Fritz back on the top

3/28/2002 – The Swedish Svenska schackdatorföreningen (SSDF, Chess Computer Association) is an independent that tests the stronges chess programs in the world. Over the years they have played no less than 85,022 (!) games between different computers. On the last 22 lists our Fritz engine has been on top 15 times. In the February list Shredder 6 took the lead. But now the newly tested Fritz 7 is number one again, 34 points ahead of the field! More

How Sashenka Kosteniuk got elected

3/24/2002 – As you probably know we conducted a Player of the Year poll in February, and it was surprisingly won by not by Kasparov, Kramnik or Ponomariov, but by 17-year-old Alexandra Kosteniuk (the exact results are here). Today we give you some excerpts from the messages we received. They give you a good insight into the grass-roots feelings in the chess world. More

Almira holds number four player to a draw

3/21/2002 – It took great control on our part to refrain from using a "beauty vs the beast" headline here. In round ten of the German Bundesliga Almira Skripchenko, number 618 in the rankings, faced Britain's top GM Michael Adams, number four in the world. With an excited crowd watching Almira showed a great deal of pluck to hold her tenacious opponent to a 91-move draw. More

What is Brutus?

3/20/2002 – At the computer chess tournament in Paderborn sharp-eyed program spotters discovered a new name in the list of participants. Brutus. Not the guy who did in the famous Roman emperor, but a spectacular new development in computer chess, a kind of new mini-Deep Blue, being developed by Dr Christian Donninger. Currently the program runs on an FPGA Virtex V405E board provided by Alpha Data Systems, Edinburgh. You find all the details here

A fresh start? Kasparov replies to Seirawan

3/20/2002 – At the end of February American GM Yasser Seirawan presented a detailed, concrete proposal for sorting out the chaos that current afflicts top-level chess. The details, he hoped, would be discussed by all interested partien during the super-tournament in Prague. The problem was: how would the prime player in this game, Garry Kasparov, react to Seirawan's proposals? Tear them up and flush them down the drain? More

Lübeck wins, John Nunn teaches us a lesson

3/19/2002 –

[Post:title]

[Post:publishedon_day].[Post:publishedon_month].[Post:publishedon_year] - The critical round of the German team championships was won by the SV Lübeck – which consists mainly of legionary British grandmasters. On Sunday they wrapped it up with a narrow victory over the main rivals Solingen. Instrumental for the success was Dr John Nunn, who won four games in a row for Lübeck. John gave us a unique insight into chess thinking and strategy by annotating his games for us. This is a lesson you will not want to miss. More...

ChessBase Player of the Year award

3/15/2002 – And the winner is... well, frankly a big surprise. We assumed that our Player of the Year poll would elect Kramnik or Ponomariov, or maybe even Garry Kasparov for the ChessBase title. Boy were we ever wrong! Before you click on to more information try to guess who took the nomination. Maybe you have a better feel for what was cool in chess in 2001. The final results are to be found here.

Oh what the hell – put it on g1!

3/6/2002 – "Great players never castle," wrote Königsted in Kort Afhandling in 1784. While this is arguably the worst piece of advice ever published in a chess primer, even to this day many players give little thought to where His Majesty should reside. Robert Timmer has written a practical manual on the dangers of leaving the King in the center, and the possible drawbacks to castling too early, too late or on the wrong side. And our database program ChessBase provides interesting tools to research castling habits in chess. More

Man vs machine, Gulko vs computers

3/4/2002 – He is a strong player and a brave man. Boris Gulko, 1975 USSR Champion and, after his emigration, two-time US Chess Champion, will be taking on four of the world's best computer chess engines later this month. Junior, Shredder, Fritz and Hiarcs are the opponents. The games can be followed on our Fritz server and in the Kasparov Chess playing zone. More

Shredder wins computer tournament – yet again

3/3/2002 – It does this with clockwork regularity. At the 11th International Paderborn Computer Chess Championship, which finished today, it was the German program Shredder which finished at the top of the list, with six wins and one loss. Second was Fritz, which beat Shredder in their individual encounter, but was not so ruthlessly efficient against the other programs. More

Topalov beats Karpov in Cannes

3/2/2002 – At the NAO Chess Masters the game of the day was Veselin Topalov's 75-move victory over tournament leader Anatoly Karpov. Topalov and Gelfand are now at the top of the tables with 4.5 points each, with two rounds to go. Alexander Morozevich, the world's number 5, is last with an incredible 1.5 out of 7. Games, results and links are at our Cannes report page, a partial explanation for Morozevich's performance can be found in his CBM interview here

Yasser Seirawan proposes – A Fresh Start for chess

3/2/2002 – We've got to admit, the professional chess world is in a mess. Two world champions, two organisations (with many coming and going over the course of the years). No players' union, strange formats and time controls. So what can we do about it? A respected GM, America's Yasser Seirawan, has set out a detailed, concrete proposal for sorting out the chaos that has afflicted top-level chess. Do not miss his thoughtful article here

Kramnik concedes a draw to an 11-year-old

3/1/2002 – Wunderkind David Howell did actually achieve a world record and scored a draw against BGN world champion Vladimir Kramnik in a one-to-one blitz game, the last in their four-game encounter. The media interest was tremendous – in fact we caught the report on Sky News, where Kramnik said: "It was definitely not a walk-over, I had to concentrate!" He predicts a great future for David. More

Can this child beat Vladimir Kramnik?

