in a new city!), the progression of the tournament, its most famous games, and more. Keres-Capablanca: https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1071884 Botvinnik-Alekhine: https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1013309 Botvinnik-Capablanca: https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1031957 Hope you enjoyed the show! Please subscribe and spread the word about this podcast. About the hosts: Peter Doggers has played chess for over 30 years and written about it for almost 20. He regularly writes for Chess.com and New in Chess. He is the author of The Chess Revolution and also hosts The Chess News Podcast. https://peterdoggers.com/ Arne Moll has played chess even longer than Peter and also loves to write about it. He contributed many thought-provoking articles to the website ChessVibes.com between 2007 and 2013 and recently published his first book as well, called The Center Game. https://www.newinchess.com/the-center-game

Anthony Miles (1955-2001) was not only the first UK-born grandmaster but also one of the most interesting characters that ever appeared in the English chess scene. His win against Anatoly Karpov as Black in 1980 using the move 1...a6 is legendary, but in fact he successfully played offbeat openings throughout his career. Hosts Peter Doggers and Arne Moll discuss Miles the chess player, but also Miles as the outstanding writer that he was, and in particular his book reviews in which he never minced words. Karpov-Miles, his first win: https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1068157 Karpov-Miles, his second win: https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1067001 Miles-Vaisser: https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1266657 Hope you enjoyed the show! Please subscribe and spread the word about this podcast. About the hosts: Peter Doggers has played chess for over 30 years and written about it for almost 20. He regularly writes for Chess.com and New in Chess. He is the author of The Chess Revolution and also hosts The Chess News Podcast. https://peterdoggers.com/ Arne Moll has played chess even longer than Peter and also loves to write about it. He contributed many thought-provoking articles to the website ChessVibes.com between 2007 and 2013 and recently published his first book as well, called The Center Game. https://www.newinchess.com/the-center-game

It was Anatoly Karpov's biggest triumph and probably still the best ever tournament performance in chess: Linares 1994. The 12th world champion won the 12th edition of the original "Wimbledon of Chess" with four draws and nine wins, scoring a tremendous 11/13. He finished 2.5 points ahead of Garry Kasparov and Alexei Shirov.  Hosts Peter Doggers and Arne Moll discuss the tournament, including the famous touch-move incident that occurred in the game Polgar-Kasparov in the fifth round. Queen of Chess (Netflix) https://www.netflix.com/watch/81749912 Hope you enjoyed the show! Please subscribe and spread the word about this podcast. About the hosts: Peter Doggers has played chess for over 30 years and written about it for almost 20. He regularly writes for Chess.com and New in Chess. He is the author of The Chess Revolution and also hosts The Chess News Podcast. https://peterdoggers.com/ Arne Moll has played chess even longer than Peter and also loves to write about it. He contributed many thought-provoking articles to the website ChessVibes.com between 2007 and 2013 and recently published his first book as well, called The Center Game. https://www.newinchess.com/the-center-game

On the occasion of the upcoming FIDE Candidates Tournament in Cyprus, Peter Doggers and Arne Moll discuss what is surely the most famous Candidates Tournament of all: Zurich 1953. The tournament was won by Vasily Smyslov, who scored his first international tournament victory and who qualified for his first world championship. (He would eventually play 12-12 vs. Mikhail Botvinnik in a match in 1954, but in 1957 Smyslov managed to win another match against the same opponent to become the 7th World Champion of Chess.) The main reason why Zurich 1953 is so famous is because of David Bronstein's tournament book, which was praised by many trainers and players, including Garry Kasparov. As it turns out, three other participants also wrote books about the tournament – Max Euwe, Gideon Stahlberg, and Miguel Najdorf – and in this podcast, Arne argues that Najdorf's book might actually be better than Bronstein's. The hosts also discuss the rumors that the Soviet players were at some point working together to help Smyslov, forming a block against the other main contender, Samuel Reshevsky. Perpetual Chess Podcast episode on Zurich 1953: https://www.perpetualchesspod.com/new-blog/2021/7/9/book-recap-17-discussing-zurich-1953-with-fm-nate-solon-featuring-gm-andy-soltis Secret Notes by Bronstein & Voronkov:  https://books.google.nl/books/about/Secret_Notes.html?id=raRqAQAACAAJ&redir_esc=y Hope you enjoyed the show! Please subscribe and spread the word about this podcast. About the hosts: Peter Doggers has played chess for over 30 years and written about it for almost 20. He regularly writes for Chess.com and New in Chess. He is the author of The Chess Revolution and also hosts The Chess News Podcast. https://peterdoggers.com/ Arne Moll has played chess even longer than Peter and also loves to write about it. He contributed many thought-provoking articles to the website ChessVibes.com between 2007 and 2013 and recently published his first book as well, called The Center Game. https://www.newinchess.com/the-center-game

