1/7/2024 – During his long career Viktor Kortschnoi (23 March 1931 - 6 June 2016) won against Botvinnik, Smyslov, Tal, Petrosian, Spassky, Fischer, Karpov, Kasparov and Carlsen. He never became World Champion himself, but you might think that "he could beat anyone". But this is just a cliché. For although Kortschnoi played a total of 17 games with classical time control against Anand and Kramnik in the course of his life, he never scored a full point against either of them. | Photo: Kortschnoi at the 1960 Leipzig Chess Olympiad | Photo: Tournament book

10/16/2023 – Piers Morgan is one of the best known interviewers of our day, having had one-on-ones with people of all walks of life and interests. Among the more unexpected guests on his program which is now streamed on YouTube was none other than Hans Niemann, who needs no introduction. Piers Morgan was exceptionally direct, and the interview speaks for itself.

9/15/2023 – Vladimir Kramnik recently caused a stir with an online game against Hans Niemann, in which he wanted to let himself be mated quickly in protest of Niemann’s alleged cheating in the previous game. Kramnik, however, is not so much concerned with Niemann himself, but with the cheating problem in online chess in general. He estimates that the problem is much bigger than people think and presented his arguments in a long video interview. | Photo: Amruta Mokal

7/2/2023 – Going into the final day of action at the Dortmund Chess Festival, Fabiano Caruana, Frederik Svane and Dinara Wagner are leading the standings in the No Castling Masters, the A-Open and the Sportland NRW Cup, respectively. Caruana defeated Vladimir Kramnik in style to get a half point lead over the former world champion and Dmitrij Kollars. Kollars beat Pavel Eljanov with white in Saturday’s fifth round. | Photo: Michelle Lassak

6/29/2023 – After his defeat in a spectacular game in the second round, Vladimir Kramnik bounced back on Wednesday with a brilliant positional performance. After the Mayor of Dortmund, Norbert Schilff, made the symbolic first move for him, Kramnik opted for a rather quiet approach with white and gained a small advantage against Fabiano Caruana. Slowly but surely, Kramnik increased his advantage and ended up scoring an important full point. | Photo: Michelle Lassak

6/27/2023 – The 50th Dortmund Chess Festival is underway in Dortmund’s Westfalenhalle. Yesterday, Vladimir Kramnik and Fabiano Caruana started their no-casting experiment and were both successful from the get go, beating Pavel Eljanov and defending champion Dmitrij Kollars respectively. | Photo: Michelle Lassak

5/10/2023 – After Sagar Shah, founder and driving force behind Chessbase India, spoke to former World Champion Vishy Anand about the dramatic World Championship match between Ian Nepomniachtchi and Ding Liren, Sagar also interviewed former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik on the same subject. As a supporter of "Team Nepo" Kramnik was directly involved in the World Championship match. In the interview, Kramnik talked about his work with Nepomniachtchi, the critical moments of the match, opening preparation, nervousness in World Championship matches and much more.

4/21/2023 – The Satty Zhuldyz Chess Festival is one of the many side events of the World Championship match between Ian Nepomniachtchi and Ding Liren in Astana. Twelve players, among them former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik, were invited to play a rapid and blitz tournament. With a score of 3.5/4 Arjun Erigaisi had the best start in the strong and attractive field. | Photo: Vincent Keymer during the drawing of lots | Photos: Maria Emelianova and Damir Kuzhumov for Satty Shuldyz

4/20/2023 – Vladimir Kramnik recently participated at the Armageddon Series organized by World Chess in Berlin. In a 35-minute interview conducted in the German capital, the former world champion talked about his new projects, his work with Indian talents and Alireza Firouzja, and his assessment of Magnus Carlsen’s place in the history of the sport. His conclusion: “He just changed chess. Chess is Magnus Carlsen.” | Photo: World Chess

3/6/2023 – While a number of Russian chess masters have publicly spoken out in favour of stopping the Russian war of aggression, hardly anything has been heard from others. For example, from Vladimir Kramnik, the 14th World Champion (2000 to 2007). Martin Breutigam, author and International Master, asked Kramnik about the long silence – and received a full answer. | Photo: Guido Kohlen

9/17/2022 – In the fourth episode of “Olympiad Stories with Saravanan”, we focus on the 14th world champion, Vladimir Kramnik. Kramnik arrived at the world scene in 1992 at the Manila Olympiad, with a score of 8½/9. His performance rating was over 2900! This was the stage where he broke through, before eventually defeating Garry Kasparov in the World Championship. In this episode, you get to know not only about the 1992 Olympiad and Kramnik’s games, but also about Vladimir’s personality.

4/14/2022 – Prior to the Candidates Tournament in 2013, two of the favourites to gain the right to challenge Vishy Anand in the next World Championship match were Vladimir Kramnik and Levon Aronian — together with Magnus Carlsen, of course. In order to prepare for the all-important event, amid a scarcity of strong tournaments, Kramnik and Aronian played a 6-game match in Zurich. It was an exciting confrontation, which ended in a draw, with each player getting a win apiece.

