12/5/2022 – Among the numerous powerful new features in ChessBase 17, one of the most striking has to be the introduction of the Buddy Engine in the panoply of engine tools. This innocuous named tool is the lynchpin in the new engine data shared with users, effectively innovating on a standard that has changed very little in decades. Don't miss this overview and video!

10/28/2022 – In the last several weeks, the world of chess has been rocked by the accusations and allegations of cheating with the help of a computer. The idea is not new of course, but it might shock you to know the very first case of surreptitiously using a computer in a game against a grandmaster dates all the way back to 1980. You won't believe who were responsible! Here is the original video footage of the pioneers in action.

8/10/2022 – The 2022 World Computer Chess championship was just held, and was the first edition since 2019 and the outbreak of the pandemic. After over two years, the traditional event took place in Vienna, Austria, and the winners were Ginkgo AKA Fritz using new neural net technology, and a powerful new Komodo (free update today!). Don't miss Komodo's fantastic knight sacrifice (with video!). (photo: Erdo Gunes, operator of Komodo)

7/27/2022 – By now it is almost impossible to not have heard the tragic tale of the 7-year-old boy whose finger was broken during an exhibition by a chess playing robot. It was certainly the least likely incident one would have imagined, but Murphy's Law was in full swing that day. Still, the history of robots and chess has been ongoing for over 250 years now, with robot chess players today in the homes of proud owners.

5/16/2022 – One of the fascinating aspects of new iterations of tablebases is submitting known positions to their 'divine' evaluation. The words "better" or "worse" cease to have any meaning and not only are all evaluations perfect and absolute, but so are the solutions. In the following article a share of cooks of studies as well as famous endgames and analyses are placed under the spotlight of the 8-piece tablebases.

5/11/2022 – Endgame tablebases can only be described as "god chess" as they are perfect information on all positions they cover, and the terms 'better' or 'worse' cease to have any meaning. Marc Bourzutschky has trained and resolved a large number of the 8-piece tablebase positions and shared his results and findings, as well as insights in a video interview.

3/4/2021 – Every chess fan knows about the "Man vs Machine" matches between the IBM computer Deep Blue and World Champion Garry Kasparov in 1996 and 1997. But in the 1960s IBM had already developed a computer that could play chess reasonably well: the IBM 305 Ramac. At an industrial fair in Milan, Ramac even defeated the Italian champion Mario Monticelli - with a little trash-talk to spice things up. A find by Adolivio Capece.

2/11/2021 – 25 years ago, on February 10, 1996, Deep Blue became the first chess computer to beat a reigning World Champion in a game under tournament conditions. This happened in the first Kasparov vs Deep Blue match, the first big "Man vs Machine" match. Despite his loss in the first game Kasparov still won the match 4-2, but one year later, 1997, he lost the rematch against Deep Blue.

12/21/2020 – For long-time chess fans this might already sound like a tiring question. But for newcomers and those still invested in finding out how far computers can go in terms of solving the game, this remains to be a fascinating subject. British daily newspaper The Guardian recently published a 6-minute video — featuring Garry Kasparov, Maurice Ashley, Daniel Gormally and Alexandra Botez — exploring the issue.

12/8/2020 – In the latest episode of his "Let's talk about chess" podcast Eric van Reem talks with Stefan Meyer-Kahlen, the creator of Shredder. Shredder is one of the best-known computer programs and won no less than 15 titles at Computer Chess World Championships.

10/2/2020 – Some might think that ChessBase was the inventor of the chess database. That is true to some degree, but there is a predecessor, and Frederic Friedel was a part of it. In the video we talk about one of the very first commercially available chess database systems, called "Intelligent Chess", and we opened our little ChessBase museum to present to you, the original prototype including a database on audio cassette.

7/5/2020 – Looking back: in 1983 Frederic Friedel was in Budapest for the third Microcomputer World Chess Championship. There he made first acquaintance with the Polgar family, but also met the East German chess programming team. His description of this memorable encounter tells us what things were like in the fading years of Eastern European communism.

6/4/2020 – On August 31, 1970, an experiment began that continues to this day. The first chess tournament for computers was held as part of the ACM’s National Conference. The interest generated was tremendous, leading to ACM sponsoring an annual event until 1994. Professor Jonathan Schaeffer has provided us with a retrospect of what it was like at this pioneering time, which was the beginning of a 50-year project to build a chess program capable of competing with (and, eventually exceeding the abilities of) strong human players. The experiment continues to this day and for the foreseeable future, he says.

