Schwarzenegger – playing chess with the budget

1/11/2004 – "An opening move in the fiscal chess game" – that is how one journalist is describing Governer Arnold Schwarzenegger's recently announced budget plans for California's ailing economy. The analogy to chess is not accidental – the action star is known to be a chess enthusiast. Here's the full story...

Corus Round 2: The favorites strike back

1/11/2004 – One day after the top rated player lost to an outsider, the top tenners took revenge. Vladimir Akopian's run of glory lasted just one day. Kramnik bounced back by beating van Wely. Vishy Anand took a share of the lead with a win over Akopian and was joined by Peter Leko, who beat Timman. Full report and analysis here.

Corus Round 1: Akopian beats Kramnik and leads

1/10/2004 – While the other dozen players were splitting the points, the battle of the Vladimirs provided action to spare. Akopian finished off Kramnik with a spectacular rook sacrifice to become the first leader of the year. Games with notes and report here.

Corus Wijk aan Zee tournament begins today

1/9/2004 – Corus is the sponsor, a steel manufacturing company responsible for 10% of total EU production; "wyke aahn zay" is the Dutch seaside resort north-west of Amsterdam; the tournament is a category 19 with an average rating of 2702. It all comes together today, the first round is on Saturday. Details...

Our readers reply to Kasparov

1/9/2004 – Volume two is out, and the discussion of Garry Kasparov's book "My Great Predecessors" continues unabated. Especially during the Christmas break many readers sent in commentary and analysis. Some add new insights to previous discussions, others tackle new positions. GM Karsten Müller presents his Analysis Focus #4.

Scottish champion wins Hastings

1/7/2004 – “A meeting of those interested in chess will be held at Hastings," read the advertisement in June 1882. Since then the annual chess festival in Hastings has been one of the permiere tournaments in the world. This year it was won by Jonathan Rowson and Vasilios Kotronias. Here's a pictorial report.

Major Fraud, or just Playing The Game?

1/6/2004 – In September 2001 Major Charles Ingram won the £1,000,000 prize in Britain's TV quiz show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Subsequently he and two accomplices were convicted of fraud – using coughs to signal the answers. Chess grandmaster James Plaskett, who has been on the show twice himself, is not convinced of their guilt.

Printing games and diagrams with ChessBase 8

1/6/2004 – In this week's ChessBase Workshop, we look as some questions and answers specifically relating to print publication of chess games and diagrams. If you're planning on writing the "chess book of your dreams", be sure to take a look here before you begin! It is all to be found in the latest installment of Steve Lopez's ChessBase Workshop...

Crossing the mountains to meet the girls

1/4/2004 – Today our roving reporter Jamshid Begmatov traverses the treacherous Kamchik mountain pass to visit two young girls who are the Uzbekistan champions in their age groups. Meanwhile GM Saidali Yuldashev seems definitely to be gaining the upper hand against the Uzbek TV audience + ChessBase visitors. Here's our pictorial report.

Kasparov leads in January 2004 FIDE list

1/3/2004 – Once again Kasparov is at the top, 54 points ahead of his nearest rival. Next come Kramnik and Anand, as usual, with a new player joining them in the top slot: Peter Svidler, who gained 24 points. Judit Polgar is now number eight in the world. Here is the list of the top 100.

Running of the GMs in Pamplona

12/31/2003 – A very hotly contested tournament in Spain ended in a three-way tie between McShane, Sutovsky, and local hero Illescas. No player finished without a loss and only 33% of the games were drawn. Two of the world's youngest Grandmasters, Nakamura and Karjakin, had a rough time but managed to score a pair of wins each. More..

Deep Fritz defeats GM Volkov

12/31/2003 – Lot of excitement on the Playchess server: 29-year-old Russian GM Sergey Volkov faced a mean dual Xeon 3.06 GHz machine running the latest Deep Fritz 8 program. Even though both games were strategic affairs Fritz outplayed the GM (in the King's Indian!) and won the match 2:0. Here are details and the games.

Russian 'Super-Final' with top players

12/30/2003 – With a new and determined man at the helm of the Chess Federation, chess in Russia is enjoying something of a renaissance. On Christmas day Alexander Zhukov announced that there is to be a “super-final” for the Russian Championships in 2004. It will be a 12-player round-robin, with the probable participation of both Kasparov and Kramnik.

December 2003 tournament review

12/29/2003 – Looking forward to Wijk aan Zee? Already counting the days to Linares? Not so fast. There have been many interesting tournaments in the last month and more are underway. We take you from the land of the Mayans to the Subcontinent with crosstables, games to download, and analysis of the most interesting and important games. More..

Fischer signature a fraud?

12/29/2003 – It looked like a great find: "This is a 1972 edition of Bobby Fischer's book" wrote a seller on Ebay. "Fischer has signed it with a sketch and the message 'Checkmate'." The book went for $676.00 on December 23rd. But was it genuine? Experts and friends of Fischer think not.

Demonstrations in the Chess Republic

12/28/2003 – Kalmykia is a slightly obscure Russian republic, more than 1000 miles from Moscow. Recently it saw political unrest, with opposition parties accusing the government of vote rigging. This is of interest to us because Kalmykia and the world chess federation share the same president. Not the man in the picture, though. He's a famous 18th century leader. More...

A chess revolution in Punjab

12/28/2003 – What do you do when you return to your hometown, in the north of India, and discover there is no chess around? One solution is correspondence games. Another is to start building up a chess culture by teaching youngsters. They are thrilled to be playing an Uzbekistan grandmaster in an online game.

Deep Fritz 8 review by Steve Lopez

12/27/2003 – Deep Fritz8 is much more than just a multi-processor version of Fritz. Read all about the new extras included with Deep Fritz8 in this week's ChessBase Workshop.

Man vs the Mean Martin Müller Machine

12/25/2003 – In January GM Sergey Volkov was soundly beaten by Shredder 7. Now this very brave chess player is taking on Deep Fritz, running on one of the fastest machines this side of the Kasparov and Kramnik matches – a dual Xeon 3.06 GHz. You can watch the match live on Playchess.com.

The FIDE World Championship plan

12/24/2003 – The World Chess Federation has published its rules for its next world championship cycle, consisting of qualifiers in four continents, a 128-player knock-out tournament and the winner will play against Garry Kasparov. The winner of that match then faces the winner of Kramnik vs Leko (if this is staged). The first leg will be held before July 1st 2004. Here are the details.

Choosing the best in the US

12/24/2003 – In December, 2004 the best chess players in the country will be heading to San Diego, for the US Championship. Last year’s winners, Alexander Shabalov and Anna Hahn may have some interesting challengers. Susan Grumer reports...

‘Twas the Night Before Christmas

12/24/2003 – "...my friends had all gone, Not a chess piece was stirring, I stifled a yawn." But then, suddenly, eight ghostly GMs appear, and out in the sky a voice calls through the gloom "Happy Christmas, keep studying, you might improve soon." Christopher Willard of Montreal, Canada, sent us this Christmas Eve poem.

Christmas dinner on a train – meet the ChessBase team

12/23/2003 – Once a year the ChessBase staff take a break for a traditional Christmas get-together and dinner. Normally this is at a restaurant with has a "Kegelbahn" (a German version of bowling). But this time we took a train ride around Hamburg. Here's a pictorial report you can use to get to know the ChessBase team.

Two new CDs: The Gruenfeld and The Colle System

12/23/2003 – No matter whether you're looking to try a new opening as Black or as White, we have you covered with two new CD releases: The Gruenfeld and The Colle System. Take a look at what you can expect to find on both of these CDs in this week's ChessBase Workshop.