The Top Chess Engine Championship saw Komodo calculate its way ahead of 23 other digital competitors to claim the title for the second series in a row. In the final round, facing Stockfish, another former champion, Komodo won eight games, Stockfish won two, and 90 were a draw.

Among humans, the Manhattan Applesauce defeated favorite team, the St. Louis Arch Bishops, to claim the 2015 United State Chess League Championship. The crucial win in that contest came on the fourth board when 12 year-old Akira Nakada defeated Nicholas Rosenthal.

Though he didn’t have an easy time of it, World Champion Magnus Carlsen won the London Chess Classic and therefore also the Grand Chess Tour.

A Chess game of a different sort took place in Lake Sartash in Russia. Yes, I do mean “in the lake“, which by the way, was frozen over at the time.

At the River Hill Fall event in Maryland, first Keaton Ellis beat the 3×3 Rubik’s Cube single-solve world record with a 5.09 second performance, then Lucas Etter topped that with a single-solve in 4.90 seconds.

Meanwhile, at the MPEI Open in Moscow, Roman Strakhov solved a 5×5 blindfolded in a world record 5 minutes, 4.81 seconds.

Zhao Jian of China won the World Series of Mahjong in Macau. His prize was HK$406,000 and a 24 karat gold Mahjong neclace.

The winner of the Magic: The Gathering 2015 World Cup was team Italy.

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It was Yusuke Takanashi of Japan’s fourth time winning the World Othello Championship, which this year took place in Cambridge, U.K. and earned him a $3,000 prize.

The winner of the World Scrabble Championship and a $10,000 prize was 32 year-old Wellington Jighere of Nigeria. To prepare for the event, Jighere had spent the previous 4 months in training full-time. At the tournament, he beat out 450 other players, including perennial favorite Nigel Richards, who only came in eighth.

The top trophy of the World Chess Championship for the Disabled, which took place in Dresden, Germany, went to Alexey Smirnov, representing the Russian chapter of the International Braille Chess Association. Placing 53rd but tops in inspiration was Shailesh Nerlikar of India, who has to play lying down and with the aid of an assistant to make and record his moves.

Feliks Zemdegs scored four Rubik’s Cube world records on his way to the top at Melbourne Cube Days. In one, he beat the previous record (which he held himself) for solving a 5×5 by 0.28 seconds (the new record is 46.97).

A world record-sized Twister mat (27,159.616 ft²—equivalent to 1,200 standard mats) saw play by singer Thomas Rhett and fans at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas

World no. 10-ranked Chess player, Wesley So, came in first at the Bilbao Masters, ahead of Viswanathan Anand (no. 3), Liren Ding (no. 8), and Anish Giri (no. 9).

The Trinidad & Tobago National Chess Championship was won by 24 year-old up-and-comer, Kevin Cupid, who has his sights on high-level international tournaments next. The National Women’s Championship was won by Aditi Soondarsingh for the ninth time.

Seven-hundred forty-eight students of California Baptist University playing Bunko set a new world record for most individuals playing the game at a single venue.

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Hikaru Nakamura managed to pull off a fantastic come-from-behind victory at the Millionaire Chess tournament in Las Vegas. First, one of his games was almost disqualified based on tournament rules that prohibited a draw before move 30. However, he and opponent Luke McShane were able to convince organizer Maurice Ashley to let the nine-move draw stand based on three-time repetition (a standard draw condition under FIDE rules). This tied Nakamura up at 5.5/7 with nine other players, all of whom were placed in a rapid playoff. After a win there he went on to join the final-four with three players who had advanced on scores of 6/7. Despite playing with a cold, he triumphed there as well and claimed the $100,000 top prize.

Maximilian Lu, age 9, of Connecticut became the youngest player in the history of the U.S. Chess Federation to earn the title of Master.

Thirteen-year-old Sota Fujii has become the youngest ever 3-dan Shogi player and may become the youngest ever professional player if he can achieve 4-dan in the next year and five months.

