FIDE World Chess Championship starts today

6/19/2004 – 128 players have gathered together in Tripoli, the capital of Libya, to play for the World Championship. The first round starts at 14:30 local (and European Central) time. A special FIDE site is offering comprehensive coverage. We bring you pictures, schedules and the pairings of round one. Also full instructions on how to follow the event.

Victor Victorious!

6/19/2004 – Will someone please tell Victor Korchnoi to start acting his age? We have 12-year-old Grandmasters running around and 73-year-old Korchnoi is still winning strong GM tournaments. Did we say winning? We meant to say dominating! He scored six wins and won the 2nd György Marx Memorial in Hungary by a full point. Report and games.

ChessBase 8 printout

6/18/2004 – If you've ever fired up ChessBase 8 and loaded a game which has a ton of opening variations, you'll know that the regular notation display can sometimes be a little tough to read and navigate. In this week's ChessBase Workshop, Steve Lopez shows you how to clean up that display and make a nice professional-looking paper printout of the result. Workshop...

Hit the board, Jack!

6/18/2004 – The great musician Ray Charles, who died last Thursday, will be laid to rest today at the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles. We pay homage to this legendary pianist and soul singer by taking a look at a chess game he played two years ago against GM Larry Evans. Rest in peace, Ray.

It's politics as usual

6/17/2004 – The Israeli chess federations is suing FIDE (and apparently Libya), the ACP is complaining about irregularities, FIDE replies to the ACP, world champion Ruslan Ponomariov wants to know why FIDE is silent now, and Georgian WGMs reply to the women's championship finalists. On the eve of the World Championship in Tripoli it is a chess world in turmoil.

World Team wins Petrosian Memorial by a point

6/15/2004 – A heroic comeback by the Petrosian team in the final two rounds fell a point short. Anand-Kasparov was one of several short draws in the final round. Vaganian had the only win of the round, an impressive bind against Adams. Gelfand, once Petrosian's star pupil, battled hard for the full point against Bacrot to no avail. Report and games.

Gata Kamsky plays chess!

6/15/2004 – After a five year absence, American GM Gata Kamsky returned to the chessboard on Tuesday night. He came to play in the 106th New York Masters at the famous Marshall Chess Club. The former world championship candidate showed considerable rust in tying for first and giving up two draws in the four rapid games. Is he back to stay?

Makropoulos: Why were they silent in Prague?

6/14/2004 – Georgios Makropoulos has been a high FIDE dignitary for almost a quarter of a century. Recently the eloquent and humourous Greek sat down for an interview with "Sport-Express" journalist Yuri Vassiliev, talking about the FIDE World Chess Championship in Tripoli and reunification. We bring you excerpts...

Who will be the next FIDE world champion?

6/14/2004 – We cannot be 100% sure, but at least the statistical odds are 13% in favour of Morozevich or Topalov to win. Adams has a 9% chance, Grischuk 7%. And there is a 1 in 100 million possibility that the next FIDE world champion will be Tarik Abulhul of Libya. Read all about it in Jeff Sonas' World Championship Statistics.

Leko and Lputian strike back for Petrosian

6/14/2004 – Peter Leko defeated Vishy Anand and the Petrosian Team cut the World's lead in half with one round to play. After losing three of four Lputian came back and scored a full point against Vallejo. For the first time the World failed to notch a win. Tomorrow sees Anand-Kasparov. We have the results, games and analysis here now.

The engine analysis pane

6/14/2004 – The engine analysis pane is a really useful informational tool in both ChessBase and the Fritz "family" of playing programs. But how do you read all of this information? In this week's ChessBase Workshop, columnist Steve Lopez explains what all the numbers mean and also offers some "engine tricks" to help you gather even more information from the display. Workshop...

Meeting the King's Indian – with Petrosian

6/13/2004 – To commemorate the 75th birthday of the late world champion Tigran Petrosian our Internet trainer Dennis Monokroussos will look at his distinctive way of meeting the King’s Indian Defense. Join him on Monday night, especially if you would like to add a new anti-King’s Indian weapon to your repertoire. Catch it on the Playchess server.

Miniatures in Moscow

6/13/2004 – Team Petrosian finally won another game, thanks to Peter Leko, but the World won two to make the lead 11-7 at the halfway point. Anand and Vallejo scored with black. Three games were over before move 25, only one of them a draw. Gelfand lost his second while Kasparov missed an endgame victory against Bacrot.

The Traxler Counter Attack

6/13/2004 – When you get to know him, Boris Alterman is an amicable, peace-loving fellow – not the uncompromising militarist he appears to be when you see the title of his recent online lectures (Fried Liver Attack, Morphy Attack, Max Lange Attack). Today he shows us another hyper-aggressive opening. Visit GM Alterman's lecture and simultaneous exhibition.

Women in Red goes down to the Computer

6/13/2004 – It is with a touch of melancholy that we report the loss, in game two, by a very bright young lady to a notebook computer. Ex world champion Zhu Chen suffered her second loss to the 64-bit Star of Unisplendour. In game one the Chinese girl had dominated, in game two it was the machine all the way. Here's an illustrated report...

Kiriakov tames the monster

6/13/2004 – In his second game against the Dual Xeon 3.06 GHz Russian GM Petr Kiriakov showed the audience how to get a safe draw: close up the position, block any breakthrough chances and then simply do nothing! Opponent Shredder was reduced to shuffling its pieces around, wondering why nothing was happening in this game...

Team Petrosian gets a draw in round four

6/13/2004 – In the first three rounds the Armenians were overmatched by the World all-stars. Today was like two separate tournaments with the heavyweights on each team battling it out in a Linares-caliber line-up. The decisive games came from below, however, as van Wely and Lputian crashed to their third losses. The World kept its four-point lead.

World team wins again on day two

6/12/2004 – So far it's been rough going for the sons of Petrosian in Moscow. Anglo Mickey Adams and anglophile Peter Svidler notched wins for the visitors and the home team had no answer. Kasparov's Najdorf was held by Vallejo and Anand also drew. The two-point win leaves the World team with a three point lead.

Petr Kiriakov vs the monster machine

6/12/2004 – Last night former Russian junior champion Petr Kiriakov drew the first of a two-game match against Deep Shredder on the Playchess.com server. His opponent was running on an awesome Dual Xeon 3.06 GHz computer, with 2 GB of RAM. The second game will be played on Saturday, June 12, at 19:00h CET (1 p.m. NY). Details...

Hot start for stars in Petrosian Memorial

6/11/2004 – The world's top two players, Garry Kasparov and Viswanathan Anand, wasted no time in living up to their status. In round one they beat van Wely and Lputian, respectively. The other decisive game was Svidler's win over Gelfand, giving the World team a 3.5-2.5 advantage. Games and analysis here.

Clash of the Titans – man vs woman

6/11/2004 – Two legendary world champions are scheduled to play a match to promote chess in the USA. Anatoly Karpov, 12th world champion, faces the 8th women's world champion Susan Polgar in September the city of Lindsborg, Kansas. We use the opportunity to bring you up to date on the women's world champions.

Chess president threatens the Kremlin

6/11/2004 – The Russian news service Pravda is reporting that the President of the autonomous Republic of Kalmykia, Kirsan Ilyumdzhinov, is telling the Kremlin that if Moscow dismisses him, there will be the second Chechnya in Kalmykia. Ilyumzhinov is also the president of the world chess federation FIDE. Here are the details of this ominous story...

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.