12/14/2019 – The pairings for the quarter-finals of the Jerusalem Grand Prix are now set, after seven round-one match-ups were decided in Friday's tiebreaks. Out of those with serious chances to get the remaining spot in the Candidates, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov was the one leaving the race early on. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave is still ahead in the overall standings, but Ian Nepomniachtchi or even Wesley So could overtake him in the coming rounds. | Photo: Niki Riga

12/13/2019 – About seven million players worldwide have joined the Football Fantasy League to try their luck as virtual managers of a virtual English Premier League team. They play on the internet but the Premier League games in the real world define how good they are. Magnus Carlsen is very good: on Sunday, December 8, the World Champion and his fictitious team Kjell Ankedal were number 6 on the world's ranking list. Which made headlines. | Photo: Magnus Carlsen at the Tata Steel Chess India Tournament | Photo: Lennart Ootes

12/13/2019 – Power Play plays on! On the show today: Aronian-Carlsen. Power Play is live most Fridays at 17:00 UTC (18:00 CET, Noon EST) on playchess.com. You can watch the episode live for free! All the usual puzzles, games and instruction will be on offer. Puzzle and the live video...

12/13/2019 – In the diagram position, White's 25.Rxe8+ Qxe8 26.Bxf6 gets a most menacing attacker in front of the completely exposed enemy king. But Black has a way to secure half a point — can you see it?

12/13/2019 – Mariya Muzychuk held Goryachkina to a draw, despite the former getting an advantage in the opening. Humpy suffered her first loss of the tournament against Paehtz. Thus, Goryachkina took a full-point sole lead. Harika made a short draw with Lagno. Both Humpy and Harika are now tied at second place. Cramling, Kosteniuk, Lagno and Anna Muzychuk are at tied fourth place. Gunina lost her sixth consecutive game, this time against Dzagnidze. | Photo: Karol Bartnik / FIDE

12/13/2019 – Wesley So is the only player that has so far advanced to round two of the Jerusalem Grand Prix, as he knocked out Yu Yangyi with a 26-move victory in their rematch classical encounter. Despite the abundance of draws, day two of action in Israel was quite entertaining, as no fewer than five of the seven remaining games featured hard-fought struggles. | Photo: Niki Riga

12/12/2019 – Just imagine you had a chess computer — the auto-sensor kind. Would someone who had no knowledge of the game be able to work it out, just by moving pieces. Or imagine you are a very powerful computer. By looking at millions of images of chess games would you be able to figure out the rules and learn to play the game proficiently? The answer is yes — because that has just been done by Google's Deep Mind team. For chess and 76 other games. It is interesting, and slightly disturbing. | Graphic: DeepMind

12/12/2019 – Mihail Marin takes a game Ding Liren vs. Teymour Radjabov from the final of the FIDE World Cup as his starting point for an incisive investigation into the “Flohr-Mikenas System” with Black’s continuation 3…c5. At the age of 14 Praggnanandhaa became world champion in the U18 class. “Pragg” shows one of his games against Iran’s No. 1: Alireza Firouzja (video).

12/12/2019 – Goryachkina scored a victory over Gunina and took sole lead with 6.0/8. Humpy drew her game with Harika and they are now at second and third place. Cramling recovered against Mariya after making a few mistakes. Kosteniuk beat Dzagnidze and now is at shared fourth place. Anna Muzychuk made a short draw with Elisabeth Paehtz, Kateryna Lagno had a fighting draw with Zhao Xue. | Photo: Karol Bartnik / FIDE

12/12/2019 – What distinguishes the Mega Database from other databases? For one, it does not become obsolete and remains "up to date" with just a few clicks! Because the delivery of the Mega Database 2020 includes not only approximately 8 million games but also the weekly mega update service. Every week we provide you with a database of around 5,000 new games. (Plus, the included 85,000 annotated games alone corresponds to a set of over 1,000 or more chess books!) With a few clicks in ChessBase 15, your Mega Database will always be up to date. A "mega help" for every tournament player. Here's how...

12/12/2019 – The fourth and final stage of the 2019 FIDE Grand Prix kicked off in Jerusalem. The first classical games of all eight single-elimination matches finished peacefully. The Israeli city sees the race to the Candidates coming to an end, with two spots still in contention at the series — theoretically, Alexander Grischuk can still be eliminated, although he is a clear favourite to get one of the two tickets. | Photo: Niki Riga

12/11/2019 – This week IM Merijn van Delft brings you his analysis of one of his own games from the recent German League weekend which he considers quite instructive. The live show is free to watch, and available on-demand for ChessBase Premium account holders (but FREE for a limited time!). Merijn is live this week starting at 19:00 UTC (20:00 CET / 4 PM EST).