Meanwhile, engineers in Japan announced that their robotic Shogi player (it calculates the optimum play and moves the pieces) achieved a 63 percent winning record against professional players in 2014.

The EuropeMasters board game championships saw team Brettspielteam Hamburg of Germany take home the top trophy in a tournament made up of Deus, ZhanGuo, Orleans, and Five Tribes.

Magnus Carlsen won the 2015 FIDE World Rapid Chess Championship but let out an uncharacteristic expletive upon losing his fourth game in the World Blitz Championship. That contest was won for the third time by Alexander Grischuk.

The World Championship for Rapid, Blitz, and Turkish Draughts in Didim, Turkey was followed just a few days later by the World Cup and Bacoli Open in Italy. In the men’s section of the World Championship, Alexander Schwarzman placed first in Blitz and second in Rapid. Olga Balthazy led the women’s Blitz tournament undefeated, as did Faik Yildiz in the Turkish event. Guntis Valneris stole the show at the World Cup tournament, taking an early lead and leaving other players battling for second.

Tim Wong solved a Rubik’s Cube in just 19 moves for a world record.

Along his way to claiming the China Rubik’s Cube Championship, Feliks Zemdegs cleared four world records:  a single solve of the 4×4 cube in 21.54 seconds, a single solver of the 5×5 cube in 47.25 seconds, and the 5×5 cube solved in an average of 50.23 seconds. At the same event, Kaijun Lin broke the world record for solving a 3×3 blindfolded, doing it in 21.05 seconds.

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Nicolò Falcone of Venice, Italy won the 2015 Monopoly World Championship in Macao. His prize was US$20,580, an amount equivalent to the bank in a standard Monopoly game. Sponsored by Hasbro, the tournament brought together 27 winners of national and regional Monopoly competitions. In the final game, Falcone played with the race car token against Tsutomu Doita of Japan, Brian Valentine of the United States, and reigning Monopoly World Champion, Bjørn Halvard Knappskog of Norway. At one point in the game, a multi-player trade gave each a property color set.

The Pentamind World Championship, an event of the Mind Sports Olympiad, seeks to find the best all-around game player in the world. Players score “pentamind points” based on their rank in each game played and the player with the most points from their best-five games is declared the champion. That person at the 2015 event, August 23-31 in London, was James Hepell, who also won the Diving Chess World Championship.

At the 2015 Electric Football Championships in Richmond, Virginia there were events for kids, novices, experienced players, and members of the Miniature Football Coaches Association. The winner of the Legends Tournament was Darrel Smith.

The final game of the French Subbuteo Open saw brothers Mongi and Fayçal Rouis play to a tie, broken only by Fayçal in a shoot-out.

Roman Strakhov solved the 5×5 Rubik’s Cube blindfolded in a world-record 5 minutes, 18.65 seconds.

Levon Aronian of Armenia won the Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis, claiming its $75,000 top prize. The Sinquefield Cup is the second leg of the Grand Chess Tour.

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Matthew Tunnicliffe of Ottawa is the 2015 North American Scrabble Champion. He won that title, as well as a trophy and $10,000 cash prize, by defeating runner up Jesse Day 495-344, using words such as “huipil”, “bighead”, “nonelite”, “leucomas”, and “kiva” (only one of which passed my spell checker).

At the Rubik’s Cube U.S. Nationals 2015, the winner of the 3×3 was Drew Brads with an 8.33 second average. His achievement earned him a $1,000 prize. Keaton Ellis came in first place in the 3×3 one-handed competition at a 13.75 second average. Jakup Kipa of Poland solved the 3×3 with his feet in an average of 28.56 seconds.

The winner of the 40th World Backgammon Championship in Monte Carlo was Cihangir Çetinel of Turkey. Among his prizes was a Geoffrey Parker Backgammon board.

Arlington, Virginia was a hot-zone of Chess as the World Open followed just 4 days after the D.C. International Tournament. Both saw multi-player ties for first place (four at D.C. International and eight at the World Open) but the common element in the two groups was GM Ehsan Ghaem Maghami of Iran.

