3/7/2017 – One can only describe a norm tournament in which three of the seven hopefuls manage to actually make norms as a smashing success! The mix of young and ambitious players coupled with a lot of fighting chess was the recipe for this big success, and at the top were both Australian IM Bobby Cheng and IM Lucas Van Foreest who both scored GM norms. Illustrated report and analysis by GM Alexandr Fier.

3/7/2017 – Iran, the country that has just finished hosting the 2017 Women's World Championship, has been in the mainstream news of late for different reasons. In a remarkable incident during sidelines of the Championship the Iran Chess Federation banned two siblings for "hurting Iran's national interests" (e.g. not wearing a hijab in the Gibraltar Open). This has caused an international outcry, and now an Iranian player and computer scientist, Arash Akbarinia, weighs in.

3/6/2017 – Impossible odds set the stage for amazing tournaments. And one for the books is the traditional Irish weekend event that has been held in Bunratty each February for the past 24 years. Nigel Short ran away with it with a perfect 6.0/6 score, in a lyrical environment that is described as a 'tournament for the hedonist in you' by Alina L'Ami in her large illustrated report.

3/6/2017 – While comparisons between chess and mathematics and chess and science are not new, with greats such as Feynman elaborating, the article here is more than yet another comparison, it is an actual lesson that will appear in high school physics classes in Crete. Enjoy this excellent article by physicist Ioannis Halkias.

3/6/2017 – Have you played a game of chess that you were always proud of? You wanted to share this game with others, but never really found a way to reach the maximum audience. Well, the developers at ChessBase have come up with a way to upload your best game to the best chess database – the Mega Database 2017 and share it with the world. Here's how you do it:

3/5/2017 – This week's Agony is from a young Canadian filmmaker and producer, a childhood friend of Canadian rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer and actor Drake, about whom he has made a documentary film. Jacob Stein submitted two Ecstasy games in the London System (Queen's Pawn Openings with Bf4), and when Jon Speelman requested some “Agony”, he added an obviously very painful loss.

3/4/2017 – The dramatic final tiebreaker of the Women’s World Championship ended with a victory for the one with steel-like nerves: Tan Zhongyi from China. As we expected, the Chinese showed a great control over her nerves to bring the best of her game forward and defeated yet another favorite to win the tournament, Anna Muzychuk, to win the coveted title. Illustrated report and analysis by GM Elshan Moradiabadi.

3/4/2017 – Vladimir Fedoseev had a half point lead over the field going into the last round. He ensured that there were no hiccups and rightfully picked up the winner's purse of €18000. Along with that he gets an entry into the 2017 Dortmund super tournament. In the blitz section, it was Anton Korobov who crushed the field and won with 15.5/18. Illustrated report with analysis by IM Shah and GM Yermolinsky.

3/4/2017 – It really must be considered a Cinderella story, since by all means, Everaldo Matsuura was not even supposed to be in the final, let alone win it, yet by forceful contortions of fate, the friendly player from the state of Paraná stormed away with the event, winning his second Brazilian title after 26 years. Juliana Terao crushed the Women’s Championship with 8.5/9. Here is the large illustrated report with GM analysis.

3/3/2017 – We have some very interesting new functionality on our news page. On the right you see a list of "Live Tournaments" – these are events that are currently or were recently broadcast on Playchess. A single click takes you to a luxury broadcast page where you can follow the most important games, or replay all of them from the event, analysing them with engine assistance. But best of all: you can load deep realtime analysis and find out instantly what happened. All on different devices, without ever leaving the news page!

3/3/2017 – Playing 32...Rh6! in the diagram, Black wants to create fresh threats on the kingside. But this rook is going to do much more - at the end it will neutralize White's counterplay in the b-file! How this?...

3/3/2017 – The classical part of world women championship in Tehran, Iran, has concluded but the winner, similar to the last World Championship in New York, has yet to be determined by tiebreak. The two finalists, after shedding blood in rounds two and three, took a rest and agreed to a rather fast draw in the last round to go for a tiebreak. Report, tiebreak preview, and analysis by GM Elshan Moradiabadi.