10/24/2022 – 188 years ago, from June to October 1834, Louis-Charles Mahé de La Bourdonnais of France and Alexander McDonnell of Ireland played a series of five matches to determine who was the world's best player of their time. La Bourdonnais won with an overall score of 45 wins, 27 losses and 13 draws. Today, this series of matches is considered to be the first inofficial World Championship match. It helped enormously to popularize chess and led to a number of remarkable games. Eugene Manlapao has the details. | Pictured: Stamp issued by the postal administration of the Solomon Islands in 2013

1/7/2022 – The MegaBase 2022 is Chess History in Action: It offers 9.210.512 games, the earliest played in 1475 and the most recent played October 2021, many of them annotated. Here our columnist, offers an introduction to three epic matches from the MegaBase with six annotated games. There is a lot more to discover in this treasure trove, grand battles, opening novelties and exemplary endgames.

3/14/2017 – Recent trends in book publishing indicate how demanding life has become. A whole series of thick books tell you about "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", "1001 TV Series You Must Watch Before You Die", "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die" or "1001 Beers You Must Try Before You Die". But what about chess? And why not start small, e.g. with "50 chessgames every chessplayer should know"?

4/6/2014 – The players of Asian board games like Shogi and Go honor their champions at least as far back as the 1600s. Chess, on the other hand, crowned its first official World Champion in 1886, although the game has been around since the 6th century. The chess community recognizes sixteen title holders – too few for historian Paul Lillebo, who proposes we include five earlier champions.