9/7/2023 – Maxime Vachier-Lagrave won the Tata Steel Chess India Rapid with 7 points and an undefeated performance. The Frenchman distanced himself from the rest of the field by 1½ points with a round to spare. Teimour Radjabov finished in sole second place with 5½ points, while Praggnanandha Rameshbabu, Alexander Grischuk and Vidit Gujrathi scored 5 points each. | Photo: Vivek Sohani

9/7/2023 – In the latest edition of his Fast & Furious series, Robert Ris takes a look at a double-edged opening that at first glance seems rather dubious: the Norwegian Rat (1.e4 g6 2.d4 Nf6 3.e5 Nh5), which Carlsen and other strong players have tried with surprising success. | Fast & Furious is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

9/7/2023 – On Friday 8 September, the best players in the USA and Garry Kasparov will begin to explore the depths of Fischer Random Chess (Chess 960 or "Chess 9LX") in Saint Louis. They will be competing for a prize fund of no less than $150,000. Before the tournament, however, the players and sponsor Rex Sinquefield want to have some fun with "Ultimate Moves". If you want to join in the fun, check out the live video. | The action starts at 13.00 ET (19.00 CEST, 17.00 GMT).

9/7/2023 – ChessBase Magazine offers a window to the world of professional chess. The latest issue, CBM 215 is just out. Here our columnist, Nagesh Havanur takes a look at a recent issue. 162 games (41 annotated), decisive encounters from World Championship deeply annotated. 12 opening surveys, 3 opening videos, 9 demo lectures and several exercises for training. Annotators include Anish Giri, Boris Gelfand and Peter Svidler among others. The icing on the cake is a feature on Boris Spassky with 27 annotated games. | Photo: Ding Liren vs Nepomniachtchi, WCH 2023, FIDE/Anna Shtourman

9/7/2023 – Jennifer Shahade herself founded the women's program in the US Chess Federation, but is now stepping down as its director. In a Facebook post, Shahade cited the way the chess federation reacted - or failed to react - after Shahade accused GM Alejandro Ramirez, who was then working as a coach for the federation, of sexually harassing women and minors as the reason for the decision. | Photo: Jennifer Shahade

9/7/2023 – In his Game of the Week show #584, Merijn Van Delft takes a look at a game Jan-Krzysztof Duda and Gukesh played at the FIDE World Rapid Team Championships in Düsseldorf, a fine example of defense and counterattack. | Merijn’s show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

9/7/2023 – Day 1 of the World Women’s Team Championship saw two rounds played in each pool. Three teams scored back-to-back wins — Kazakhstan is the only squad in pool A with 4/4 match points before round 3, while the United States and China are sharing first place with perfect scores in pool B. The pool stage will run until Friday, when four teams per group will move on to the knockout stage. | Photo: Michal Walusza

9/6/2023 – Out of the four players who were sharing the lead after the first day of action at Tata Steel India Rapid tournament, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave recorded the best score in rounds 4-6. The Frenchman is now the sole leader in Kolkata with 4½ out of 6 points. Teimour Radjabov stands in sole second place, a half point back. | Photo: ChessBase India

9/6/2023 – The World Cup had it's fair share of underdog surprises in the first round. Robert Ris decided to pick a game from round three, though! Anish Giri faced Nijat Abasov, and in the tiebreaker, the GM from Azerbaijan played aggressive moves, which caused a lot of trouble for Giri. Ris shows us exactly, how the 150 points weaker player won impressively.

9/6/2023 – Apart from Kirill Alexeenko (to Austria) and Nikita Vitiugov (to England), the FIDE transfer list shows several other prominent Russian grandmasters who have left their federation after Russia invaded Ukraine. Evgeny Alekseev now plays for Israel and Sanan Sjugirov is the new number one in Hungary.

9/6/2023 – The new ChessBase Magazine #215 offers, among other things, 36 extensively annotated games. More than half of them build the "Special" of this issue: an exclusive collection of outstanding games by Hikaru Nakamura! In addition, Anish Giri, Grigoriy Oparin, Ivan Cheparinov, Thai Dai Van Nguyen et al. provide analyses from Norway Chess 2023 and Sharjah Masters 2023. Arjun Erigaisi played a brilliancy against Vladislav Kovalev in Sharjah - you can find an abridged version of his analysis here!

9/6/2023 – There has been an official announcement from the UK Government of a package of measures that will support the England teams, our best juniors, new tournaments and our deaf and blind players. This is the culmination of a 25-year quest and a 12-month-long campaign. Initiator Malcolm Pein tells us how it all came about and what it means for the future of British chess.