Jan Timman, a former world number-two, multiple world championship candidate, nine-time Dutch national champion, prolific author, honorary editor of New in Chess magazine, and endgame studies specialist, passed away on February 18, 2026, after battling a serious illness. He was 74. Peter Doggers and Arne Moll, the two Dutch co-hosts of this podcast, obviously dedicated the next episode of this podcast to this legendary player from The Netherlands. Peter's Timman obituary on Chess.com forms the basis of the episode while Arne and he regularly take the time to expand, add more anecdotes and share more (personal) memories. You can find the obituary, with lots of pictures, at https://www.chess.com/news/view/jan-timman-obituary Hope you enjoyed the show! Please subscribe and spread the word about this podcast. About the hosts: Peter Doggers has played chess for over 30 years and written about it for almost 20. He regularly writes for Chess.com and New in Chess. He is the author of The Chess Revolution and also hosts The Chess News Podcast. https://peterdoggers.com/ Arne Moll has played chess even longer than Peter and also loves to write about it. He contributed many thought-provoking articles to the website ChessVibes.com between 2007 and 2013 and recently published his first book as well, called The Center Game. https://www.newinchess.com/the-center-game

In this sixth episode of Masters and Matches, Peter Doggers and Arne Moll discuss the 1988 Chess Olympiad held in Thessaloniki, Greece. This was one of the most fascinating Olympiads in history, with many stories and anecdotes connected to it. In the Open section, the Soviet team included the "two Ks" Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov. Despite internal struggles between these two giants of the game, the team won the tournament convincingly, once again. The big struggle for silver was fought between England and, surprisingly,  the Netherlands, who were playing without their number one player Jan Timman. A key game was Nunn-Van der Sterren in the England-Holland match. Fourth came team USA, and one of the anecdotes is about Yasser Seirawan's game with Garry Kasparov. Of course we give a lot of attention to the Women's Olympiad as well, where Team Hungary, consisting of the three Polgar sisters and Ildiko Madl, surprised the chess world by claiming the gold medals ahead of the mighty Soviet Union, with a 12-year-old Judit Polgar scoring 12.5/13. SOURCES BBC documentary with Stephen Fry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zopb7VDSuN8 Queen of Chess: https://www.netflix.com/watch/81749912 Hope you enjoyed the show! Please subscribe and spread the word about this podcast. About the hosts: Peter Doggers has played chess for over 30 years and written about it for almost 20. He regularly writes for Chess.com and New in Chess. He is the author of The Chess Revolution and also hosts The Chess News Podcast. https://peterdoggers.com/ Arne Moll has played chess even longer than Peter and also loves to write about it. He contributed many thought-provoking articles to the website ChessVibes.com between 2007 and 2013 and recently published his first book as well, called The Center Game. https://www.newinchess.com/the-center-game

There's so much to say about Bobby Fischer and so we might spend more than one episode on this fascinating figure from chess history. The 11th world champion was one of the best players to ever play the game, but he is also famous for his writings – the topic of this fifth episode of Masters and Matches. Peter Doggers and Arne Moll interview IM John Donaldson, whose new book "Inside the Mind of Bobby Fischer" deals with this topic extensively. https://www.amazon.com/Inside-Mind-Bobby-Fischer-Annotations/dp/1890085286 Hope you enjoyed the show! Please subscribe and spread the word about this podcast. About the hosts: Peter Doggers has played chess for over 30 years and written about it for almost 20. He regularly writes for Chess.com and New in Chess. He is the author of The Chess Revolution and also hosts The Chess News Podcast. https://peterdoggers.com/ Arne Moll has played chess even longer than Peter and also loves to write about it. He contributed many thought-provoking articles to the website ChessVibes.com between 2007 and 2013 and recently published his first book as well, called The Center Game. https://www.newinchess.com/the-center-game

Say "January" to chess players, and they say: "Wijk aan Zee." In this fourth episode of Masters and Matches, Peter Doggers and Arne Moll dive into the long history of the Tata Steel Chess Tournament, which will have its 88th edition starting in a week from now. The "Wimbledon of Chess" has a special place in the heart of both amateur chess fans and top players. Bent Larsen famously said: "Normal people have to see Naples before they die... but a chess grandmaster has to win Wijk aan Zee first." The event was first held in 1938 and was called Hoogovens Tournament until 1999. Following a merger with British Steel, the company and its tournament was renamed 'Corus' in 2000 and since 2011 it is called Tata Steel Chess. The record winner is Magnus Carlsen (8 times), followed by Viswanathan Anand (5 times). Since the 1950s, when the tournament became truly international, all world champions participated except for Bobby Fischer. In this episode, we tell how the tournament started in that pre-WWII year 1938 and  about the sponsor that has remained faithful to chess for nine decades. We bring many stories, such as Emil Josef Diemer falling off the stage, IM Manuel Bosboom beating Garry Kasparov in a blitz game, or a 13-year-old Magnus Carlsen making his debut in Grandmaster Group C. In short, this is your ideal preview to get you in the mood for the upcoming Tata Steel Chess Tournament! Hope you enjoyed the show! Please subscribe and spread the word about this podcast. About the hosts: Peter Doggers has played chess for over 30 years and written about it for almost 20. He regularly writes for Chess.com and New in Chess. He is the author of The Chess Revolution and also hosts The Chess News Podcast. https://peterdoggers.com/ Arne Moll has played chess even longer than Peter and also loves to write about it. He contributed many thought-provoking articles to the website ChessVibes.com between 2007 and 2013 and recently published his first book as well, called The Center Game. https://www.newinchess.com/the-center-game

