4/24/2018 – Nino Khurtsidze died Monday in Tbilisi after a long illness. The multiple times youth and junior world champion was one of the best players in Georgia. In 2017, she was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 41. | Photo: David Llada

7/19/2017 – Top Georgian player Nino Khurtsidze is fighting cancer. She underwent surgery in Germany and now has to undergo five rounds of chemotherapy. The total cost is beyond what she can afford. Her friends have asked the chess community to support her efforts to overcome the situation and return to the chess board. | Photo: Evgeny Surov, chess-news.ru

2/19/2017 – Six out of eight games drawn, mostly in a peaceful manner. Among these draws, there were two that actually went very well in black’s favor until the players on the black side decided to call it a day and conceded a draw. All said and done, four players qualified for the Quarterfinals while the remaining eight will fight in the tiebreakers. Illustrated report.

2/18/2017 – The third round of Women's World Championship in Tehran saw a rather peaceful day in which ladies at the office tried to play cautiously. With five out of eight games drawn, and some of them being dull and uneventful, three players scored to go to the next round with high hopes. The pervasive theme of these three games was the fact that the winners played the whole game by the book and did not try to do anything eccentric but to execute the known plans of their respective positions, step by step. Here is the illustrated report with GM analysis.

2/13/2017 – 20 of 63 ladies lost their respective matches and had to leave the cycle. 11 matches went into the tie-break with hair-raising pressure. For many, it was the question of survival in the competition. In Tehran, many of the players who lost their first games managed to bounce back and square the match, some did not. Check out GM Elshan Moradiabadi's illustrated report and analysis.