BDO Chess: writing history in Haarlem (1/2)

10/31/2014 – Frits Agterdenbos was one of the leading chess photographers in the eighties, and has graced our pages with articles and photos over the years. His first full-fledged article was in 2005, and now he comes full circle with a lovely article on the 10th BDO Chess tournament, complete with his high standard of photography and a native's guided tour of the area.

BBC's Across the Board: Sigrid Rausing

10/30/2014 – The third episode of Across the Board brought in Sigrid Rausing, founder of the Sigrid Rausing Trust, one of the United Kingdom's largest philanthropic foundations, having distributed over 200 million pounds to human rights organizations in the last decade. She is the heiress and granddaughter of Ruben Rausing, the founder of the Tetra Pak company, and plays chess every day.

ChessBase Complete: Manual and reference guide

10/30/2014 – "Players new to ChessBase 12 should seriously consider buying a copy of ChessBase Complete, and long-time users might want to as well," writes John Hartmann. "It is a sturdy tutorial to the various features of the program, and it doubles as a user-friendly reference guide. I suspect that about 90% of what you need to know about ChessBase can be found in these pages." Review.

Chess in the High Tatras (2/2)

10/30/2014 – In this second part, author Adam Jarmula recounts the quest for the elusive third IM norm for his son FM Lukasz Jarmula, while sharing the impressions of the High Tatras mountain range and the tournament. For anyone seeking to mix day-long excursions in nature, with a nice tournament in a convivial environment, the appeal it has on players is no surprise.

Tashkent 08: Georgian Magic

10/29/2014 – Baadur Jobava has to be, by far, the most uncompromising player in this tournament. His choice of openings, his aggressive style and his powerful attacks sometimes give him spectacular wins, but many times he suffers painful and overwhelming defeats. This tournament it seems everything is working for him; he won with Black by rolling over Gelfand's position and he is now tied for first!

BBC's Across the Board: Murray Campbell

10/29/2014 – In this second episode, Dominic Lawson interviewed Murray Campbell over the internet as the latter was playing from New York. For those who do not know, Murray Campbell was one of the key figures behind Deep Blue, the computer that famously beat Garry Kasparov in 1997. Campbell discusses artificial intelligence, Kasparov's cheating accusations and solving chess.

Illya Nyzhnyk wins Spice Cup 2014

10/29/2014 – SPICE stands for Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence, and has made Webster University in St. Louis, USA, a hotbed of chess talent. Players from all over the globe play and study there, and the participants of the Spice Cup 2014 showed high international standard. The event was won by former child prodigy Illya Nyzhnyk, now a ripe 18 year of age. Big illustrated report with analysis.

Chess in the High Tatras (1/2)

10/29/2014 – Dating back to 1952, the Tatry Open, held in Slovakia, is a tournament that has adapted and survived in spite of a fairly low profile. It has achieved this by bringing in solving competitions, blitz events, and more, but its magic lies in the beautiful scenery of the High Tatras, with rounds held in the evening to allow one to make the most of the breathtaking landscape.

Tashkent 07: Much needed air

10/28/2014 – Two luckless players in this tournament have finally found some relief. Caruana, the winner of the previous Grand Prix and the man who was on an absolute tear through the chess world, had a mediocre start in Tashkent but he finally found a full point against Gelfand, who is now last. Karjakin recovered from two consecutive losses with an attacking win against Giri.

An offside knight

10/28/2014 – 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!

CBM #162 – keeping up the high standard

10/28/2014 – "Jubilant Chinese players grace the cover of the latest issue if ChessBase Magazine," writes Sean Marsh and finds that the Chess Olympiad receives excellent coverage in this edition, with a plethora of annotated games and video presentations. He advocates reading GM Rainer Knaak's editorial piece on possible reasons why top seed Russia fails to win Olympiads. Marsh Towers review.

BBC's Across the Board: Magnus Carlsen

10/28/2014 – The first game of the second season of Across the Board pitted World Champion Magnus Carlsen against Dominic Lawson, while Dominic pelted Magnus with questions on whether he felt he might have applied his intelligence to some other field, what does the laziness reputation really mean, and despite this he concluded the show with a spectacular queen sacrifice.

