Greetings from Pál Benkö for 25 years of ChessBase

5/20/2011 – "Congratulations to ChessBase on your 25th anniversary! Your news page is the the first thing I look at every day when I go on the Internet. You do such wonderful work. Keep up your great service for the whole chess world." Heartening words from legendary great chess player, theorist, author and problem composer – who in addition sent six anniversary puzzles for our readers.

Kavalek in Huffington: How to Cook in Chess

5/20/2011 – Actually, "to cook" in chess has nothing to do with culinary pleasures, but is a dreaded thing for chess composers. A problem is cooked when there a different unintended solution is found. But a composition can be also cooked when someone creates a sound problem or study from an unsound work and eliminates the dual solution. You can also have it both ways as Prof. Noam Elkies proved.

FIDE Candidates Finals G2: Grischuk close to win against Gelfand

5/20/2011 – It was an exciting game with the players opting for a complicated Symmetrical English. Gelfand got the worst of it and ended up with a rook for two pieces. In the ensuing endgame the two fought hard and Grischuk seemed to have a winning position. However with an array of paths to choose, a clear victory never materialized, and Gelfand held. GM commentary by Alejandro Ramirez.

ChessBase is 25

5/19/2011 – It is difficult to determine the exact date when ChessBase was born. Was it when a science journalist and a future World Champion discussed computer databases? Or when a very talented programmer started to actually write one? We think it was when the two showed the prototype to the World Champion and decided, at his urging, to commercialise the product. That was May 19, 1986.

FIDE Candidates Finals: First game drawn after fight

5/19/2011 – The last match of the Candidates is upon us, this time a six-game match to decide Anand's challenger. Grischuk and Gelfand played a Queen's Gambit Declined, though contrary to his treatment of Kramnik, Grischuk was not amenable to a fightless draw. The game simplified to a tough rook endgame in which Grischuk pressed hard but never broke the balance. GM Alejandro Ramirez annotates.

Le Quang Liem and Andreikin lead at Capa Memorial

5/18/2011 – The 46th Capablanca Memorial is taking place from May 10-21, 2011, in Havana, Cuba. The Elite Group is a double round robin with six strong GMs. Top seed Vassily Ivanchuk suffered a somewhat mysterious defeat in round four, while GM Le Quang Liem from Vietnam survived a long attack by Czech GM David Navara in the same round. Entertaining.

2nd Hainan Dangzhou: 16-year-old Yu Yangyi leads

5/18/2011 – After the success of the first Hainan Dangzhou tournament, the second edition is underway and a long-term contract has already been signed for five tournaments. This year has the cream of the crop of Chinese players including Wang Hao, Wang Yue and the teen prodigies, Hou Yifan and Yu Yangyi. 16-year-old Yangyi leads after three rounds. Here is the illustrated report by Gu Xiaobing.

Ponomariov draws first blood in Saint Louis

5/18/2011 – From May 17-25 there is an interesting match taking place at the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis: top US GM Hikaru Nakamura plays former FIDE world champion Ruslan Ponomariov in six regular and four rapid games. The event has unprecedented live and archived video coverage – hours and hours of it. In their first game Ponomariov was forced to mate with bishop and knight.

CUCA International in Angola

5/18/2011 – In a sign of the enormous reconstruction efforts being made in Angola, the CUCA international Chess event is being held in the capital Luanda. The Open brought star chess globetrotters, Nigel Short and Sergey Tiviakov, not to mention the generous prize fund, and the Women's event has also been given its due. With his tireless camera, here is a large pictorial by Sergey Tiviakov.

2011 Canadian Closed Chess Championship

5/17/2011 – Canada’s top players gathered at the University of Guelph, playing for the Zonal title and a berth in this year’s World Cup. The tournament, with 29 players, was topped by GM Bator Sambuev, 2750 on the Canadian rating scale (2513 FIDE), who finised equal first together with IM Eric Hansen, Alberta’s provincial champion. Bator won the tiebreak, Hansen got the World Cup ticket. Illustrated report.

Instant knowledge – download the new ChessBase Powerbooks

5/17/2011 – Looking for new lines in your favourite opening? New ideas for your next tournament games. In our latest Powerbook series you will find not just lines from master-level games, but also hundreds of thousands of games played between top chess engines – a treasure-trove of unpublished chess knowledge. Best of all: the Powerbooks are inexpensive and instantly available as download. Video tutorial.

Karsten Müller's CBM Blog: Deceptive Simplicity, Knight Moves

5/16/2011 – Our resident GM endgame expert shows us that even pawn endings with only a few remaining pawns can be quite tricky. In his second example he shows us a tricky pawn ending with rook and knight, one he asks you to try and work out in your mind before you look at the solution. Dr. Müller once again proves that learning can be fun.

