10/5/2016 – On 6th October the 3rd Millionaire Chess tournament starts in Atlantic City. And again it is a tournament in which players can win a lot of money. Chess organiser, author, coach and commentator GM Maurice Ashley is one of the driving forces behind the Millionaire Chess tournament. In an interview he openly talks about expectations, this year's tournament, Chess in the US and why he is so enthusiastic about the game.

10/5/2016 – Alexei Shirov is famous for his wild tactical play and his intuitive sacrifices. However, in the top encounter of round four in the Isle of Man tournament he defeated the young and tremendously talented Indian Grandmaster Santosh Gujrathi Vidit with dry but strong technical chess to take the sole lead with 4.0/4. Half a point behind follow five players with 3.5/4 each. One of them is Wesley So who won with Black against Julio Granda Zuniga, showing very energetic play.

10/5/2016 – "I have always been hooked on the game’s history," writes IM Craig Pritchett, a leading Steinitz authority, in the British magazine CHESS. "As I struggle to keep my FIDE rating afloat into my chess-playing seniority, I have taken to writing books on great players, their styles, times and significance. I have never had the slightest doubt that striving to understand the contribution to the game’s development made by Wilhelm Steinitz (1836-1900) and others is not just intrinsically of interest, but that it also positively benefits our own chess.

10/4/2016 – As the title suggests, there were five draws today in Moscow after we had been spoiled with hard-fought, violent rounds. Several of the games saw little to no chances for either side to win, or even create real threats. Nepomniachtchi keeps his half point lead over Giri, who had amazing news yesterday! On the rest day his son Daniel was born! Congratulations to him and Sopiko.

10/4/2016 – With a populuation of about three million Armenia is a small country. But a country with a strong chess tradition and lots of talent. At the World Youth Championships in Khanty-Mansiysk in Russia, Armenia won two of six possible (U18 Open, U18w, U16 Open, U16w, U14 Open and U14w) gold medals. The four other gold medals went to Russia, China, India and Greece. All in all, Russia won the most medals: seven from eighteen.

10/4/2016 – Every week ChessBase magazine author and renowned endgame expert Karsten Müller presents a remarkable or particularly instructive endgame in his blog. A click on the diagram opens a larger board. Test your endgame skills, improve and have fun!

10/4/2016 – In a large open as strong as the Isle of Man, every round is a feast, every game a meal, with no shortage of exciting positions and exotic play. Round three saw many of the top players already facing stiff grandmaster competition with few of the lopsided pairings from the first two days. This led to some exciting bouts including hard fought draws at the top. Sharing his enthusiasm of all there was to see is Manuel Weeks, highlighting some of the best games with lots of quiz positions.

10/3/2016 – Evgeny Tomashevsky was playing the Modern Scotch with black in the first round of the 2012 Tal Memorial. He lost the game to Teimour Radjabov. Fast forward to 2016 – Tomashevsky playing the Modern Scotch with black, once again, this time against Nepomniachtchi. He loses again! We investigate both the games in this article, with analysis by Teimour Radjabov and Alejandro Ramirez. And we show you a DVD that presents the white strategies in detail and also outlines a dynamic way for Black to counter the latest trends.

10/3/2016 – In a total field of 133 players we see no Russians – not a single lone GM or IM. But: 75% of the Gold Medal United States Olympic team is in the Isle of Man to win the tournament. And: almost 20% of the total participants in the event are Indians. After two rounds of play 16 players are on 2.0/2 – but not world number 6 Wesley So, who was stopped by Indian number two female Harika Dronavalli. Big report with lots of annotated games + Round three live!

10/2/2016 – What an exciting and powerful round we had in Moscow! Four white wins, which blast the tournament wide open! The most important ones for the top standings were Aronian's win against Giri, finishing with a flourish, and Nepo's positional domination against Mamedyarov: the Russian now regains sole lead. Svidler blew Li Chao off the board while Kramnik beat Gelfand, who suffered his fifth loss in a row.

10/2/2016 – This tournament is taking place from October 1st to 9th, 2016. The participants include Fabiano Caruana, Wesley So, Hikaru Nakamura, Michael Adams, Pavel Eljanov, Wang Hao, Alexei Shirov, Hou Yifan, with a total field of 132 players. The first round saw clean wins by most of the top seeds (Peter Leko, 2709, drew against an untitled 2363 player). You can watch the action of round two here on our news page.

10/2/2016 – Today he turns 60, our very popular columnist Jonathan Speelman, grandmaster and mathematician, twice Candidate for the World Championship. In 1978, at the age of 21, he defeated his first GM, none other than Bent Larsen in the Lone Pine tournament (which Larsen went on to win). In celebration of his birthday Jon annotates this "ecstasy" game, as well as an "agony" encounter against Peter Biyiasas. Learn and enjoy.