9/3/2026 – The Opening Encyclopaedia 2026 presents you with a wealth of new ideas for your opening repertoire. From May 2025 to March 2026, 62 new repertoire suggestions and 46 new videos have been added to the Opening Encyclopaedia! In total, you have access to 1586 opening articles, 100 videos and 8274 surveys covering a period of over 26 years!

9/3/2026 – As early as the end of 2024, at the Blitz World Championship in New York, Alexander Grischuk played the piece sacrifice 9.Nd5! in the Sicilian Kan Variation – a move that had never before been played at Grandmaster level. To the surprise of our author, Petra Papp, this ‘brilliant idea’ has apparently remained virtually unknown to this day. In the ChessBase Online Database, you’ll find a grand total of five games with this move! Petra Papp has examined the variations following 9.Nd5! and presents her findings in the article ‘Grischuk’s stroke of genius’ in the new ChessBase Magazine #233. You can now read the full article, including all the game analyses, in this week’s CBM free sample!

9/3/2026 – ChessCare.com, a new player management agency dedicated to professional chess players, has been launched by grandmaster Sebastian Siebrecht and marketing expert Oliver von Wersch. The agency will offer services covering career planning, contracts, travel logistics, sponsorship, communications and talent development. Its stated aim is to support players as the chess world becomes increasingly professional, allowing them to focus more fully on competition while receiving structured commercial and operational support.

9/3/2026 – Dear chess friends! When discussing ChessBase authors and content creators, no name is more synonymous with high quality than British Grandmaster Daniel King. His courses, videos, and articles, have been essential viewing for decades! This week only, you can get ALL of his video courses at our lowest ever price. Save up to 50 percent!

9/2/2026 – The Tirol Open 2026 featured eight days of high-level chess in Innsbruck. In the A Open, GM Harshit Raja successfully defended his title from the previous year, albeit only on tiebreaks ahead of FM Tobias Kolb, who finished level on points with the two-time champion. Philipp Schlosser, Timur Kocharin and Cedric Chassard ensured that three more German players finished in the top ten of the 57-player field.

9/2/2026 – The year 1926 was a major one for chess tournaments. Among the many outstanding events was the anniversary tournament of the Hannover Chess Club, which had already enjoyed a remarkable history and was now celebrating its 50th anniversary. The battle for first place developed into a close contest between the two favourites, Aron Nimzowitsch (pictured) and Akiba Rubinstein, with Nimzowitsch ultimately prevailing. Friedrich Sämisch proved to be the decisive factor.

9/2/2026 – Spanish Anti-Berlin: "Give me the f-file!": Christian Braun likes 4.d3 Bc5 5.Be3!? – "The Fortress" with opposite-coloured bishops and two connected passed pawns: Dorian Rogozenco shows how the defender should position himself – Do you know the Barendregt Variation? Robert Ris advocates 1.d4 g6 2.c4 Bg7 3.Nc3 d6 4.e4 c5 5.d5 Bxc3+ 5.bxc3 e5!? – "Attack with Qh5!" One move, many motifs: Oliver Reeh tests you in 32 example games with plenty of training exercises – Alekhine-Chatard Attack – as dangerous as 100 years ago: Sergey Grigoriants updates 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5 Be7 5.e5 Nfd7 6.h4! – The Isolated c-Pawn: Mihail Marin demonstrates the advantages of a fragmented structure, using two games of Kasparov-Karpov! – Grischuk's Stroke of Genius in the Sicilian Kan Variation: After 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 a6 5.c4 Nf6 6.Nc3 Qc7 7.Be2 b6 8.0-0 Bb7, Petra Papp considers the magnificent 9.Nd5!! and much more. Download version including a comprehensive and redesigned accompanying PDF (52 pages)! Take a look – an extract from the PDF is provided below.

9/2/2026 – The second edition of Legends & Prodigies will take place in Madrid from 7 to 12 September, with Faustino Oro (pictured) returning to the event he won last year. The Argentine teenager will face David Antón, José Martínez, Ivan Sokolov, Diego Flores and José "Pepe" Cuenca in a six-player double round-robin. | Photo: Mar Melero

9/2/2026 – FIDE and World Chess have submitted an application to ICANN for .chess, a proposed top-level domain intended to provide the chess community with a dedicated and verified online space. Filed as a community application on behalf of FIDE, the project would give federations, clubs, organisers, platforms, media and players recognisable chess-specific domains if approved. Registration will open only after ICANN's review, with an early-access list already available.

9/1/2026 – The Sinquefield Cup and the Cairns Cup in Saint Louis brought about some movement at the top of the world rankings. Magnus Carlsen and Hou Yifan remain the world's top players, while Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus and Anastasiia Hnatyshyn are the leading junior players. Based on the average rating of its top players, the German Chess Federation is ranked fifth overall, making it now the leading European federation.

9/1/2026 – Daniel King's 'Power Play' series is one of ChessBase's most popular FritzTrainer course collections. Between 2007 and 2020, an impressive 28 volumes were published in the series, covering not only general topics such as tactics, attacking play and endgames, but also opening repertoires for both Black and White. Jochen Schwarz, a club player from Bremen, has known and valued the Power Play courses for many years and provides an overview of the individual volumes.

9/1/2026 – The Tech Mahindra Global Chess League returns for its fourth season, bringing the world's biggest chess stars to Bengaluru from September 5–13, 2026. With six power-packed franchises, fresh team combinations, exciting debutants and fierce rivalries, here's a complete look at every squad, their strengths and what makes this season the most anticipated yet. | Pictured: Vishy Anand with Anand Mahindra, Chairman of the Mahindra Group