Armand Niculescu

Armand Niculescu is a full-stack developer and creator of SparkChess. He has two BDs in engineering and marketing and a MSc in Management. He's been programming since the age of 12 and he also loves design, photography, and - obviously - chess.

World Chess Championship 2018: Fabiano Caruana vs Magnus Carlsen – Game 3

Another day, another draw after 49 moves. Caruana and Carlsen repeated the Rossolimo Variation from their first game. More 🡢

World Chess Championship 2018: Magnus Carlsen vs Fabiano Caruana – Game 2

Fabiano was clearly in charge, but Carlsen successfully maneuvered for a draw. More 🡢

World Chess Championship 2018: Fabiano Caruana vs Magnus Carlsen – Game 1

The first match was a grueling marathon that lasted 7 hours, and although Carlsen had the advantage, he wasn’t able to convert it to a win. More 🡢

5 Best Chess Web Shops

Around 1100 AD chess was well known in royal and noble houses from Spain, France, and Italy. With an enormous variety of artistic and elaborated chess sets, it had to be simplified and unified in order to spread to all social classes. The turning point was in 1849, when “Staunton Chess Set” appears. More 🡢

SparkChess - The Free Online Multiplayer Chess Game

Multiplayer Score Adjustment

UPDATED on Jan. 22 with details! We’ve had several requests from our top players to decrease the gaps between scores. Right now, our top players simply can’t find enough similarly-ranked opponents to play against. To refresh your memory, SparkChess uses an Elo-based system for score, but we tweaked its parameters a bit to reward players […] More 🡢

Why Learning Chess is Important for Your Child

One of the more surprising aspects of chess is that it can actually improve creativity and original thinking. Creativity sounds like a non-measurable attribute, but studies have shown that children who play chess offer more creative and original solutions to problems than those who do not play chess. More 🡢

Old vs New: The SparkChess board redesign

With the new board design we introduced for SparkChess 10, some people were left wondering if the change was really necessary . After all, the old design has served the community for eight years and people grew attached to it. Far from us to pursue change for its own sake. In this post I’ll try to explain the reasons for the redesign. More 🡢

How we test SparkChess across platforms

SparkChess 9 is now available on all major platforms and devices, completing a cycle started last year. You may be wondering why the mobile version came out a month and a half after the desktop version. Read on to learn how we test it. More 🡢