Dear Chess Player,

Welcome to the US Chess Sales weekly newsletter. This week’s featured story explores the Computer Chess Championship. It traces the evolution of engine battles from early pioneers to today’s neural networks. Our story looks at landmark matches and the development of this tournament. Whether you’re into hardware, software, or pure competition, the computer chess championship is fascinating.

Discover a concise, practical guide in this week’s US Chess Sales first blog post, “The 10 Best Chess Starting Moves For Black.” Designed for players building a dependable repertoire, it ranks ten reliable replies, explains typical plans and pawn structures, and highlights which lines suit tactical or positional players. Discover the best options for responding to White’s opening.

The Best Chess Openings for Beginners is the second US Chess Sales blog post this week. It introduces simple, reliable openings and the ideas behind them. It explains easy‑to‑learn replies, focusing on basic plans, typical piece placement, and common traps to avoid. Our post is Ideal for new players wanting fast, playable results and steady improvement.

Wishing you great games this week,
The US Chess Sales Team

Feature Story
Computer Chess Championship

Despite being one of the least known tournaments, the Computer Chess Championship (CCC) features the most accurate and complex chess in the world.

The simple reason for this is that it pits the strongest chess engines against each other. For over a decade now, chess-playing programs have been stronger than the best human players. Not only that, but they are showing no signs of slowing down.

Creators of these programs are keen to put their engines to the test: enter computer chess tournaments.

Tournament History and Structure

The CCC started in 2017 as a one-off event. Hosted by Chess.com with a prize fund of $2,500, it attracted the top 10 chess engines in the world. The two best performers, Stockfish and Houdini, faced off in a 20-game final. It was a close contest, with 15 games drawn, but Stockfish ultimately took the win with 3 wins and 2 losses.

The next year, Chess.com announced the tournament would resume as a non-stop competition for the strongest engines. Unlike human players, chess engines don’t need to take breaks or manage busy schedules, so the engines in the CCC never stop competing.

The games have different time formats and even compete in the Chess960 variant, in which the back rank pieces are randomized. At the time of writing, Stockfish remains in the top spot with a staggering ELO rating of 3930.

Why Follow the Computer Chess Championship?

For some, watching chess engines compete may not seem worth the time. While they may lack the drama of human matches, if you are looking for extraordinary demonstrations of logic, calculation, and even creativity, you will enjoy engine games.

There is no doubt that high-level engine games are very different from human matches. Modern chess computers can calculate further ahead and evaluate so much more accurately than humans that some of their moves seem completely nonsensical.

Take a look at this move from Stockfish in a game against Leelenstein from the CCC in 2019.

This queen move looks slightly mysterious. It protects the queen, but does not defend the knight. White can capture with check. The point is, Stockfish sees further than we do. The weakness of the White king is too much, and Black can unleash a devastating attack.

After many forcing moves, we have the final flourish: two rook sacrifices, which White cannot accept. The first, Rb3+, forces the king to move (capturing leads to checkmate). The second rook sacrifice is completely forcing Rb1+. White must capture, and Black delivers checkmate Qa1+.

Featured Blog Posts

The 10 Best Chess Starting Moves For Black

The Best Chess Openings for Beginners

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