11/16/2017 – Most parents want their children to reach their academic potential, and they’re willing to go through great effort and expense to help them achieve that goal. In recent years, a number of researchers have offered evidence suggesting that two activities in particular are especially effective at improving children’s cognitive abilities. These are playing chess and learning a musical instrument. But before sending your kid to chess club or band camp, please read on.

11/16/2017 – The Grand Prix series until now was not the most exciting string of tournaments held, mainly because of the high number of draws in the past events. But the last leg held at Palma De Mallorca, Spain, which will begin November 16th, is extremely exciting, because two spots from the Candidates 2018 will be decided from here! Two players who have the best chance to make it are Teimour Radjabov and MVL. We have the pictures from the grand opening ceremony that was held in a Gothic Castle.

11/15/2017 – The last day of the match between Magnus Carlsen and Ding Liren continued the trend of the previous days: Ding had chances but failed to realise them. Carlsen, however, was able to exploit chances he did not really seem to have. No wonder Carlsen won the blitz-match by a huge margin. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

11/15/2017 – It's taking place in the north Italian town of Acqui Terme, a place where ancient Romans went to take sulphur baths. 282 players are gathered to play the open and women's Senior World Championship, in the +50 and +65 sections. GMs Granda Zuniga and Zurab Sturua lead in the +50 Open, with 5.0/7 each. On the sidelines there is an initiative to establish a new FIDE Seniors' Commission, to help address future policy, a range of existing issues.

11/15/2017 – Passed pawns often lead to exciting tactics. They invite sacrifices and can lead to mating attacks that have to be calculated carefully. But sometimes the tactical possibilities are even more sophisticated.

11/15/2017 – DeepMind is a neuroscience-inspired AI company which develops general-purpose learning algorithms and uses them to help tackle some of the world’s most pressing challenges. The company's groundbreaking work includes the development of AlphaGo. This Deep Learning program defeated Go world champion Lee Sedol in 2016 — a breakthrough experts proclaimed to have arrived a decade ahead of its time. Demis Hassabis, Co-Founder and CEO of DeepMind, visited UCL Academy in Camden, UK, and took students on a journey through his career from chess prodigy to scientist and business leader and into the complex world of artificial intelligence.

11/14/2017 – Today, the Champions Showdown in St. Louis will end. Ding Liren and Magnus Carlsen will play 12 blitz games with a time-control of 5 minutes for the whole game. After three days Carlsen leads by 50-18 and thus secured the match. Even if Ding Liren won all 12 blitz games today he would not catch up. But no matter the result, 12 high-class blitz games are still worth watching. The games begin at 18:00 CET (11 am in Saint Louis) on Tuesday. You can follow the action live.

11/14/2017 – One match is still running at the Champions Showdown in St. Louis: Magnus Carlsen vs Ding Liren. In round three, on November 13, the World Champion and China's first World Championship Candidate had to play eight 10-minute games. Ding Liren started well but then suffered a debacle. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

11/14/2017 – Tuesdays at 5pm UK time Lawrence Trent goes on air on Playchess.com. In his show Lawrence Trent will be dealing with the latest trends, games and combinations from the elite chess tournaments. This week features games from the Bundesliga!

11/14/2017 – Lawrence Trent is an Internation Master from The United Kingsdom. He's in Hamburg to record a DVD. He also has his own weekly show on playchess (this evening at 18:00 CET). He joins Karsten to today look at some fascinating endgame from recent tournament praxis! Live at 15:00 CET (9:00 AM EST)!

11/14/2017 – Photos and video from Magnus Carlsen's two days in Hamburg last week. At the ChessBase office he gave a short interview, greeted the ChessBase team and received the first copy (made by hand) of Fritz 16 (on sale starting on November 14th!). On Thursday Magnus participated in a conference on the theme "digital health" organised by Die Zeit (we have the full interview) and in the evening he played a clock simultaneous exhibition at the Atlantic Kempinski hotel. Carlsen prevailed in all the games, but the 13 players gave him a decent challenge. The group itself was interesting, including German football star Marco Bode, a Norwegian politician, three very young but talented players, several self-proclaimed "addicts" of "Play Magnus" app, and an young Austrian woman who played her first serious game against the World Champion. | Photos: Nadja Wittmann

11/13/2017 – Three matches of the Champions Showdown in St. Louis are over: Hikaru Nakamura crushed Veselin Topalov, Wesley So needed an incredible comeback to defeat Leinier Dominguez, and Fabiano Caruana won a close match against Alexander Grischuk. Magnus Carlsen and Ding Liren still play, but Carlsen dominates. | Photo: Lennart Ootes