3/7/2018 – In the modern game, a player has to be ready to play almost any opening variation at short notice. The plan is to interrupt the preparation of the opponent at every turn. A knowledge of dynamic and slightly unusual lines could well score many,many points for the resourceful player. The Kveinys Variation : 1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 e6 3 d4 cxd4 4 Nxd4 Qb6! is surprisingly little-played, yet gives Black excellent chances and on this new ChessBase DVD, Andrew Martin explains how the system works.

3/7/2018 – New: Start a private tournament in your browser! Chess clubs, schools, companies, or any other collection of players, can also offer chess online — on their own chess server — for free! It is simple and does not does require much of any technical skill. In fact, all it takes are a few mouse clicks. It's a powerful and completely free self-service tournament system in your web browser! Here's how to get started in a few easy steps! | Photo: Hamburger Schachclub

3/6/2018 – Tuesdays at 18:00 CET (5 pm UK time, Noon EST) Lawrence Trent goes on air on Playchess.com. In his show, Lawrence will be dealing with the latest trends, games and combinations from elite chess tournaments. Today, Lawrence continues his look at classic Candidates tournament games.

3/6/2018 – The Gamma Reykjavik Open 2018 is all about Robert Fischer, who would have turned 75 this year. In Reykjavik he celebrated his greatest success, and he's also buried in Iceland. Among the participants are over 30 grandmasters. Richard Rapport and Pavel Eljanov lead the ranking list. Live games and commentary, plus a preview and photos by Gerd Densing.

3/6/2018 – Who is stronger? The queen or two rooks? This (of course) depends on the concrete position. However, the queen is always happy if she gets help.

3/6/2018 – Yannick Pelletier is a Swiss Grandmaster and well known DVD author for ChessBase. He's in Hamburg to record a DVD. He's in the organising comitee for the Biel Chess Festival and still very active on the chess board. Today he joins Karsten to look at some fascinating endgames from recent tournament praxis! Live at 15:00 CET (9:00 AM EST)!

3/2/2018 – The Tal Memorial 2018 begins on the 2nd of March 2018. It consists of two events - nine rounds of rapid and thirteen rounds of blitz. The Candidates tournament is about to begin in a week, yet four of them are playing here: Kramnik, Karjakin, Mamedyarov and Grischuk. Competing with them are Anand, Gelfand, Nakamura, Svidler, Nepomniachtchi and Dubov. It is going to be a wonderful event and we have Sagar Shah and Amruta Mokal present at the venue to bring you high-quality coverage. In this first report apart from the opening ceremony we bring you a very interesting experiment that was conducted with the players using Tal's famous games.

3/2/2018 – Practicing openings is best done by playing openings. And with a Powerbook, Fritz 16 turns into an ideal sparring partner to play, test and practice openings. He plays the openings you want to practice again and again. When you are ready you can test your knowledge against human opponents!

3/1/2018 – In the final round of the Aeroflot Open, Belarusian GM Vladislav Kovalev secured a comfortable draw against GM Gabriel Sargissian to clinch the title prize. With his full point lead over the rest of the field, it was no surprise that Kovalev settled for peace just 15 moves into the game. Decisive games were seen on boards four and five where SP Sethuraman and Dmitry Gordievsky defeated Victor Bologan and Amin Tabatabaei respectively. Both were tied for second with a score of 6½ / 9 but Sethuraman, due to a better tiebreak, took the higher spot on the leaderboard. | Pictured: Top three finishers in Group A: (L to R) SP Sethuraman, Vladislav Kovalev & Dmitry Gordievsky | Photo: Niklesh Jain

3/1/2018 – FIDE just published the new ratings and the official world ranking list. Compared to March there are some slight changes among the top ten, but World Champion Magnus Carlsen is still clear number one. Number two in the world is Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, followed by Vladimir Kramnik on three. Hou Yifan leads the women's list.

3/1/2018 – After the Aeroflot Open there is more high class chess in Moscow: a strong blitz tournament with top players such as Karjakin, Nakamura, Artemiev, Andreikin, Nepomniachtchi, Mamedayrov, and many others. Though the organisers do not offer a live-transmission of the games, they offer a live-video of the tournament.

2/28/2018 – Two weeks ago there was a World Championship — in Chess960, a variant that symmetrically shuffles the position of the pieces behind the row of pawns. The game has gained some popularity since it eliminates the staggering amount of preparation that is required in regular chess. But Chess960 has a few problems that probably prevent it from really taking off. We discuss some possible solutions to these problems.