Master and Amateur explain the Queen's Gambit

7/8/2014 – IM Lorin D'Costa and Nick Murphy are a strong team. As a club-level player Nick has a sound basic knowledge, but of course he does not know all crucial variations and the latest nuances. Lorin has the chess knowledge, and by asking the proper questions, he guides his co-presenter to discover the answers for himself. Enjoy the show!

Yes2Chess: team finals in London

7/8/2014 – It is one of the most inspiring events we have attended in years: eight teams of elementary schoolchildren from eight different countries, who qualified in a massive Playchess tournament, are now in London for a face-to-face showdown. The hosts, Barclaycard, have put in a tremendous effort to make it a memorable stay for the visitors, all of who are now sure to say Yes2Chess. More...

Novak Djokovic wins Wimbledon!

7/7/2014 – On Sunday, right in the middle of the World Cup fever that has gripped the globe, another sporting event of superlatives took place: the Wimbledon finals. In an immensely exciting match that spanned five sets, Novak Djokovic defeated Roger Federer, winning his seventh Grand Slam title and second Wimbledon. So what does this have to do with chess? Read on to find out.

Coincidence in Chengdu: Part One

7/7/2014 – The 2014 edition of the International Star Mixed Pair Tournament has begun in Chengdu, China. The tournament brings a mix of top Chinese women players and strong foreign grandmasters in a unique pair format: two players per team alternate moves in a single game, no communication allowed between them! A coincidence allowed us to have a report straight from Chengdu, China!

Tactics please: Open Invitation

7/7/2014 – Oliver Reeh knows how important tactics are. After all, he's been writing the tactics column in the ChessBase Magazine for many years. From now on, he will challenge you every week with a tricky task. Go to "Challenge", take a look at the diagram and find the best move for White. If you think you got it, click on "solution". Challenge...

15th European Women's Championship starts

7/7/2014 – The 15th European Individual Women’s Chess Championship has just started, and is being held in Plovdiv, Bulgaria from July 5-18. 116 top female competitors in Europe will be competing over eleven rounds to determine the title. The top seeds are Nana Dzagnidze (2541), Mariya Muychuk (2521), Natalia Pogonina (2508), Valentina Gunina (2501) and more. Get up to speed in this opening report.

Ni Hua wins XXII Montcada Open

7/6/2014 – 17 grandmasters and players from nearly 20 countries participated in this Spanish open, which was won by the Chinese GM. If you wonder why so many strong players were there, in spite of the meagre first prize of €1,200 – there are a number of reasons, not the least of which is a series of four or five events that take place in the same local and temporal vicinity. Big pictorial report.

Ding Liren edges Bu Xiangzhi to top Hainan

7/6/2014 – Bu Xiangzhi's draw against Yu Yangyi, who was trying to stop the bleeding from his three losses in a row, guaranteed him a share of first place. Ding Liren, the only player that could catch him, took advantage of this opportunity and won a nice game with Black, edging Bu Xiangzhi in tiebreaks. We bring you a final round report on an interesting event and a fierce Chinese Olympic team.

Profile of a prodigy: Kayden Troff

7/5/2014 – Last May, and a few weeks after his 16th birthday, Kayden Troff became the youngest GM in the Americas and the second youngest grandmaster in the world. He is also the top ranked player U16 in the Americas and recently won the US Junior Championship a full 1.5 points ahead of his rivals. As part of the rising generation of American players, here is a profile by James Satrapa.

Chess Art Festival in Mayfair

7/5/2014 – A professional jazz singer who has made her name as a chess artist, Nette Robinson, was the centre of a special chess festival staged by Purling London, a company that sells unique hand-painted chess sets. There was a blitz tournament, a simultaneous exhibition and an unusual Chess Basque Championship, in which the opponents have to play two simultaneous games.

3rd HMC Calder Cup gets creative

7/4/2014 – The HMC Calder Cup celebrated its third edition, with a series of entertaining activities and events. Among them was a grandmaster tournament as befits it, but there was also a small very strong rapid round-robin with Anish Giri and Rustam Kasimdzhanov, a girl-guy team match, and even a sort of chessboxing competition in which the boxing was replaced by table tennis!

Chinese lead in Hainan

7/4/2014 – With only one round to go in the Hainan Daizhou super-tournament it is almost a given that a Chinese player will take the tournament. Bu Xiangzhi is half a point ahead of Ding Liren while the two foreign players, Ponomariov and Naiditsch, trail the leader by a full point. We bring you a report with some of the highlights of the last three rounds with some impressive chess.