FIDE Candidates Semis Tiebreak: G-Day for the Ks

5/16/2011 – It was G-Day for the Ks, as both Kramnik and Kamsky bowed out to Grischuk and Gelfand respectively. Grischuk pursued his "draw with white" plan into the rapids, and pushed into the blitz, where he manhandled Kramnik and went through. Kamsky beat Gelfand in game three, but the Israeli clinched the fourth, and then won the blitz. Surprise finalists. Big illustrated report.

Candidates Semifinals G4: Blood, sweat and real tears this time

5/15/2011 – Yesterday’s blurb might well have fitted today’s, although with the names inverted. Kamsky improved on the game two opening against Gelfand and drew in 23 moves. Kramnik-Grischuk was a hair-raising English, with both players missing golden opportunities for large, if not winning, advantages. In the end a dejected Kramnik had to accept perpetual check. GM Fabiano Caruana comments.

European Women Chp: Cmilyte and Khotenashvili keep the lead

5/14/2011 – After eight rounds of grueling competition, Cmilyte still has the lead with 6.5/8 despite a slip in round six against GM Stefanova. With the same score, but slightly worse tiebreak, is local hero IM Khotenashvili. On the day off, the ladies were entreated to tourism and even dancing out at night sadly lacking more men! Here are the video reports by Robert Fontaine as well as pictures of the ladies.

FIDE Candidates Semis G3: Blood, sweat and tears

5/14/2011 – The bad news is that we had two more draws; the good news is that at least one of the games had people on the edge of their seats until the end. It wasn't the quiet Petroff in Grischuk-Kramnik, but Kamsky-Gelfand's incredibly complicated Najdorf where both missed clear chances, and fate chose not to favor either. Once again our Russian colleagues in Kazan provided spectacular video coverage.

Light versus dark squares

5/14/2011 – The black queen has a dominating position on d4, and White faces the question whether to attack it directly, indirectly (idea 38.Bxh7+) or not at all. So what's the correct continuation?
A) 37.Bc4
B) 37.e5
C) 37.g3

The solution is here, but first ponder over it with a larger version of the diagram.

FIDE Candidates Semis G2: White wins both games!... Almost.

5/13/2011 – If the first game was fairly quiet, in game two, both Kramnik and Gelfand seemed headed for victory. Kramnik's situation was the less clear, despite the extra pawn, and Grischuk held. Gelfand had a monster positional edge over Kamsky but missed his chance. Tomorrow, don't miss the live commentary by masters as well as 24-core Hiarcs. Game two report with analysis by GM Elshan Moradiabadi.

Surprising winner at the Sydney Open

5/13/2011 – The Sydney International Open took place from April 27 to May 1st, immediately after the Canberra Open. These two events represent best Australia has to offer, and give foreign players a chance to visit this beautiful continent. There was a major upset at the SIO, where a lowly FM, Akshat Khamparia of India, finished ahead of all the GMs participating. Illustrated report by GM Dejan Bojkov.

Anti-cheating: the fifteen minute broadcast delay

5/13/2011 – For five years we have been trying to get FIDE to implement a 15-minute delay in the Internet broadcast of important games – to make organised cheating harder. A chess journalist has now pointed out a fatal flaw in the plan: it would force chess journalists to walk many yards to find out the current status of the games. Damn – and we thought it was such a good idea! What is your opinion?

Kavalek in Huffington: Chess Champ Kamsky Marches On

5/12/2011 – Levon Aronian and Veselin Topalov were the favourites to meet in the finals of the 2011 FIDE Candidates matches in Kazan, and one of the two to challenge Vishy Anand of India for the world chess title in 2012. But both GMs dropped out in the first round, Topalov being eliminated by the US champion Gata Kamsky. GM Lubomir Kavalek has analysed the key win.

In Memory of Janis Klovans (1935–2010)

5/12/2011 – Together with Mikhail Tal and Alexei Shirov he is one of the best known chess grandmasters in Latvia. Last October Janis Klovans suddenly passed away, at the age of 75, leaving behind a family and a lot of students who miss him very much. With the help Shirov a memorial tournament was organized, with the best players Latvia had seen in a long time. Pictorial report.

FIDE Candidates Semis G1: Gelfand and Kamsky draw

5/12/2011 – You might be wondering why no mention is made of Grischuk-Kramnik in the title. The reason is that it was hardly a game. The first semifinal encounter of the Candidates and they draw in sixteen moves? That is both embarrassing to the players and disrespectful to the fans. Kamsky and Gelfand played a Najdorf that quickly simplified to a balanced endgame, and drew. Game one report.

FIDE Candidates: the battle resumes tomorrow

5/11/2011 – The candidates for the 2012 World Championship are taking two days of rest. But on Thursday the remaining four – Kramnik, Grischuk, Gelfand and Kamsky – will continue their matches in Kazan, and we our live coverage on Playchess and the browser-based broadcast which gives you a running evaluation of the games. This is being provided by the Hiarcs team using some extraordinary hardware.