The African Team Draughts Championship saw a semi-final match replayed after an appeal, allowing Senegal to reverse its loss to Ivory Coast. Nevertheless, the team came up short in the finals, where Cameroon finished ahead.

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Nigel Richards claimed the trophy at the French Scrabble Championship, in French, which he doesn’t speak. But c’mon, it was Nigel Richards, for whom coming out on top of any Scrabble tournament in which he plays is a pretty safe bet. And in fact, it’s not uncommon for dedicated Scrabble players to compete in foreign language games. In many non-English-speaking countries, English Scrabble is still the predominant version played.

In another no-surprise win, Feliks Zemdegs took the Rubik’s Cube World Championship in Sao Paolo, Brazil. He also set a world record there for the 7×7 cube, solving it in 2 minutes, 23.55 seconds.

An average of 25 moves to complete the 3×3 Rubik’s Cube qualified Sébastien Auroux for a world record at the N8W8 Summer 2015.

Students in Michigan broke the U.S. record for toppling dominoes. Whether the same setup also broke a Rube Goldberg machine record remains in doubt because of several malfunctions. However, further investigation in to how backup devices functioned may yet deliver a record.

A Turkish diving instructor spent a world-record 72 hours under water. One of the ways in which he occupied himself was playing Backgammon.

After a three-way tie at the Nijmegen Draughts Open, Alexander Bulatov won on tie-breakers. Despite that, second place Anton Kosior took home more prize money, having also received awards for rating points, team competition, and rating group.

Shuhei Nakamura won Magic: The Gathering Grand Prix Dallas/Fort Worth without losing a single game in the top 8.

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Alfred “Eastpoint” Barnett of Sparta, Georgia won the American Pool Checkers Association National Tournament. It’s his 12th such title in 57 years playing the game. American Pool Checkers is a variant of American Checkers (also known as English Draughts) in which a piece may capture both forward and backward and kings may jump any number of squares.

Despite never having played the game before and having signed up for the wrong tournament by mistake, professional Poker player Christian Pham won the No-Limit Deuce-to-Seven Craw Lowball event at the World Series of Poker, earning an $81,000 prize and one of the coveted gold bracelets.

At the Irish Rubik’s Cube Championship, Oliver Frost solved the 4×4 in a world-record 2 minutes, 2.75 seconds. At the TCG & Friends Rubik’s Cube tournament in Peru, powerhouse Feliks Zemdegs broke two world and three Oceania records, and Gianfranco Huanqui broke five South American records.

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Brigitta Sinka of Hungary has broken the world record for total number of simultaneous Chess games played in a lifetime. The record was previously held by Cuban grandmaster Jose Raul Capablanca (1888-1942) and now stands at 13,600 (though by the time you read this, she’s probably played a few hundred more).

World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen crashed on home turf, finishing in the bottom half of Norway Chess 2015 (also the first stop of the $1 million Grand Chess Tour). The winner was Vaselin Topalov, with former world champion Viswanathan Anand coming in second.

Bridge has been admitted to the 2018 Asian Games (to take place in Indonesia) by the Olympic Committee of Asia. Its bid (as well as that of Chess) for admission to the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, however, was denied.

The winner of the World Crokinole Championship, Justin Slater, has been gunning for the position for 5 years, twice in that time coming in second.

A new world record has been set for solving a Rubik’s Cube with feet. Jakub Kipa did it in 20.57 seconds at the Radomsko Cube Theory in Poland.

The United Kingdom’s National Schools Top Trumps Tournament, sponsored by Winning Moves, started with 2,000 school-level tournaments, narrowed in an online round, and went to a live final. Coming out on top was William Gooch from Elloughton Primary School in Yorkshire.

Yu-Gi-Oh! events are divided in to two sections, one, Dragon Duels, for younger competitors (currently those born in 2002 or later), and one unrestricted. At the North American World Championship Qualifier event in Nashville, the winner in the open section was Noah Reid of Georgia; the winner in Dragon Duels was Austin Wesley Colling of Ohio. Both received similar prize packages included a trophy, complete sets of Secrets of Eternity and Crossed Souls boosters, an iPad, and expense-paid travel to the World Championship in Kyoto, Japan.

