9/7/2025 – The third day of play in Samarkand produced sole leaders in both tournaments of the FIDE Grand Swiss. Decisive results on all the top four boards in the open section left Parham Maghsoodloo, the 21st seed, alone at the top with a perfect 3/3. In the women's event, defending champion Vaishali Rameshbabu continued her perfect run, scoring a third consecutive victory to move half a point ahead of the field. | Photo: FIDE / Michal Walusza

9/6/2025 – 95 years ago, on September 6, 1930, the Anderssen Jubilee Tournament of the Frankfurt Chess Club began in Frankfurt am Main. The Master Tournament was convincingly won by Nimzowitsch with 9½ out of 11, but the perhaps most famous game of the event was played in the Main Tournament. It was Hugo Hussong’s brilliant win against Fritz Herrmann.

9/6/2025 – In the diagram position Black set the board on fire with 34...Rgxd6. How would you assess the situation after that?

9/6/2025 – After two rounds of the FIDE Grand Swiss, only five players remain on perfect scores out of 172 participants, underlining the strength of both tournaments. In the open, Alireza Firouzja, Parham Maghsoodloo and Anton Demchenko (pictured) lead with 2/2, while Vaishali Rameshbabu and Olga Badelka top the women's standings. Thirty players chase the leaders in the open, while fifteen trail in the women's event. | Photo: FIDE / Michal Walusza

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.

9/4/2025 – On September 28, Czech Inn Chess is organizing a rapid chess tournament in honor of Vlastimil Hort. The venue is the Hotel Giovanni, where Vlastimil Hort always stayed whenever he visited Prague. The tournament is intended to be held annually from now on. Those who take part will feel the spirit of the great Czech chess legend, which surely still lingers in these rooms.

9/4/2025 – An experienced trainer, Ivan Sokolov helped the likes of Alireza Firouzja and Parham Maghsoodloo to develop their talent. In his FritzTrainer series for ChessBase, he showcases a pragmatic style, focusing on general ideas rather than specific lines. One of the games analysed in the section devoted to practical play is Garry Kasparov against Jan Timman from Corus 2001, which included a number of instructive mistakes by both legendary grandmasters. | Photo: Frederic Friedel