9/1/2020 – Usually passed pawns should be pushed, but there is no rule without exception! What is Black’s best move in the diagram? Endgame specialist Karsten Müller demonstrates why one should always calculate carefully not to spoil a winning position in the final stages of the game.

9/1/2020 – The Czech Republic is in the process of returning to normality after the corona crisis. Last week the Czech National Championships were held as over-the-board tournaments in Pilsen, without face masks nor Plexiglas walls. Rating favourite David Navara won the 9-round event after collecting 7½ points. | Photos: Official site

8/31/2020 – One of the most mysterious passages of chess history was the 1910 World Championship match. Both the controversy of whether the world title was at stake in the ten-game confrontation and which were the conditions of said match are still unresolved. The riddle that Karsten Müller presented to our readers, however, had to do with game 5. The conclusion: Lasker was winning! | Pictured: Emanuel Lasker | Photo: Cleveland Public Library

8/31/2020 – The 2020 FIDE Online Olympiad came to an end on Sunday, with an internet outage prompting FIDE to declare finalists Russia and India as joint winners. The match had started with a tie in the first six-game mini-match. In the second encounter of the day, however, Nihal Sarin and Divya Deshmukh disconnected towards the end of their games and lost on time. First, the Russians were declared champions, but after India’s appeal, on the grounds that their players lost connection as a consequence of a massive internet outage, FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich decided to grant gold medals to both teams.

8/31/2020 – ChessBase Magazine is the most comprehensive and most sophisticated chess magazine there is. World class players analyse their brilliancies and explain the ideas behind the moves to you, opening specialists present the latest trends in opening theory and offer exciting ideas for your repertoire. Master trainers in the fields of tactics, strategy, and the endgame show you the tricks and techniques a successful tournament player needs! DVD with several hours of video + booklet. Also available for download including the booklet in pdf!

8/31/2020 – In 1949, four years after the end of World War II, the Allies divided Germany into West Germany (the Federal Republic of Germany, FRG) and East Germany (the German Democratic Republic, GDR). For chess composers, the main restriction was that they were unable to travel into western countries and the fact that they could not always send chess compositions to western sources, nor receive them. Columnist Siegfried Hornecker tells us how the chess composition scene was kept alive in the GDR. | Pictured: Leipzig in the 1980s

8/30/2020 – Many users have comfortable — one could almost say “huge” — computer screens. So it is not surprising that texts in our databases and also those of ChessBase Magazine look almost “ridiculously small”. But that does not have to be the case! Solution: in the latest versions there is a zoom function which becomes available after you update your software online!

8/30/2020 – Thank you for your commentaries about the last riddle and for clarifying the riddle before finding a solution. The chess logic-riddle community is very active — thanks for your engagement! Today’s riddle fits perfectly well into the chess world. It is a little odd though, I have to admit.

8/30/2020 – The quarterfinals, semifinals and final of the 2020 FIDE Online Olympiad scheduled to take place between Friday and Sunday (Augusto 28-30). After a draw in the first mini-match of the final between Russia and India, two Indian players lost connection to their games and forfeited on time in the second encounter. FIDE decided to declare both teams as joint winners! Follow the games live with commentary and computer analysis. | See the report on the semifinals!.

8/30/2020 – India and Russia defeated Poland and the United States respectively to reach the final of the 2020 FIDE Online Olympiad. After losing the first mini-match, India came back with a convincing win in the second. In the Armageddon decider, Humpy Koneru comfortably defeated Monika Socko to give her team overall victory. Meanwhile, the Russians defeated USA in the first mini-match and drew the second encounter to advance to the final. | Pictured: Humpy Koneru and Alexandra Kosteniuk | Photos: Austin Fuller / Russian Chess Federation

8/29/2020 – A few months ago we reported about Nakamura making a cameo in the award-winning and critically acclaimed series Billions. He did not stop there, he kept growing the game by involving more mainstream stars in chess. He even taught chess to World Strongest Man 2018, Hafþór J. Björnsson a.k.a. ‘The Mountain’ of Game of Thrones. Moreover, a few days before his impressive performance at the Magnus Carlsen Chess Tour Finals, Nakamura crossed 500K followers on Twitch. With that rapidly-gaining momentum, the esports teams TSM tweeted about their signing with Nakamura. This is only going to be good for chess in every aspect one can fathom. | Photo: Amruta Mokal

8/29/2020 – It was not quite the apocalypse. But the pandemic wreaked death and destruction of a magnitude never seen before. While many are still struggling to survive, the worst is over. The human spirit remains indefatigable and there are efforts to rebuild and rehabilitate lives. Amidst this chaos chess has survived and indeed flourished in the virtual world. This issue offers coverage of two major events, the Magnus Carlsen Invitational and the FIDE Online Nations Cup and offers all available games (405 of them!) from the Silkway Online Blitz Cup, the proverbial icing on the cake. It includes games annotated by Anish Giri, Alireza Firouzja and Romain Edouard, just to mention a few. Our columnist Nagesh Havanur takes a look at some of the decisive encounters featured in this issue. | Photo: Lennart Ootes