Indian Chess players performed well in recent tournaments. The world’s 25th ranked player Pendyala Harikrishna defeated defending champion Vassily Ivanchuk (ranked #27) in the final round  of the Edmonton International to claim the trophy. Abhijeet Gupta won the Commonwealth Chess Championship with a score of 8.0/9.

Nine year old Mhage Gerriahlou Sebastian of the Philippines qualified as Woman Candidate Master after winning gold and silver medals at the 16th ASEAN + Age Group Chess Championship.

A dedicated player who along with her late husband founded the Trinidad and Tobago Scrabble Association in 1985, Patricia John finally won the local Scrabble Masters Tournament herself and will be representing the country at the World English-Language Scrabble Players Association Championship, November in Perth, Australia.

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Rubik’s Cube

At the Indiana 2015, Kevin Hays solved a 6×6 cube in a world record 1 minute, 33.55 seconds.

Rami Sbahi broke another world record at the Canadian Open 2015, solving a 2×2 in just 0.58 seconds.

Draughts

Representatives from 19 countries gathered at the International Open Draughts Tournament in Salou, Spain, where the winner was Jan Groenendijk of the Netherlands.

Magic: The Gathering

Taking a turn at the table, Level 2 Judge Sky Mason was champion of Grand Prix Providence.

At Grand Prix Copenhagen, Przemek Knocinski of Poland secured first place with a Merfolk deck.

Subbuteo

At the International Open in Rosario, Argentina, Claudio Murcilli topped both the open and veterans sections.

Another tournament seeing significant international participation was the FISTF Major in Bologna, Italy. There, Juan Noguera of Spain took the trophy in the open section and Massimo Cremona of Malta came in first among veterans.

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Rubik’s Cube

Brian Johnson solved a 2×2 cube in just under 1 second (0.95) for a North American record.

Jan Bentlage’s three-solve average of 25 moves for the 3×3 Rubik’s Cube qualified as a world record for fewest moves.

Draughts

Latvian player Zoja Golubeva’s win at the Draughts World Championship for Women represents her 15th time taking that title.

Host country Uzbekistan led the medal count at the Asian Draughts Championship with 34 gold, 25 silver, and 25 bronze.

Magic: The Gathering

The Magic Online Championship brought the best online players together in the same room to play each other via laptop. The winner, Magnus Lantto, qualified for the Pro Tour and World Championship and took home a prize of $25,000.

For the release weekend of the Modern Masters set, there were coordinated Grand Prix events in Chiba, Japan (with 5,000 attendees); Utrecht, Netherlands (another 5,000 attendees); and Las Vegas (11,000 attendees total, though the competition was split in to two). Four couples were married at the events, and Wizards claims 1 million people watched online. The winners were Yuki Matsumoto in Chiba, Davide Vergoni of Italy in Utrecht, and Aaron Lewis and Scott Markeson in Las Vegas.

Monopoly

A group in Suisun City, California claims to have broken the world record for largest Monopoly board ever assembled.

Chess

When Natalya Zhukova of Ukraine won the European Women’s Chess Championship recently, it was a repeat of the same feat 15 years ago. However, her win was marred by some controversy.

Wei Yi, who only turned 16 during the tournament, won the Chinese Championship and broke in to the top-30 of FIDE internationally ranked players.

Jeffery Xiong of Texas, is only 14 years old but won the Chicago Open, broke the 2500 ratings mark, earned his third GM norm.

Connect 4

Guests, 314 of them, at Butlin’s Minehead Resort in Somerset, U.K. got together to break the world record for most people playing Connect 4 at the same time.

Scrabble

The winner of the 2015 Bayer National Scrabble Championship in India was Mohan Verghese Chunkath, a former Chief Secretary of the government of Tamil Nadu. Among his 24 games, Mr. Chunkath scored 56 bingos.

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