Lopota GP: a fond farewell

7/3/2014 – The aftermath of a large tournament brings the necessary formalities such as the prize giving, and speeches, yet the Lopota Women's Grand Prix was a cozy affair held in a perfect mix of officialdom, and good cheer. Set in a beautiful backdrop with good wine, toasting, food, and more toasting, Alina L'Ami shares this final pictorial. One picture does require help from our readers.

Opening Encyclopaedia 2014: the ultimate reference

7/2/2014 – For years, no player could do without an opening encyclopedia, to provide quick and comprehensive answers on any and every opening line. Welcome to the Opening Encyclopedia 2014. In it you will find a massive 4.9 million game database, more commented games than Mega Database, thousands of surveys and hundred of articles. It may have no equal in terms of bang for the buck.

Nine-year-old rips through GMs!

7/2/2014 – When a 2600 GM loses a game to a player 550 points lower on the rating scale, this will cause us to take note. But if the winner is just nine years old, then surprise turns to stunned shock – especially if the win did not come through a fluke blunder by the GM, but was a gritty, square-by-square grind-down in which the youthful master prevailed. Akshat Chandra has carefully annotated the game.

Lopota Final: Fitting Finish

7/2/2014 – The tournament finished with a mixture of ferocious chess in some games and very subdued battles in others. Ju Wenjun finished tied for second with Danielian, who drew Hou Yifan in the last round, after her ultra-risky approach to chess backfired badly on her. Khotenashvili won an important moral victory by defeating Humpy. At the end of the day, Hou Yifan won by two full points.

Classical, Rapid, Blitz: FIDE's new rating lists

7/1/2014 – It's the first of the month - time for FIDE to publish the current ratings. The classical ratings saw a few shifts here and there, but everyone was waiting for the new FIDE Rapid and Blitz lists after the World Championships. At the top of the Rapid list is Caruana with 2858, followed by Carlsen with 2855, while the Norwegian is no.1 in Blitz with a huge 2948 rating.

Film project in Tromsø: Chess Brains

7/1/2014 – There is something mythical and mysterious about the game of chess, and the world's top players. It feels like they know something the rest of us barely recognize. They have a mind capacity that far exceeds our own. Do they know something about life that we don't? These are the questions that will be posed to some of the world's top GMs in a film project that you can support.

9th Edmonton: Ivanchuk wins with 8.0/9

7/1/2014 – The Edmonton International tournament was the highlight of the Edmonton chess festival, and brought a myriad of international players to face off against Canada's best. The two stars were Ivanchuk and So, and they played a private race to see who outdid whom. By the midway point So had the edge, and it seemed as if the show was his, but Ivanchuk showed he was a force to reckon with.

Lopota 10: Queenside Pawns!

7/1/2014 – In today's three decisive games, the queenside pawns were somehow the star of the battle. In Ju Wenjun-Muzychuk the Chinese player used her pair of bishops and active rook to wreck her opponents pawns, meanwhile Danielian and Humpy created passed pawns on that side to vanquish Zhao Xue and Muminova respectively. Hou Yifan's draw clinches the tournament, but second place is still open.

Simuls and Exhibitions in the Hawaii of China

7/1/2014 – Arkadij Naiditsch struck an important blow to Bu Xiangzhi by beating him in the fourth round of the 5th Hainan Danzhou tournament and took the lead for himself. However Bu Xiangzhi recovered immediately and won his fifth game to tie with the German up top. Yu Yangyi scored two in a row to also join them. Meanwhile, during the free day, it was the local players that won.

Hawaii: the chess vacation of a lifetime

6/30/2014 – If you look down at your feet you are probably looking in the general direction of Hawaii. The beautiful Pacific island group will be the host of an Inaugural Chess Festival in March 2015 – a weeklong series of world-class chess events that will bring chess enthusiasts from all over the world to the Hawaiian island of Oahu. You may be interested to attend this unique chess event.

8.5 out of 10 with the King's Gambit

6/30/2014 – That's the personal record of Simon Williams in recent years. No wonder, that the English GM fell in love with this unique, old and creative opening. On his popular and critically acclaimed DVDs about the King's Gambit he invites the reader to (re)discover this most romantic of all chess openings and to play successful attacking chess!

Kayden Troff is US Junior champion

6/30/2014 – The 2014 U.S. Junior Closed Championship has been decisive in its theme, and leaders rose and fell with hearbreaking collapses and heartwarming finishes. Victories were claimed on four of five boards in every one of the tournament’s last five rounds, and in fact there were only twelve draws out of 45 games, for almost 75% decisive games. Talk about bloodthirsty.