All about Basque – Interview with GM Feliz Izeta

1/12/2012 – The Donostia Chess Festival has just ended. It used the innovative and dynamic "Basque system", a world's first. Not only did the participants play two games at the same time; if they lost in the knock-out format the event was not over. Anastasiya Karlovich talks to the organizer and person responsible for making this idea a reality: GM Feliz Izeta, who discusses all that is Basque.

ChessBase DVDs – The Art of the Exchange Sacrifice

1/11/2012 – This month in Chess Cafe Steven B. Dowd is reviewing ChessBase DVDs that "show the power of original ideas in chess, their categorization, and learning how strong players formulate and classify these ideas will make you a better player." In the current review he looks at Ari Ziegler's DVD, which gets only four stars ("good") because of certain shortcomings, but actually deserves six.

Chess in the US in the eyes of the English

1/11/2012 – The 21st North American Open, 26-29 December 2011, was held in Las Vegas and won by Spanish GM Francisco Vallejo Pons with an undefeated 6/7 score. GMs Varuzhan Akobian, Ivan Sokolov and untitled Roman Yankovsky finished 2nd-4th with 5½/7. British chess teacher Sabrina Chevannes was in the city of lights and sent us her impressions in this pictorial report.

Gott Nytt Ar!!! Shimanov wins 41st Rilton Cup in Stockholm

1/10/2012 – This beautiful event was won by Russian GM Aleksandr Shimanov, who is also a singing talent. Our reporter Alina l'Ami started with a 1-0-1-0-1-0-1 tic-tac-toe score, but then drew a game and won her last one to pocket her third IM norm. Amazing, since the Romanian WGM spent a lot of time exploring the delights of the Swedish capital. Here's her big illustrated report.

Endgame Magic with GM Karsten Müller

1/10/2012 – Endgame knowledge is not easy to acquire and thus a valuable weapon to have. In his Endgame Magic Show on Playchess.com, renowned endgame expert GM Karsten Müller helps you to hone your endgame skills with a bunch of practical endgames. He shows how to handle these positions, which will help to improve your practical results. Example and more information!

Gashimov wins Donostia Blitz tournament!

1/10/2012 – Why the exclam? Because it was not Vugar Gashimov, the super-GM rated 2761 and ranked number nien in the world, who went through the high-class field of 13 GMs, three rated over 2700. It was rather his older brother and manager Sakhan, who does not have a FIDE title and is rated 2351 (= 3834th in the world). Final report by WGM Anastasiya Karlovich.

Wijk Aan Zee: Tata Steel Super-GM tournament starts soon!

1/10/2012 – The Wijk Aan Zee Super-GM tournament starts January 13, and brings a record 2754.5 Elo average, with Carlsen, Aronian, Topalov, Nakamura, as well as juniors Giri and Caruana. The B and C events include eight female players as well as Timman and Nyzhnyk in the B group, and comeback kid Sadler in the C group. Playchess will have live commentators with King, Seirawan, Pelletier and Trent.

Gender differences in chess

1/9/2012 – A new and very commendable women's live rating list of top players is being maintained by the Russian chess news portal ChessPro. Fired by this list we did a little additional research to find out how many female players there are in the top 100 and top 1000. What would you estimate? And what are the possible reasons for the superiority of males in certain intellectual activities? Latest research.

Master Moves #21 - Hastings special

1/9/2012 – All the deepest plans or endgame technique are useless if you fall victim to a shot that leaves you in a lost position. Likewise, sometimes that superior play will only offer a single window of opportunity to deliver that final blow, so it is vital to be ready for it when it does. All the shots were played at the Hastings Chess Congress. Try your hand at harrying the Hastings hostiles!

Hastings Congress 2011/12 won by GM Wang Yue

1/8/2012 – Aside from national championships, the Hastings Congress is the longest running chess tournament in history, with a tradition going back to 1919, won by Capablanca. Over the years, the grand event has seen almost every world champion (except Fischer and Kasparov), and the ultimate who's who of greats. This year Chinese GM Wang Yue added his name to the illustrious list of winners.

ChessBase DVDs – The Battleground of Ideas

1/7/2012 – This month in Chess Cafe Steven B. Dowd is reviewing opening, middlegame, and endgame DVDs by ChessBase, starting with Sergei Tiviakov's Scandinavian. "This is one of those rare trainers that actually gives insight into the grandmaster's lab" he writes, adding that for counter-punchers who like activity as Black the opening is perfect and the six-star DVD too good to pass up.

David Friedgood: introducing myself

1/7/2012 – Chess problems are a world of their own. They share with chess the rules of the game, but introduce dimensions that are missing in the over-the-board version. We are glad to welcome a new contributor to our somewhat sporadic section on problem chess, which was nevertheless very popular with our readers. We wish you happy solving over the weekend.

