Protest by Georgian women grandmasters

6/9/2004 – In an open letter two Georgian WGMs complain bitterly about the conditions surrounding the FIDE Women's World Chess Championship. Meanwhile the newly crowned women's world champion and vice champion have penned a reply in defense of FIDE. Here are the originals and summaries.

Chess Queen vs Unisplendour Fritz

6/9/2004 – In this corner, Zhu Chen, the women's World chess champion. On the other side of the table: the Unisplendour Star laptop, powered by an AMD 64 bit 3400+ CPU and 2 GB RAM. In head to head competition, the air was tense. After two hours had passed, it was the human who cracked. Read about the latest (wo)man vs machine match in Beijing.

Installing endgame tablebases

6/9/2004 – There's more to installing endgame tablebases than just copying them to your hard drive. Before your engine goes into head-to-head combat, you should test the tablebases to make sure they're functioning properly. We step you through the process in this week's ChessBase Workshop.

The greatest chess tournaments of all time

6/8/2004 – Chessplayers love to argue. Who was the greatest World Champion? The greatest tactical player? What's the best way to face the King's Indian Defense? And, of course, there's the question "What were the greatest chess tournaments of all time?" A great new CD from ChessBase attempts to answer that last question; you'll find a preview of it in this week's ChessBase Workshop.

Armenia (and friends) versus the World

6/8/2004 – What do Lputian, Akopian, and Vaganian have in common? Easy one. Why put Kasparov, Leko, and Gelfand on the Armenian team with them? We'll tell all. They will face a World all-star team of Anand, Svidler, Adams, Bacrot, Vallejo, and van Wely in a spectacular team event starting June 10 in Moscow.

Konstantin Landa wins Third ACP tournament

6/8/2004 – It was a bit of a surprise, since he was not a top seed. But the Russian GM who now lives in Germany had a great day and, with great tenacity and a bit of luck, he was able to clinch the Third ACP Internet Blitz Chess event, staged on the Playchess.com server and sponsored by ChinaCom. Final report.

Sacrificing a rainforest of material

6/7/2004 – In his Immortal and Evergreen games Adolf Anderssen sacrificed great amounts of material. Surely this is impossible nowadays? Happily, no, as Dennis Monokroussos demonstrates in a recent GM game in which White sacrificed every one of his pieces! Learn all about it in his Radio ChessBase lecture...

Shirov crushes Svidler to take León

6/7/2004 – Advanced Chess has been left behind but Alexei Shirov didn't need computer help to win in Spain. After a narrow escape against Teimour Radjabov in the first round Shirov won convincingly against Peter Svidler to take the Leon rapid tournament title. We have a full report, photos and analysis.

Antoaneta Stefanova scores second win

6/5/2004 – After the sensational first-round victory with black in the Women's World Chess Championship in Elista Bulgarian WGM Stefanova today scored again to take the score to 2-0 against her Russian opponent Ekaterina Kovalevskaya. This means she has excellent chances to win title in this six-game final. We bring you the game and pictures.

US women meet professor Kasparov

6/5/2004 – A lesson in slam-dunking from Jordan wouldn't help you. But how about chess lessons from Garry Kasparov? That's what the US women's Olympiad training squad got last weekend. It was fascinating, but we were too busy taking pictures to learn anything. See why.

St Petersburg wrap-up – part 2

6/5/2004 – The last two rounds of the preliminaries for the Russian Championship in St Petersburg decided it all. Of special importance was the question: who would get a ticket to the super-final with Kasparov and Kramnik, planned for November? Misha Savinov tells us in part two of his pictorial report.

Antoaneta Stefanova new Women's World Champion

6/5/2004 – Today Bulgaria's top women player Antoaneta Stefanova drew the third game to clinch the title of Women's World Champion. Her opponent Ekaterina Kovalevskaya did not, however, go down without a fight: the Russian won a pawn and pressed hard, but some very tenacious defence by Stefanova saved the day. Here's our illustrated report...