3/19/2022 – After the successful first edition last year, the No-Castling World Masters Tournament will be expanded in Dortmund in July 2022, as former world champions Vladimir Kramnik and Viswanathan Anand will be joined by Krishnan Sasikiran and local hero Daniel Fridman. Concurrently, the Deutschland Grand Prix, the NRW Youth Cup and two opens will take place at the massive festival set to kick off four months from now.

9/7/2021 – The pioneering ‘NC World Masters 2021’ saw Vladimir Kramnik and Vishy Anand playing No-Castling chess — an interesting experiment. Kramnik analysed the games together with Deep Mind experts Ulrich Paquet and Nedad Tomasev. The Russian explains motifs and ideas in three instructive videos.

7/22/2021 – In Dortmund Vishy Anand and Vladimir Kramnik tried a new variant of chess: they played a four-game match, in which castling was not allowed. After four interesting games Anand won the match 2.5-1.5, and both players, the organizers in Dortmund and the public agreed that the experiment was a success.

7/15/2021 – Wednesday afternoon "No Castling" chess premiered at the highest level in Dortmund's Westfalenhalle. In the first game of their "No Castling" match Vishy Anand and Vladimir Kramnik engaged in an uncompromising fight in which Anand eventually had the better of it. In the Deutschland Grand Prix Dmitrij Kollars and Pavel Eljanov share the lead with 2.5/3 each, but the big news of the day was the torrential rain that currently is causing havoc in large parts of Germany and also affected the players in the Westfalenhalle.

5/5/2021 – On Sunday, 2 May, Magnus Carlsen won the New in Chess Classic Online Tournament, the first of the so far five Meltwater Champions Chess Tour tournaments the World Champion, who is as spoilt for success as he is hungry for it, could win. But Carlsen did not only entertain and impress at the board (or screen). In short video clips, shown during the live broadcast, he revealed what he thinks about previous World Champions and showed his amazing chess memory. | Image: Screenshot

5/3/2021 – From 10 to 18 July, Dortmund will once again be Germany's chess capital. Chess fans in Dortmund organise the "Sparkassen Chess Trophy", a grandmaster tournament, and Vladimir Kramnik and Vishy Anand will play a match in No Castling Chess. In an interview Kramnik reveals more.

3/29/2021 – Grandmaster Vladimir Kramnik became the Classical World Chess Champion in 2000 by beating Garry Kasparov. He defended his title in 2004 against Péter Lékó, and defeated the reigning FIDE World Champion Veselin Topalov in a unification match in 2006. In this article I will make a meal I think Kramnik would like and annotate the game Ponomariov – Kramnik, Linares 2003 | Photo: Lennart Ootes

3/22/2021 – Chess legends Judit Polgar and Vladimir Kramnik have joined forces with Play Magnus Group to launch a new elite online tour designed to support rising young players and advance gender equality in the sport. The Julius Baer Challengers Chess Tour will feature some of the world’s top talent and include a healthy balance of male and female competitors.

2/21/2021 – In this week’s column, Jon Speelman focuses on the importance of ‘trusting your hand’, noting that “playing chess is one of the few times in our lives when we are totally self-sufficient and self-reliant. It’s the joy and horror of the game that you can take all the credit for your triumphs but have nobody else to blame for your mistakes.” Unmissable! | Photo: David Llada

11/18/2020 – Grandmaster Chess is a series hosted by IM Sagar Shah on the ChessBase India YouTube channel. The idea of the series is to give you a peek into the mind of a world class grandmaster. Every episode has a GM who shows his immortal game with 10 critical questions. Four famous stand-up comedians of India - Samay Raina, Biswa Kalyan Rath, Vaibhav Sethia and Anirban Dasgupta are the participants. It's a synthesis of great chess education by the GM along with a liveliness of the comedians! The first episode had GM Vidit Gujrathi who showed his immortal win against GM Vladimir Kramnik. We have all the 10 critical moments for you to solve! Try your hand and see how you fare!

11/8/2020 – An online blitz tournament was organized on Friday in memory of Yuri Sergeyevich Razuvaev, an enormously respected figure for his work as a coach and an author, besides his great accomplishments as a player. Vladimir Kramnik and Evgeny Tomashevsky finished in the top two places at the 8-player single round robin, and played a final 2-game match to decide the winner — Kramnik won with black and drew with white to take first place. | Photo: Alina l'Ami / Tata Steel Chess

10/18/2020 – Star columnist Jon Speelman explores the exchange sacrifice. Speelman shares five illustrative examples to explain in which conditions giving up a rook for a minor piece is a good trade. “As a general rule and in fact (almost all?) of the time you need other pieces on the board for an exchange sacrifice to work.” | Pictured: Mikhail Tal and Tigran Petrosian following a post-mortem analysis at the 1961 European Team Championship in Oberhausen | Photo: Gerhard Hund