3/10/2010 – 168 players took part in the biggest chess festival of closed tournaments in France, with seventeen groups, from the A Group (ten players, average 2526 Elo) all the way to the last group with an average Elo of about 1300. Israeli GM Evgeny Postny won first place with 6.0/9. The venue, the “Conseil General”, is normally reserved for local government meetings. IM Christophe Philippe reports.

3/8/2010 – This event is taking place from March 6th to 18th 2010 in Rijeka, Croatia. Top players include Almasi, Bacrot, Movsesian, Navara, Vallejo, Motylev, Adams, Tomashevsky, Alekseev, Baadur, Naiditsch, Akopian, Volokitin, Bologan and Caruana. After two rounds 34 players have perfect scores, in the women's section it is 17. The venue is spectacular: see if you can read its name from space.

3/8/2010 – At the New York, 1889 tournament a master lost a game by forfeit after only eight moves because he was, in the words of a newspaper report, ‘laboring under excitement’. The Editor of Chess Notes looks at three great players with reputations for heavy dependency on alcohol, examining how they have been treated by contemporaries and subsequent writers.

3/6/2010 – Here's another puzzle from our early-pictures scrapbook: who is the child in this photo? He was a boy prodigy, who at the sensational age of nineteen became the youngest grandmaster in the world. He has beaten twelve world champions. He lives in Europe and unlike his compatriots speaks flawless English. In our report we provide you with a few more or less helpful clues.

3/5/2010 – ... the German chess fans had the pleasure of watching at the last Bundesliga weekend in Heidelberg, when Vishy Anand's club OSG Baden-Baden had to acknowledge their first defeat of the season versus title contender Werder Bremen. This is his white game from Sunday. How would you assess the situation after 23...Qxe5? A) White is in trouble since the bishop f7 can't move; B) this piece can be unpinned, but Black has no problems whatsoever; C) White wins by force.

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

3/5/2010 – Actually at thirteen years and eleven months, but still according to our calculations the fifth youngest player in history to gain the title. Richárd did it in spite of a last-round loss to chess legend Lajos Portisch, who is almost 60 years older than the lad. The tournament was held in Hungary and was won by Alexander Beliavsky. Congratulations to the new GM.

2/25/2010 – Located at the eastern end of the Himalaya Mountains, the Kingdom of Bhutan used to be one of the most isolated nations in the world. Today the country has embraced modernization while retaining its ancient culture and traditions. The President of the Asian Chess Federation sent a delegate to promote the game in schools and support the Olympiad team. Pictorial report by IM Ravi Kumar.

2/24/2010 – With Alexander Grischuk sharing first in Linares (as of this writing), poised to win Linares for the second straight year and at an all-time career high rating (2770), it seems an auspicious time to feature him in this week's Playchess presentation by Dennis Monokroussos. Watch him deal with the likes of Gata Kamsky in Khanty-Mansiysk back in 2005. 9 p.m. ET Wednesday night.

2/24/2010 – The position in the diagram is from the game Bu Xiangzhi-McShane. Black will soon have to give up the rook for the a-pawn and when that happens the decisive question is whether the duo of black king and f-pawn are favourably enough placed to draw against the rook and the king. Amongst the weapons in Black's arsenal, there is above all the bodycheck in order to keep the white king at a distance. White, on the other hand, can get to work with a barrier. Sharpen up your analytical abilities by trying to work out the solution and comparing what you find with GM Karsten Müller's analysis. It's well worth the effort! CBM Online.

2/23/2010 – When did the chess brain develop? Turns out that Caissa made it some 50 km south of Nairobi, Kenya, in the pre-historic wastelands of Olegersaille. She called the bipedal primate Homo Sapiens. Today, 200,000 years later, the Kenyans are picking a national team to join their cousins from all over the world at the Siberian Olympiad. Spectacular pictorial by Mahul Gohil.

2/23/2010 – One way to measure the relative strengths of chess engines is to play them against each other – see who wins and by how much. But often newer engines can be "booked" to beat older rivals straight out of the opening. To get objective results without killer books John Nunn introduced opening test suites. That was a decade ago. Now Albert Silver presents an update and explains how to use it.

2/23/2010 – Alexander Grischuk won his second game in a row, the third in this tournament. He beat the leader Veselin Topalov, avenging a loss to him in the first half. Topalov and Grischuk go into the final round tied for first. Topalov has white against Gelfand, Grischuk black against Vallejo. It's going to be an exciting finish – watch it on Playchess with GM Danny King at the mike. Round nine report.