3/30/2016 – 587 players used the Easter holidays to play in the GRENKE Chess Open in Karlsruhe, Germany. The huge open attracted five grandmasters with a rating of 2700+ and 21 2600+ grandmasters. But in the end the young German GM Matthias Blübaum (Elo 2605) left all favorites behind. With 7.5/9 he shared first place with five other players and won on tie-break.

3/30/2016 – After a fortnight and a bit of ferocious combat we can now congratulate Sergey Karjakin on becoming Magnus Carlsen's next challenger. It's been a roller coaster ride of wildly swinging emotions and will certainly merit much examination in retrospect. GM Speelman looks at it not only from a historical point of view, but also from personal experience as a player and as a second.

3/29/2016 – In this second part of the profile of Wang Hao, the 26-year-old player shares his dire predictions of the future of classical chess, and his opinion of Magnus Carlsen's play. He also goes into detail on his passion for Manga, and his recommendations, as well as eclectic reading tastes from modern fantasy such as The Witcher to literary giants like Yukio Mishima.

3/29/2016 – One of the most powerful tools in the ChessBase Account feature set is MyGames Cloud, a comprehensive database and game editor. If you are seeking to create and maintain databases directly online, or enter and annotate games from a browser to save in a cloud database, this is where you have it all. In order to get started, and covering the basics, here is a video tutorial.

3/29/2016 – We are having such a great time following the Candidates. But there was one thing missing in Moscow – Magnus Carlsen! For chess fans who are experiencing withdrawal here's some good news: The film "Magnus" will be aired at the prestigious TriBeCa festival in New York mid April. The 76-minute documentary has been compiled from more than 500 hours of footage shot over a decade. For now we have the trailer.

3/28/2016 – Sergey Karjakin and Fabiano Caruana went into the final round of the Candidates tied for first, with Caruana needing to win with black to qualify. That was not to be – Sergey defeated his opponent in a Sicilian Rauzer in 42 moves. With this win he became the Challenger for the World Championship in November against Magnus Carlsen. We have a detailed report from Moscow including pictures, analysis and lots of video interviews.

3/28/2016 – 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!

3/28/2016 – Every prodigy has their story, how they started, what took them to chess, and more. In this profile and interview, the elite Chinese player Wang Hao is revealed to the readers, from his first steps as a youngster in a country where western chess is a distant third to Go or Chinese Chess, to his fantastic leaps as he became a grandmaster almost overnight. | Photo: Wang Hao's personal archive

3/27/2016 – Hikaru Nakamura played a solid Queen’s Gambit Declined against Veselin Toplaov, equalized quickly, won a pawn the game in 40 moves. Viswanathan Anand vs Anish Giri was a draw in 52 moves. Sergey Karjakin managed to draw in a dangerous position against Levon Aronian in 101 moves, while Caruana-Svidler turned into a 50-move-rule drama that ended on move 116 in a draw. Full report with postgame interviews and indepth analysis.

3/27/2016 – "I write for ChessBase because, as a kind of ‘community service’, we academics are expected to convey our research to the public in more palatable and widespread forms than just technical papers," writes Dr Azlan Iqbal. Unfortunately some readers interpreted his last article to be misogynistic, having “gratuitous sexist content”. The author replies to his critics and describes the application of the scientific method to an area as nebulous as aesthetics in chess.

3/26/2016 – Amruta Mokal is in Moscow for the Candidates 2016 and sends us beautiful pictures every day. Today we have a compilation of her photos which doesn’t include any of the eight candidates on the chess board. Here are pictures of spectators and famous personalities who visited the tournament hall and also the organizers who have made this event possible. Enjoy this pictorial.

3/26/2016 – In horror films the fog never lifts until the very end. Despite twelve ferocious rounds of chess, fog still lies heavy on the Candidates tournament, but there is some indication of what we'll see when it clears. Despite some vile blunders and dreadful tension it's less a case of pure horror, and more a case of whodunnit - or rather who will do it.