2/16/2023 – The name Erich Eliskases is familiar to only a few chess enthusiasts today. However, the Austrian was one of the best players in the world in the late 1930s. In 1941 he was supposed to play for the World Championship with Alexander Alekhine. But things turned out differently. 15 February 2023 is the 110th birthday of Eliskases, who was born in Innsbruck, Austria, and died in Cordoba, Argentina.

10/3/2020 – Alberic O'Kelly de Galway was a Belgian Grandmaster of Irish descent. One of his trainers was Akiba Rubinstein, and after World War II O'Kelly belonged to the extended world class. He won the 3. World Championship of Correspondence Chess and supported chess as arbiter and author. O'Kelly died 40 years ago, on October 3, 1980. | Photos: Dutch National Archive

5/12/2019 – The Kan Variation, also known as Paulsen Variation, is a popular line of the Sicilian. It is named after Ilya Kan, a Russian player who was born 110 years ago last week, on May 4, 1909. He lived most of his life in Moscow where he worked as a lawyer. Kan played in ten Soviet Championships and helped Botvinnik to prepare for his World Championship matches against Smyslov but outside of Russia he is still rather unknown.

11/19/2018 – Today, November 19th, José Raúl Capablanca, would have celebrated his 130th birthday. After World War I the Cuban was the world's best player and World Champion from 1921 to 1927. During his career, he played more than 500 tournament games but lost only 36 of them. | Photo: Screenshot from the movie "Chess Fever"

7/15/2018 – Today, July 15th, Pal Benko turns 90. As the progenitor of the Benko Gambit, chess theory will always remember him, but he also had an interesting life. He was a ladies man, spent a year and a half in a Soviet prison camp, fled from Hungary to the US, played in two Candidates tournaments, and is a renowned composer of endgame studies and problems. FRANK ZELLER offers more details. | Photo: (left) F.N. Broers / Anefo [Public Domain], via Wikimedia Commons | (right) Diana Mihajlova

6/7/2018 – Today, 150 years ago, on June 7, 1868, Dawid Janowski was born, one of the world's best players at the beginning of the 20th century. Janowski was an inspired and dangerous attacking player who was strong enough to challenge Lasker to a World Championship match. | Photo: St. Petersburg 1914, from the "Neue Wiener Schachzeitung"

5/27/2018 – On May 10, 2018, Evgeni Vasiukov died in Moscow. In his prime, he was one of the best players in the world and amongst other things he won the prestigious Moscow Championship no less than six times. Later he was a renowned coach, second, and organiser and achieved a number of successes in senior tournaments. An obituary by DAGOBERT KOHLMEYER.

4/13/2018 – The 13th of April is "Kasparov-day". Today, 55 years ago, arguably the best player in chess history was born and since then has shaped the history of chess like no other player — not only on the board! Andre Schulz briefly traces Kasparov's history from his first international moves, through the peak of his career in 1999, his life in politics (both in and out of the chess world) and on to his recent advocacy work. | Photo: Kasparov.com

1/5/2018 – Only a few chess enthusiasts will remember the name of Paul Felix Schmidt thought Schmidt was one of the world's best players in the 1930s and 1940s, and equal to his Estonian countryman Paul Keres. A new biography by Eva Regina Magacs and Michael Negele invites you to get to know Paul Felix Schmidt and chess in his time.

1/21/2016 – In 1976 the Cuban writer Miguel Angel Sánchez published "Capablanca, leyenda y realidad", which the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba elected as best biographical book of the year. During the next thirty-seven years Sánchez continued to search all over the world for new material about the Cuban. He now published his findings in an exciting new book. A review...