This week, FIDE announced that the 2012 Candidates Tournament - which will select the challenger for the 2013 World Chess Championship to play the winner of the upcoming match between Boris Gelfand and Viswanathan Anand - will be held in London, England. London has recently become a hotspot for international chess competitions, thanks in large part to the annual London Chess Classic.

The Candidates Tournament will be a double-round robin, and take place from October 23 to November 13. Participating players include Magnus Carlsen, Levon Aronian, Vladimir Kramnik, Vassily Ivanchuk, Alexander Grischuk, Peter Svidler, and Teimour Radjabov, the organizer's selection. As ChessBase points out, it's likely that the organizers chose Radjabov because he was possibly the most deserving player not in the field, and there was no English player they felt would be a credible challenger. The eighth player will be the loser of the upcoming World Championship match.

The match has an important place in chess history. When two players pit themselves against each other over a long series, the result is a tense struggle in which both sides fight for the advantage at every turn. While tournaments can be memorable, virtually all of the most dramatic and pivotal moments in chess history have come from match play.

With that in mind, I've begun a series of articles that will cover the most important matches in the history of chess. Today, I've uploaded summaries of two (well, technically three) matches that had a huge impact on the world of chess: the Fischer-Spassky 1972 World Chess Championship, and the two matches played between Garry Kasparov and Deep Blue. If you're not familiar with these matches and have an interest in chess history, I hope they give you a little insight into these amazing chess battles!

One of the most popular articles on this site is the "Every Move Explained" piece on the famous Morphy Opera House Game. It occurred to me that it might be worthwhile to do another of these articles soon, focusing on another of the most famous games in chess history.

A few of the most likely candidates can be found in a new article I just posted, detailing ten of the most famous chess games ever played. Is there a particular game people would like to see notes and annotations for on this site? While I'm probably not qualified to be analyzing any of these games on my own, plenty of the greatest minds ever to play chess have done so before me, which should help make it possible to provide a move-by-move analysis on any chess game you guys want to see.

Levon Aronian put together an impressive tournament to win the 2012 Tata Steel Chess Tournament. Despite losing to World #1 Magnus Carlsen, Aronian still won the tournament by a full point over carlsen, Teimour Radjabov, and Fabiano Caruana, who shared second place.

For a full review of Wijk aan Zee 2012, check out the new article I've posted on the tournament!