In this third episode of Masters and Matches, Peter Doggers and Arne Moll discuss the infamous Toiletgate scandal, when Vladimir Kramnik was accused of cheating during his world championship match with Veselin Topalov in Elista in 2006. The episode is not only a complete overview of how the match unfolded, what accusations were made and how the players reacted at the time, but also features all the events that happened both before this match and afterward. For starters, it was Topalov himself who was suspected by grandmasters of having cheated during the San Luis World Championship tournament in 2005. And then, half a year after the Elista match, suddenly Topalov and his manager Silvio Danailov were once again accused in Wijk aan Zee 2007 when seemingly suspicious videos appeared of Danailov spending a lot of time at Topalov's board, making strange gestures, walking back and forth and using his phone. In the end, no clear evidence was surfaced related to whether Kramnik or Topalov cheated during that period in time.  Most remarkable are the similarities between the discussed period of 2005-2007 and more recent times, when we see Kramnik on the other side of the allegations, and using very similar methods and language as the Bulgarians were doing two decades ago. These parallels formed the inspiration for choosing this topic in the first place and ended up being even more striking than suspected. Hope you enjoyed the show! Please subscribe and spread the word about this podcast. About the hosts: Peter Doggers has played chess for over 30 years and written about it for almost 20. He regularly writes for Chess.com and New in Chess. He is the author of The Chess Revolution and also hosts The Chess News Podcast. https://peterdoggers.com/ Arne Moll has played chess even longer than Peter and also loves to write about it. He contributed many thought-provoking articles to the website ChessVibes.com between 2007 and 2013 and recently published his first book as well, called The Center Game. https://www.newinchess.com/the-center-game

In this second episode of Masters and Matches, Peter Doggers and Arne Moll dive into the Moscow 1925 tournament which took place exactly a hundred years ago. Apart from discussing what was Efim Bogoljubov's biggest success, the podcast explains why chess was so popular in the Soviet Union and where it all started. 1925 turns out to be a fascinating year in both chess history and history in general. Aron Nimzowitsch's My System started to get published alongside Emanuel Lasker's Manual of Chess. In the same year, Benito Mussolini came into power in Italy, Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf came out and in art, we saw the first exhibitions in Art Deco and Surrealism and Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin. Another reason that Moscow 1925 was special was that it was likely the first-ever chess event where a camera was present that filmed the players. This was because scenes from the movie Chess Fever were shot there, which has cameos of different participants, most notably Jose Capablanca.  You can find it on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdXmtc56rsM Speaking of Capablanca, after the tournament, the reigning world champion talked about a topic that is still relevant to this day: whether too many draws might be happening at the top level. A full century before Magnus Carlsen got fed up with classical chess, Capablanca wrote: Consider the fact that the great masters of truly superior class, like Alekhine and Bogoljubow, young men, know every opening variation that has been frequently used by other masters; that Alekhine, for instance, who is only 33, knows every game played in any tournament or match in the past 25 years; that the similarity of the technical development of the majority of openings is such that even when one transposes the order of moves or plays something new or unknown, it is relatively easy to find the correct reply. Consider all this, even without taking into account other aspects more related to style, which would be difficult to explain and would make the present piece too long, and you will reach the conclusion that it is necessary to think very seriously about the question of draws if one does not wish to reach the point where there are several players who are completely invincible. Hope you enjoyed the show! Please subscribe and spread the word about this podcast. About the hosts: Peter Doggers has played chess for over 30 years and written about it for almost 20. He regularly writes for Chess.com and New in Chess. He is the author of The Chess Revolution and also hosts The Chess News Podcast. https://peterdoggers.com/ Arne Moll has played chess even longer than Peter and also loves to write about it. He contributed many thought-provoking articles to the website ChessVibes.com between 2007 and 2013 and recently published his first book as well, called The Center Game. https://www.newinchess.com/the-center-game

In this first episode of Masters and Matches, Peter Doggers and Arne Moll tell about the very last of the many matches that Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov played against each other: their rapid and blitz match in 2009 in Valencia, Spain. The event was part of a festival called 'Birthday of Modern' chess and included several lectures about the city of Valencia's importance to the way we play chess today. Arne and Peter travelled together to Valencia to attend the festival, and witnessed the legendary "two Ks" Kasparov and Karpov playing a fierce match, full of fighting chess. The episode includes fragments from their press conferences, so you can hear some comments from the players at the time. Hope you enjoyed the show! Please subscribe and spread the word about this podcast. About the hosts: Peter Doggers has played chess for over 30 years and written about it for almost 20. He regularly writes for Chess.com and New in Chess. He is the author of The Chess Revolution and also hosts The Chess News Podcast. https://peterdoggers.com/ Arne Moll has played chess even longer than Peter and also loves to write about it. He contributed many thought-provoking articles to the website ChessVibes.com between 2007 and 2013 and recently published his first book as well, called The Center Game. https://www.newinchess.com/the-center-game