2/27/2002 – Wunderkind David Howell from Seaford, East Sussex, is eleven years old. He was taught the moves at the age of five by his father after they had bought a chess set for £1.00 at a jumble sale. Now David is taking on BGN world champion Vladimir Kramnik in one-to-one contest. The event is being staged by Brain Games partner Einstein. More

Shredder tops the ratings lists

2/16/2002 – It has won more computer chess world championships than anyone can remember. Now for the first time Shredder 6 has topped the computer rating lists, which are based on a very large number of games played under controlled conditions on many computers. Of the top 20 programs 17 (including the top five) are produced or distributed by ChessBase. Check it out in our online shop. Fritz7 will be tested in the next list. More

GM Edmar Mednis, 1937 – 2002

2/15/2002 – We have learned that the well-known American GM Edmar Mednis died on February 13, 2002, at the age of 64. Mednis was born in Riga, Latvia in 1937 but lived in the United States since 1950, where he worked as a professional chess player and author. His most famous deed: to beat Bobby Fischer with the black pieces in the 1962-63 US Championship. More

Chess comes back to Afghanistan

2/14/2002 – For five years chess, like kite flying, was strictly forbidden by the puritanical Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Now 138 players gathered to take part in the first post-Taliban tournament, as Patrick Cockburn of The Independent reports. Cockburn describes how difficult it still is to find chess sets in the Afghani capital and how some player had to use the floor for their games. More

Junior7 wins prestigious CCT4 computer tournament

2/5/2002 – Last weekend the members of the ICD Computer Chess Club organized their fourth tournament, a 46 player event with 11 rounds. The clear winner was World Champion Deep Junior 7, written by Amir Ban and Shay Bushinsky from Israel, with 9/11 points. Most programs were operated by their authors which gives the tournament high prestige. More

Ponomariov faces one million dollar lawsuit

2/3/2002 – The second big event in this year, Linares 2002, has a remarkably strong field, with Kasparov, Anand, Adams, Ivanchuk, Shirov and Vallejo Pons. Originally the seventh player was Ruslan Ponomariov, but the newly crowned FIDE world champion seems to have changed his mind and cancelled his appearence. Now he faces an expensive lawsuit for breach of contract. More

ChessBase Player of the Year award

2/1/2002 – Originally we intended calling this the "Man of the Year Award", with the term "man" adhering to the common English usage of meaning man, woman or gender-challenged. In fact we also open our award nomination to include electronic chessplaying entities, whom we certainly do not wish to discriminate against. Well, cast your votes, you can win a special prize by electing the ChessBase player of the year here

I'm finished with the old chess, it's rotten to the core!

1/31/2002 – Bobby Fischer has given another interview, the first after the deeply disturbing remarks we heard from him on September 12 last year. This time he talks much more about chess, although the tirades of hate against Americans and Jewish people still comes through at full blast. But mainly we learn that he has turned his back on the "old chess" and will only play Fischer Random. You will find some excerpts and the full audio files in MP3 format here.

Einstein takes over Brain Games and Kramnik

1/25/2002 – It was announced today that the Einstein Group plc in England has taken over the rights previously held by the Brain Games Network for the Man v Machine event in Bahrain, the Dortmund qualifier and 2003 Chess Championship match against Vladimir Kramnik. The group was founded in 1999 and is a multimedia Group including a satellite channel on Sky Digital. More

Ach, who can tell them apart?

1/20/2002 – When Garry Kasparov took the title from Anatoly Karpov in 1985 the chess world was electrified. But the rest of the planet had a problem. The names started alike, both had the same letters, with just an "sa" thrown into the second for good measure. Until today people seem to have problems telling which is which. You will find typical mixups here

Nigel takes Reykjavik by, well, storm

1/14/2002 – After a harrowing battle with snow-storms Nigel Short did eventually arrive in Reykjavik, Iceland, for his match against local GM star Hannes Stefansson. After a somewhat shaky start – who's going to blame him after auch an adventurous journey – Nigel settled down to thoroughly beat Stefansson with a final score of 4½-1½. More