5/24/2020 – Back in the 1980s some program authors tried to avoid the problems of the horizon effect by following suspicious lines a few half moves deeper. It became ever more difficult to use the horizon trap on them. The authors were not always forthcoming about their progress, so Frederic Friedel devised a number of test positions to find out more and to find how individual programs worked.

5/14/2020 – Take a look at the position in our picture. How can White draw? Impossible, of course: you capture the knight, the black king moves to d4 and then the pawns win the game. However, against early computers there was a way to save this position. In our first historical article, describing the early days of chess programming, you will learn how computers could fall into the horizon trap.

4/10/2020 – Battle Chess is a computer game from 1988. Although producer and director Brian Fargo from Interplay Productions first did not believe that the game would find an audience, it became a big success and if you like chess and computer games, you have probably heard of Battle Chess. Here's a short review of this cult classic.

8/28/2019 – In Macau (China) the "Chess Events" of the International Computer Games Association (ICGA) came to an end last week. In fact, behind this prosaic name are world championships in three disciplines: the World Computer Chess Championship (WCCC), the World Chess Software Championship (WCSC) and the Speed ​​Championship. At the start were six teams with their programs, including Komodo 13, which won in each of the two main disciplines WCCC and WCSC. | Photos: Erdogan Günes

8/20/2019 – Some people keep a Komodo dragon in their yard, and some keep it in their living room, safely inside their computer! In this interview with Grandmaster Larry Kaufman, one of the creators of Komodo, the World Chess Software Champion, we gain new insight into the latest release of the popular chess program. Komodo has gained strength both in the standard version, but particularly in the Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS), making the engine a valuable research tool for correspondence games, and openings.

2/18/2019 – In the first two sections of this series, originally published in Der Spiegel, Europe's largest (and most influential) news portal, Frederic Friedel described his decades-long involvement in computer chess. He was commissioned to make the story personal, and in part three he describes his encounter with the latest twist in this area of research: artificial intelligence and self-learning machines that are playing at the very highest levels of the game. Where are we headed and what will the future bring?

2/12/2019 – Europe's largest (and most influential) news portal, Der Spiegel, recently published a three-part series on the history of chess programming. It was authored by Frederic Friedel, emeritus editor of the ChessBase news page. In the early 1980s Frederic was intrumental to bringing computer chess to the attention of the German public, and in 1987 he co-founded ChessBase. Here is part two of his series. Read part one.

2/5/2019 – The recent World Championship in London was closely followed by Europe's largest (and most influential) news portal. Der Spiegel had live coverage and game commentary. They also posted a three-part series on the history of chess programming, authored by Frederic Friedel, emeritus editor of this news page. In the early 1980s Frederic was instrumental to bringing computer chess to the attention of the German public, and in 1987 he co-founded ChessBase. Here is part one of his series.

1/31/2019 – AlphaZero became a worldwide sensation when it defeated the world's strongest chess engine in a long match just hours after being fed the rules of the game. At the time, Garry Kasparov said that it had shaken chess to its roots. In the opinion of Matthew Sadler and Natasha Regan, the authors of the book 'Game Changer: AlphaZero's Groundbreaking Chess Strategies and the Promise of AI' this all-new silicon monster developed by DeepMind has helped us discover that there is lots of fresh potential in chess. ADITYA PAI spoke with the authors about their book, the impact AlphaZero has (and will have) on our royal game and whether chess will be solved one day in the light of such technological advancements.

1/30/2019 – Until now, chess programs mostly worked according to the so-called alpha-beta pruning search algorithm. The spectacular Deep Mind project Alpha Zero is based on the Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS). The Komodo developers, too, are now increasingly relying on this method — with success. STEPHEN OLIVER PLATZ explains the difference and shows the progress. | Photo: (Komodo Dragon) Ryan Vaarsi, CC BY 2.0

1/3/2019 – Reviewer DAVIDE NASTASIO spent a month with the new book by GM Karsten Mueller and Jonathan Schaeffer, published by Russell Enterprises in November, and was enthralled by the history and development of chess engines. But he also believes that the book has a lot to offer players seeking to improve. Pictured: The Turk, Wolfgang von Kempelen's automaton chess player