9/10/2025 – The Saint Louis Chess Club will soon host the 2025 US Chess Championship and the 2025 US Women's Championship, running from 12 to 24 October in its newly expanded venue. With a prize fund exceeding $400,000, the 12-player fields feature America's elite, including Fabiano Caruana, Wesley So, Carissa Yip, Alice Lee and Irina Krush. Alongside the competitions, Hall of Fame inductions and cultural events promise a historic month for American chess in Saint Louis. | Pictured: 2024 US chess champions, Fabiano Caruana and Carissa Yip | Photo: Lennart Ootes

9/10/2025 – As part of the Fortune Brainstorm Tech Conference, Anna Cramling will play a game of chess against Noland Arbaugh. Arbaugh is paraplegic, but with the help of a novel neurochip in his brain, he can move the pieces via a Brain Computer interface using pure thought power.

9/10/2025 – Parham Maghsoodloo kept his lead at the FIDE Grand Swiss, drawing with Arjun Erigaisi to stay half a point clear on 5/6 going into the rest day. Nihal Sarin defeated Szymon Gumularz, while Anish Giri overcame Marc'Andria Maurizzi to join the five-player pack of pursuers. Reigning world champion Gukesh Dommaraju suffered a second consecutive defeat, this time against Nikolas Theodorou (pictured). In the women's section, Vaishali Rameshbabu and Kateryna Lagno both won to remain tied at the top. | Photo: FIDE / Michal Walusza

9/10/2025 – The XTX Markets London Chess Classic (LCC) returns to the capital between 26th November and 7th December 2025. Following GM Gawain Jones's victory in 2024, the event will once again be held largely at the iconic Emirates Stadium, switching to London Novotel West in Hammersmith to avoid clashes with Arsenal home matches.

9/10/2025 – At the Louisiana State Championship, a surprise guest stole the spotlight: none other than Hikaru Nakamura. The superstar streamer was looking to secure qualification for the Candidates Tournament and needed a few rated games to do so. That set the stage for some wildly lopsided encounters - none more striking than his matchup against Nahum Jose Villamil, rated just 1933, nearly 1000 points below Hikaru. Against all odds, Villamil came close to pulling off what would have been one of the most sensational underdog upsets in chess history. Robert Ris has a closer look.

9/9/2025 – Computers continue to shape the way chess is played, studied and understood, but they also present challenges for humans trying to assert their creativity at the board. This month's column highlights two recent encounters where human ingenuity met silicon precision: Wesley So's victory over world champion Gukesh Dommaraju at the Sinquefield Cup (pictured), and Ian Nepomniachtchi's resilient defence against Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu at the 2024 Candidates in Toronto. Both games illustrate the tension between preparation, psychology and practical decision-making. | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour

9/6/2025 – Michael Kotyk is a young chess trainer from Hamburg. He still remembers clearly when he first took serious notice of the Trompowsky system: during the World Championship match between Magnus Carlsen and Sergey Karjakin. That was reason enough for him to take a closer look at Robert Ris’s video course on this opening and to explain why he now finds the Trompowsky system interesting, despite having long considered it not particularly dangerous... | Photos: ChessBase

9/5/2025 – Grandmaster Lubomir Ftacnik presents a personal chess course that draws on his decades of playing at the top level and later experience as a coach, aiming to teach what he now understands more deeply than during his competitive career. Instead of overwhelming students with the endless information available in databases, he focuses on highlighting the most important principles—how to evaluate positions, avoid common mistakes, and understand underlying features of the game. The course covers key aspects of openings, middlegames, and endgames, always stressing practical understanding to help players make better decisions at the board.

9/5/2025 – In his latest Game of the Week show, Merijn van Delft looks back at the Sinquefield Cup and presents Wesley So’s crucial win over Nodirbek Abdusattorov. So began the tournament with a string of draws, but in this game he displayed both creativity and a fine sense for positional nuance. | Merijn's show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

9/5/2025 – On Tuesday 22-year-old Ukrainian GM Kirill Shevchenko was stripped of his title and banned from competitive chess for three years. He was caught cheating during the Spanish Team Championship last year – and admitted to his wrongdoing. The case renewed our interest in the subject, and we take a look back at the evolution of cheating in chess – and the very tricky way it can be exercised.

9/5/2025 – The FIDE Grand Swiss opened with contrasting fortunes across the two sections. In the open, several of the world's top players, including Gukesh Dommaraju, Alireza Firouzja, Nodirbek Abdusattorov and Anish Giri, made assured starts, while upsets from David Antón and Aydin Suleymanli showed the depth of the field. The women's tournament, however, saw chaos from the outset, as 6 of the top 10 seeds fell, with Anna and Mariya Muzychuk, Tan Zhongyi and others suffering early defeats. | Photo: FIDE / Michal Walusza

9/4/2025 – In this new ChessBase show "Master Your Chess with ChessBase Tools", GM Dorian Rogozenco and Arne Kaehler introduce viewers to the practical use of ChessBase tools for chess improvement, starting with the cloud engine and the newly added ChessBase remote-engine feature. They explain how cloud and remote engines differ, how to install and use them, the role of ducats, and why trust and engine choice matter for analysis. The episode also highlights practical tips like running multiple engines, using private engines remotely, and applying engine analysis efficiently in opening, middlegame, and endgame study.