8/10/2017 – American Frank Marshall was born 140 years ago today. Marshall was an ingenious chess gentleman who enriched opening theory with gambits and immortalised himself with many splendid combinations.

8/10/2017 – Part three of the "Exercises in Style" showed games by Tigran Petrosian, Boris Spassky, Bobby Fischer and Anatoly Karpov, featuring patient maneuvering, tactical brilliance, impressive endgame technique and sophisticated positional play. However, it was not always easy to ascribe the games to the "right" World Champions. Here are the solutions.

8/10/2017 – The British Championships in Llandudno ended last weekend Sunday in the dead heat — a tiebreak between Luke McShane and Gawain Jones. After two rapid games, Jones emerged the 2017 British Champion. Jovanka Houska was the top scorer among female players and became the woman's champion. | Photo: David Thomas

8/9/2017 – Levon Aronian was the sole winner of the sixth round, impressively defeating Wesley So and moving into shared second place with Vishy Anand and Magnus Carlsen. The latter missed chances to beat Hikaru Nakamura in a long drawn-out rook endgame, but had to settle for a draw after six hours of play. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave remains in the lead. | Photos: Lennart Ootes

8/9/2017 – After ten games in the World Championship match in Reykjavik, 1972, the score was 6½-3½ for Challenger Bobby Fischer. The match seemed virtually over – in the last eight games Boris Spassky had only managed to score 1½ points. "If it had been the best of 12 games, as in the Candidates matches, Spassky would already have been on his way home..." wrote Garry Kasparov in his Great Predessors book. In game 11 Boris took on the Poisoned Pawn variation of the Najdorf Sicilian, even though he had obtained a lost position in game seven. Take a look at what happened.

8/9/2017 – Belgium's biggest open tournament took place in Charleroi from July 29th to August 5th, 2017. A total of 240 players gathered to play, enjoy and celebrate the game of chess. The top seed of the event Tigran Gharamian (2616) emerged as the winner on tiebreak edging out experienced GM Alexandre Dgebuadze. Read on for interesting positions plus a video interview with Tigran showing you some beautiful tactics from one of his games, and his work as a second of Levon Aronian. | Photos: Amruta Mokal

8/8/2017 – Magnus Carlsen is back in the black! It was a day when Vishy Anand and Magnus Carlsen showcased brilliant calculating skills and self belief in order to win their games against Caruana and So respectively. When your opponent makes a move which you have thought was impossible, it is natural to doubt your own calculation. But great players go beyond that doubt and play confidently if they can find no refutation. Anand did just that, and so did Carlsen to score the only victories of the day. Blow by blow analysis of both the games. | Photos: Lennart Ootes

8/8/2017 – "The passed Pawn is a criminal, who should be kept under lock and key. Mild measures, such as police surveillance, are not sufficient." That is what Aron Nimzowitsch said about passed pawns. He knew what he was talking about. Karsten Müller also knows it.

8/7/2017 – For over 30 years, the GM Arnold Denker Tournament of High School Champions has provided top high school players of each U.S. Chess state the chance to compete nationally for college scholarships. Last week, IM Praveen Balakrishnan won the USD $5,000 first prize and also qualified for the next U.S. World Youth and Junior Closed Championships. Rochelle Wu (below) took the top spot in the National Girls’ Tournament of Champions | Photo: Vannessa Sun

8/7/2017 – With the latest update of playchess.com we reintroduced a powerful training tool: playing training games from a given position in the opening, in the middlegame or in the ending. Playing out certain positions can really improve your chess. Here is how to do it.

8/7/2017 – Test your tactical ability with these positions grouped in rough order of difficulty. The games come from various recent events, not least the opening Grand Chess Tour events in Paris and Leuven. Don’t forget that whilst sometimes the key move will force mate or the win of material, other times it will just win a pawn. Take your time analysing the positions, on our news page, assisted by a built-in chess engine.

8/6/2017 – Maxime Vachier-Lagrave became "the Frenchman with two names...and three points"! On Saturday he eked out a win with Black over World Champion Magnus Carlsen. He now leads Fabiano Caruana, who drew, and five players with an even score a point back. Hikaru Nakamura slipped to -1 with a loss to Neponiachtchi. | Photo: Lennart Ootes