3/7/2019 – Stanley Kubrick was a giant in film history. Almost all of his films were milestones in their genre. He was also a great chess lover. In almost every one of his films, there is at least an allusion to the game of chess. He died 20 years ago today, on March 7, 1999, at the age of 70. We take a brief look at his career use of chess and chess imagery. | Photo: On the set of Dr. Strangelove | SK Film Archives LLC, Sony Colombia, the Kubrick family, and University of the Arts London

3/7/2019 – Team United States dazzled in round two by defeating China despite not having taken any of their stars to Astana. They now share the lead on a perfect score with Russia and England, and are set to take on the latter in the next round. In the women's event, the American team is also over-performing, as they drew Ukraine and defeated higher-rated Hungary in the first two days of competition. Nonetheless, the favourites from Russia and China are leading with 4/4. | Photo: David Llada / Official site

3/6/2019 – Ideas and strategies in Grandmaster games can be quite instructive. IM Merijn van Delft presents games like these every Wednesday at 19:00 UTC (20:00 CET, 2 pm EST). On this week's show: Jasel Lopez win over Simon Williams from Round 2 of the Batavia tournament. The live show is free to watch, and available on-demand for ChessBase Premium account holders (but FREE for a limited time!). To chat, please visit videos.chessbase.com/live or login via Playchess for Windows.

3/6/2019 – Critical moves are, well, critical. They decide about win, loss or draw. To feel when a critical position arises is crucial to improve your game. ChessBase 15 helps you to find and to analyse these critical critical moments in your games or games by others – and to turn your findings into training questions which you save in a database with critical moves. | Drawing: ChessBase

3/6/2019 – A “golden age” for tournament players ages 50 and older has arrived in the United States. In the past three years, US Chess has authorized new tournaments and prizes restricted to seniors. However, women ages 50 and older have not been affected. That may change in March 2019, when US Chess begins grant applications for women’s chess programs. WIM ALEXEY ROOT explains... | Photo: Alex Yermolinsky (with Dmitry Gurevich)

3/5/2019 – Hou Yifan played her first rated classical game since December, as she led her team from Oxford University to their third consecutive win over varsity rivals Cambridge. It was the first time the top-rated woman in the world participated, and the 137th such match overall. Cambridge clings to a tiny (and shrinking) lead of 59-56 wins (with 22 draws). Cambridge alumnus GM DANIEL FERNANDEZ takes a look at the games. | Pictured: Oxford's team Andrew Rogozinski (reserve), Daniel Abbas, Hou Yifan, Joris Gerlagh (captain), Benjamin Foo, Lisa Schut, Gordon Scott, Filip Mihov, Isaac Sanders | Photo: John Saunders

3/1/2019 – The organizers of the Olympic Games periodically consider proposals for new sports to be included. FIDE has applied for chess to be on the list. Just two weeks ago we reported "the Olympic dream is alive", but once more the sport did not make the cut. LA 2028 anyone?

3/1/2019 – Black can obtain a clear advantage after 26...f5! 27.Nxd4 Bxd4 28.Qxh6 with the right continuation at hand. Are you ready to follow in (five of) his footsteps then?

2/28/2019 – The surprise winner of the 17th Aeroflot Open is Kaido Kulaots who turns 43 today. The Estonian grandmaster was able to win his game in the final round and had more black games — the tiebreak — (not to mention better performance rating) after both he and Haik Martirosyan finished with 7.0/9. Kulaots is expected to receive an invitation to the Dortmund supertournament to be held in July. | Photo: Eteri Kublashvili

2/28/2019 – On Monday we told you about a very tough problem which was given to Vishy Anand by Vladimir Kramnik — and challenged you to solve it. A number of GMs and IMs had not succeeded, when Anand gave the problem to the players of Pune. In the end he discussed the moves that needed to be found, and Sagar Shah filmed it all for us to see. Don't miss Vishy showing you the solution.

2/28/2019 – The ChessBase Mega Database and other game collections contain fantastic examples for all important chess manoeuvres. However, they often remain hidden. The new search mask in ChessBase 15 can help find these hidden gems. A powerful function that is simply fun to use! Sagar Shah has prepared an instructive video.

2/28/2019 – In order to keep our chess brains sharp, we need to practice a wide variety of calculation exercises. Although many are looking for a way to become titled players without doing much effort, the only true path to reach master-level strength involves solving endless exercises. DAVIDE NASTASIO takes a look at the latest work by Robert Ris, which includes exercises that clearly mimic the positions we can find in tournament games. The video series takes us into the depth of calculation, showing once and again why we must not stop at the surface, but dig deep under!