Features designed to help you improve your game

6/4/2004 – The Fritz "family" of chessplaying programs offer a lot of features to help you while playing a game against the computer. In this week's ChessBase Workshop, Steve Lopez checks in with another roundup of features designed to help you improve your game. Workshop...

Sixteen GMs in the ChinaCom-ACP finals

6/4/2004 – The third ACP blitz tournament has reached its final stage. On Saturday, at 16:00h server time sixteen grandmasters will play in four round-robin groups, with the top two scorers proceeding to the knock-out stage. There they will ply four-game matches for the final victory – and a prize fund of US $6,500. Here are all the details...

'A pantheon of dubious chess patrons'

6/3/2004 – "No world champion, no corporate sponsorship and no end to scandals involving shady financing and international political pariahs. This is the troubled world of chess under Kirsan Ilyumzhinov." Harsh words from the Moscow Times journalist Carl Schreck. Here's the article and word of new withdrawals from the Libyan championship. More...

Fifteen GMs battle for the finals

6/3/2004 – Every evening this week you can watch about 50 GMs fight it out in the third ACP Internet blitz chess tournament, sponsored by ChinaCom. Tonight at 20:00h CET there will be 15 GMs, four rated over 2600. Book a front seat for this live blitz tournament.

Stefanova starts with a bang

6/3/2004 – In a sensational beginning to the Women's world chess championship that is being held from June 3rd to June 8th in Elista Bulgarian WGM Antoaneta Stefanova scored a fine victory, with the black pieces, against her Russian opponent WGM Ekaterina Kovalevskaya. We bring you the game and pictures.

It's Kovalevskaya vs Stefanova for the title

6/2/2004 – The latter is the longtime top Bulgarian female player and 2002 European women's champion, the former a Russian WGM. Both have made it to the finals of the women's world championship, which starts on June 3rd. We have games, links, pictures and a note on Florencio Campomanes and a new electronic scoresheet. More...

St Petersburg wrap-up – part 1

6/2/2004 – The preliminaries for the Russian Championship in St Petersburg and Tomsk are completed. The former was won by Alexei Dreev, ahead of Tseshkovsky and Epishin. The quality of play was very high, and we return – by popular demand – to this exciting tournament with a new two-part pictorial report by Misha Savinov.

Nine GMs and three ladies

6/2/2004 – That's the lineup in today's second qualifier for the third ACP Internet blitz tournament, sponsored by ChinaCom. Three players are rated over 2600, all the ladies are WGM. Read about yesterday's action in our special report.

Lights, Camera, Kasparov

6/2/2004 – If you were a chess fan watching Fox News last Sunday you got a surprise. Garry Kasparov appeared on the cable news network to talk about his recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal about Iraq. Somehow Shrek 2 was also involved. We've got plenty of photos from both sides of the cameras.

Watch top GMs play blitz

6/1/2004 – Every evening this week you can watch about 50 GMs – more than a dozen over 2600 in strength – fight it out in the third ACP Internet blitz tournament, sponsored by ChinaCom. The final is on Saturday, the prize fund is $6,500. Fire up your Fritz 8 or get a free Playchess client for a front seat in this live blitz tournament.

Women's World Championship reaches semifinals

5/31/2004 – We're down to the Final Four in Elista. We already know who the best woman player in the world is, but she's off in Hungary. So we're waiting to see which of the ladies in Kalmykia will win the women's world championship. Well, if Kasparov, Anand, and Kramnik won't play in the FIDE WCh in Libya, why can't we have equal rights?! Report and games.

The Minority Attack Part II

5/31/2004 – In last week's lecture Dennis Monokroussos showed us how to execute the minority attack. Today we learn that the attacked side is not defenseless. In fact there is a rich source of counterplay, as revealed in a classic game Nikolic-Kramnik. Tune in to this Radio ChessBase lecture...