Millionaire Chess: An interview with Maurice Ashley

10/27/2014 – The Millionaire Chess event in Las Vegas was the Open with the biggest prize-fund in chess history. But was the tournament a success? In an interview organizer Maurice Ashley talks about past, present and future of the event, reveals why chess fascinates him, praises the attractions of Las Vegas, and draws a résumé of the Millionaire Chess Open.

Tashkent 06: Naka shares lead with Andreikin

10/27/2014 – Original and creative play was rewarded today in Tashkent. Andreikin and Mamedyarov were the winners of today's round and both used very unorthodox openings in to their games. Andreikin vanquished Karjakin in an unusual d4 opening where Black was too optimistic about his chances on the kingside, falling to a counter-attack. With this win Andreikin joins Nakamura at the top.

New season of BBC's Across the Board

10/27/2014 – Last year the BBC resurrected a chess program for their radio station BBC Radio 4, "Across the Board", a concept that had last seen the light of day over 50 years earlier. The program consisted of interviews conducted by Dominic Lawson after playing a game of chess with celebrities. The second season is about to start with Magnus Carlsen heading a fascinating lineup.

Tashkent 05: MVL tumbles, Naka leads

10/26/2014 – With renewed energy after the rest day, we witnessed many interesting games from Tashkent. Jakovenko brought a new spice to the Grunfeld and it seems as if MVL was unable to handle it. The Russian player took a pawn and nursed it into a winning advantage. This opened the door for Nakamura to take the lead by beating Gelfand. Meanwhile Jobava sacrificed and won against Karjakin.

World Championship Sochi: official web site

10/26/2014 – It is less than two week before it starts, and today we spotted the official FIDE site, conceived and designed by Pentagram in cooperation with Agon Ltd., the commercial partner of FIDE for staging top events. It represents an effort to rebrand chess and includes a new playing area setup and even new and exclusive chess pieces. Take a look.

A good line against the Grünfeld

10/26/2014 – What to play against the Grünfeld? Preferably something solid and reliable, but still ambitious? A line that offers winning chances no matter how well the opponent is prepared? On his DVD "Winning against the Grünfeld" Mihail Marin offers a repertoire to help find that line. Sagar Shah looked at the DVD, worked with it and was impressed.

The Man vs. The Machine documentary

10/26/2014 – Nate Silver is a US statistician and writer who analyzes baseball and elections – with remarkable accuracy. He is currently the editor-in-chief of ESPN's FiveThirtyEight blog and a Special Correspondent for ABC News. On Wednesday Nate released a gripping 17-minute documentary on ESPN. It is about computer chess and Kasparov's ill-fated 1997 match against Deep Blue. Must watch.

Barden on the longest running chess column

10/25/2014 – Recently we (once again) read and enjoyed a chess column in The Guardian, written by Leonard Barden. It was topical, entertaining, and even contained a challenging chess puzzle. And we discovered that the column had been running uninterrupted for almost sixty years! We asked Leonard for the history of his weekly and daily chess columns. He sent us this fascinating essay.

Tashkent 04: Back to Peace

10/24/2014 – Maybe looking forward to the free day tomorrow, the games somehow ended up being mostly dry in Tashkent. With every single game ending in a draw it was really only the game between Mamedyarov and Nakamura that provided any excitement to the fans. MVL is, of course, the one that is happiest with the results. Seven more rounds like this would crown him champion in Tashkent.

Centralisation is everything

10/24/2014 – "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold" is a famous and often quoted line from the poem "The Second Coming" by Irish poet and Nobel Prize winner W. B. Yeats. It pays to remember this piece of poetry when playing chess. Having a stable center keeps your position intact and safe, destroying your opponent's center often yields surprising results.

Hou Yifan wins Corsican Circuit

10/24/2014 – In spite of wishing for a grand final between Vishy Anand and Hou Yifan, the fans had to agree that the structure of the tournament was supremely democratic. Naturally there were two guest stars, but there were also no fewer than fourteen spots up for grabs, so anyone had a shot. Hou Yifan faced Sergey Fedorchuk in an exciting final. Final report with GM analysis.

Tashkent 03: Feisty third round

10/23/2014 – Most of the games today in Tashkent were interesting brawls, with quite a few decisive results. Kasimdzhanov overestimated his chances against Jobava, who took a pawn, outcalculated the Uzbek player and won. Karjakin nurtured an extra pawn into a win against Jakovenko while Mamedyarov tricked Gelfand in an endgame. The rest of the games were very long fights.