10/26/2018 – Attacking the bishop f7 with 36.e6 in the diagram position contains many potential ways to lose for Black. His game continuation, however, gives him the advantage! What did White overlook?

10/26/2018 – Nobody seems to be able to rise above the field at the Chess.com Isle of Man International Tournament. In round six, all the co-leaders either drew or lost, providing a chance for some big guns to reach the top — specifically, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Hikaru Nakamura and Radek Wojtaszek took advantage of the situation. So now the lead is shared by six players, with no less than eleven hungry chasers half a point behind — Kramnik and Anand included. | Photos: John Saunders / Official site

10/25/2018 – Weekends are quite busy for chess players, with tournaments of all kinds being organized. DAVIDE NASTASIO was lucky to witness the Georgia State Women's Championship held at the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Atlanta, and interview the winner, Alisa Scherbakova, who shares her insights along with games from the tournament. | Photo: Davide Nastasio

10/25/2018 – The Boston Sculptors Gallery (in Boston, Massachusetts, USA) has been hosting an interesting competition from October 3rd through to November 4th: the "Match of the Matriarchs". The exhibit is the brainchild of American artist Donna Dodson, who has designed a chess game with exclusively female figures inspired by marine animals. There is a closing reception the evening of November 2nd. | Photo: Boston Sculptors Gallery

10/25/2018 – FritzTrainer DVDs are easy to use but getting your FritzTrainer via download is even easier, especially in recent years when many laptop PCs ship without a DVD drive. This short tutorial shows why buying the download versions of the FritzTrainers are an elegant and easy way to improve your chess! | Drawing: ChessBase

10/25/2018 – All kinds of games were seen in the fifth round of the Chess.com Isle of Man International Tournament — short draws, theoretical battles, upsets, a checkmate with two knights against a queen, and so on. Jeffery Xiong and Abhijeet Gupta beat Richard Rapport and Vidit Gujrathi, respectively, to join Wang Hao and Arkadij Naiditsch in the lead with 4½/5. Meanwhile, Hikaru Nakamura and Sergey Karjakin won impressive games to up their tallies to four points. | Photos: John Saunders

10/22/2018 – The 22nd edition of the traditional "Schaaktoernooi" started over the weekend in the Dutch town of Hoogeveen. 82 players participate in the Open where the top seed is the Egyptian Grandmaster Bassem Amin. But there are also two matches on offer, typically featuring rising stars and veteran players. This year Samuel Shankland (USA) meets Peter Svidler (Russia) and Vladimir Fedoseev (Russia) is pitted against Jorden van Foreest (Netherlands). The tournament director is GM Loek van Wely. | Photos: hoogeveenchess.nl

10/21/2018 – It is with sadness that we relay news of the passing of Dato' Tan Chin Nam on Oct 21st 2018 at the age of 92. He was involved in supporting the development of chess in Malaysia as well as in many other countries across Asia. In remembrance of his contributions to chess as well as to many other areas (e.g. the restoration of the famous Queen's Victoria Building (QVB) in Sydney, the development of Mid Valley City (which is still today ranked the 8th largest shopping mall in the world), horse racing, etc, EDWIN LAM (pictured with Dato' in 2008) offers his 2006 article "Grand Maitre de Succes" published in Australian Chess magazine.

10/21/2018 – The main section of the Chess.com Isle of Man International Tournament attracted 164 players, with the first round featuring the typical big rating gaps in all boards. However, unlike in other open events, we saw many of the underdogs drawing their higher-rated colleagues. The elite player that got closest to a defeat was Vishy Anand, who managed to recover and defeat his young compatriot Raunak Sadhwani. | Photos: John Saunders / Maria Emelianova / iominternationalchess.com

10/20/2018 – In the United States, there are many weekend tournaments, thanks to the efforts of many independent tournament organizers nationwide. Some of these tournaments provide significant prize money, over USD $12,000, and the chance to play against strong master level players. Georgia-based DAVIDE NASTASIO recently spoke to one such veteran organizer, Walter High, and sent this brief interview along with annotated games from the North Carolina Open.

10/20/2018 – A full century after the Doomsday Worm had erased all the world’s electronic records, British scientists discovered, excarvations in the suburbs of Hamburg, Germany, evidence of the existence of a game that was popular in the 20th century, and of the existence of a legendary champion of the game. We have a transcript of a lecture held in Oxford in 2147 by Prof. Eduard Sommer, which we quote in this spoof article by John Nunn. It also contains two remarkable puzzles.

10/19/2018 – Legendary artist and chess player Marcel Duchamp died in France 50 years ago this month. This year also marks the 50th anniversary of his collaboration with composer and music theorist John Cage, in a unique piece played on a hybrid chess board / musical instrument, and called "Reunion". It was avant-garde in its day and still feels novel in digital recreation today. | Pictured: Duchamp and John Cage at the Ryerson Theatre in Toronto, March 5, 1968 | Photo: Eldon Garnet / World Chess Hall of Fame