Volokitin wins double-game tournament in Donostia

1/6/2012 – Ukrainian GM Andrei Volokitin beat his Viktor Laznicka 2-0 in the final of the Donostia Chess Festival. The pressure became so high that the Czech player, who had suffered from a case of nerves in the semi-finals, simply forgot about time in one of the games, and after rejecting a draw offer, went on to lose. Final report with great pictures by WGM Anastasiya Karlovich and David Llada.

Cool and correct?

1/6/2012 – In this position the first player couldn't resist and with 41.Qxh6 made a spectacular queen sacrifice. After its acceptance with 41...gxh6 42.e6+ ...

A)... White wins in all lines;
B)... best play produces a perpetual check;
C)... Black prevails.

ChessBase Magazine, larger diagram and solution.

54th Reggio Emilia: The stars align for Anish Giri as he takes first!

1/6/2012 – After four rounds, he stood at a mere 1.0/4, but a fantastic comeback with 5.0/6 allowed 17-year-old Anish Giri to take sole first after his rivals, Nakamura and Morozevich, both of whom had better tiebreaks, lost in the final round. Moro came second, while Nakamura took third. Guramishvili won the women's event ahead of Sharevich and Brunello. Final report, photos and games.

The Lewis Chessmen: Lillören's misdemeanor

1/6/2012 – The Icelanders are not going to give in: in the battle with the Norwegians over the origin of the famous Lewis Chessmen – a collection of chess pieces, handcrafted in the 12th century – they repudiate the recent article by Morten Lillören disputing the Icelandic origin. This was the subject of a symposium on the Chessmen held in the location of their assumed origin.

54th Reggio Emilia: Giri beats Nakamura to tie for lead

1/5/2012 – The ninth and penultimate round was as dramatic as could be, and for all the right reasons as far as fans were concerned. Giri defied the pundit expectations by beating Nakamura with black, and is now tied for first with Nakamura and Moro. Caruana also won and it all comes down to the last round. In the women's event the final round will also decide. Report, games, and interview with Giri.

A Gross Miscarriage of Justice in Computer Chess (part four)

1/5/2012 – As proof that Vas Rajlich had copied program code the ICGA presented pages and pages of Fruit and Rybka code side by side. But, according to Dr Søren Riis, what was labeled as Rybka code was actually fabricated to look like Fruit. He criticizes the ICGA's process failures and ruminates on the reasons behind the unprecedented vendetta launched against the star chess programmer.

Bologan: The Catalan – A Complete Repertoire for White

1/4/2012 – It is one of the most solid openings for White and forms part of the large and strong fianchetto family in which White builds his strategy mainly around the bishop on g2. This DVD by GM Viktor Bologan covers all of Black’s replies to the Catalan, some of which can even transpose to other openings such as the Tarrasch System and the Queen’s Indian. Chess Cafe review by Carsten Hansen.

54th Reggio Emilia: Ivanchuk has a meltdown

1/4/2012 – Normally, the news would be that Morozevich beat Nakamura (which he did) and is now right behind (which he is), followed by Giri in third, but Ivanchuk stole their thunder. In round seven, visibly haunted by his loss to Giri, he dropped a piece against Vitiugov in such a way that spectators were left gaping. In round eight, against Caruana, he just flipped and literally tried to give away all his pieces!

A Gross Miscarriage of Justice in Computer Chess (part three)

1/4/2012 – A core accusation against Vas Rajlich is that Rybka and Fruit have very similar positional evaluations, and the use of floating point numbers in Rybka’s time management code had to be copied from Fruit. Søren Riis enumerates the ten substantive evaluation differences and shows how the second accusation boils down to a single misplaced keystroke with zero impact on Rybka's play.

Master Moves #20

1/3/2012 – All the deepest plans or endgame technique are useless if you fall victim to a shot that leaves you in a lost position. Likewise, sometimes that superior play will only offer a single window of opportunity to deliver that final blow, so it is vital to be ready for it when it does. All the shots that follow were played at the Groningen Chess Festival. Go on and strut your stuff!

A Gross Miscarriage of Justice in Computer Chess (part two)

1/3/2012 – In this part Dr Søren Riis of Queen Mary University in London shows how most programs (legally) profited from Fruit, and subsequently much more so from the (illegally) reverse engineered Rybka. Yet it is Vasik Rajlich who was investigated, found guilty of plagiarism, banned for life, stripped of his titles, and vilified in the international press – for a five-year-old alleged tournament rule violation. Ironic.

Groningen chess festival won by Alexander Kovchan and Robert Hess

1/3/2012 – The Groningen chess festival took place from December 21st to 30th, and had a number of activities, including three Swiss opens and two matches. The main open was the 'A' event, which was won by Ukrainian GM Alexander Kovchan, who edged out American GM Robert Hess on tiebreak after both scored 7.0/9. Sergei Tiviakov came in third. Illustrated report.