9/14/2020 – Before the third and final day of the Champions Showdown Chess 9LX Online Tournament Levon Aronian was sole first but he scored only 1.0/3 from his last three games, and that allowed Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura to pass the Armenian and to share first place. On Tuesday, September 15, Nakamura and Carlsen will continue they rivalry in the Rapid & Blitz tournament.

9/13/2020 – On Sunday, 1 p.m. CDT (8 p.m. CEST), the Chess 9LX 2020 tournament goes into its final stage. The Chess 9LX tournament is a Chess960 round robin at rapid time controls (20+10) with ten top players: Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Fabiana Caruana, Wesley So, Levon Aronian, Leinier Dominguez, Peter Svidler, Alireza Firouzja and Garry Kasparov(!). Follow the event and the games live, with commentary – live transmission will begin about ten minutes before the start of round 7.

9/13/2020 – With a run of three consecutive wins Levon Aronian has taken the lead on the second day of the 20+10 online tournament "Champions Showdown Chess 9LX". At this tournament, organized by the Saint Louis Chess Club, the Armenian grandmaster, with his now 4.5/6, has a half-point-lead on Magnus Carlsen, Wesley So and Hikaru Nakamura. Former world champion Garry Kasparov, on the other hand, is towards the bottom of the standings after an underwhelming second matchday.

9/12/2020 – Brazil is the fifth largest country in the world size-wise and the sixth biggest by population. It brought us famous football stars like Pele, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Romario and Neymar. Chess-wise, Brazil is a bit more of an underdog. Juliana Terao on the other hand won the Brazilian Woman's Championship five times in a row (2015 to 2020), and sticks out with achieving a rating of over 2300 in 2017, which no other Brazilian woman has ever reached before. In our interview with the FM and WIM, we talk about chess in Brazil, why her middle-name is "Sayumi", and how she and other South-Americans deal with the coronavirus situation.

9/12/2020 – Yesterday, the 20+10 online tournament "Champions Showdown Chess 9LX" of the Saint Louis Chess Club started with the first of a total of three matchdays. Ten world-class grandmasters play against each other in a round robin tournament of "Chess 960". The difference to regular chess is that the starting position varies each game. After three rounds, world champion Magnus Carlsen and Leinier Dominguez Perez share the lead in the standings with 2.5 points each. Former world champion Garry Kasparov is also doing well with 1.5/3.

9/11/2020 – In this Power Play Show Grandmaster Daniel King looks at a brilliancy prize win from Jan Timman that he featured in his latest book 'Timman's Triumphs - My 100 Best Games'. | Power Play is on air most Fridays at 17:00 UK (18:00 CEST, 11:00 EST) on playchess.com. All the usual puzzles, games and instruction will be on offer. | Photo: Frans Peeters

9/9/2020 – Vishy Anand and Vladimir Kramnik are friends, but they were also rivals. They played a World Championship match and about 150 games against each other, and for two decades both were among the three best players in the world. In the Indian sports program "The Finish Line" Anand now talks about his World Championship match 2008 against Kramnik. Anand shares insights about his surprising choice of 1.d4, about match strategy and he reveals why this was one of the most important matches of his career. | Photo: Alina l'Ami

9/8/2020 – In round eight of the Spanish Championship the two leaders, Ivan Salgado and Alexei Shirov, played against each other. Shirov won and is now sole first with 7.0/8 and with one round to go he has good chances to become Spanish Champion 2020. | Photos: Patricia Claros/ Feda

9/8/2020 – The Candidates Tournament 2020 in Ekaterinburg was started when the corona pandemic had already spread around the world. However, after seven of 14 rounds it was interrupted and postponed to an indefinite date. In a press release FIDE now announced that the Candidates Tournament will resume on November 1, 2020, probably in Ekaterinburg, or alternatively in Tbilisi. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

9/8/2020 – Claus-Dieter Meyer and Karsten Mueller present the "Magical Endgames Fritztrainer", their third collaboration. Sadly, Claus-Dieter Meyer passed away in March 2020, but he finished his work on this DVD before, including notes and comments. Endgame expert Karsten Mueller analyses and explains important endgame techniques and presents a number of fantastic games. The volume concludes with helpful interactive exercises and is a treasure for everyone who likes the endgame and wants to improve in chess.

9/8/2020 – Endings with opposite coloured bishops are often drawish but can also be very exciting because material is less important. This again and again leads to surprising and aesthetically pleasing sacrifices.

9/8/2020 – In the prestigious news magazine Der SPIEGEL, edition 49/1982, we found the following chess problem, which a reader had solved on his chess computer. It was a 7-mover and the computer required more than 48 days to solve it. In an article at the time Frederic Friedel tried to explain not why it took so long, but how it could manage to process theoretically three trillion positions so quickly! In the meantime things have changed and regular chess engines have become much, much faster. You can find out how much faster yourself.