1/1/2010 – For heaven's sake, somebody take away this man's Christmas present! Our Hastings reporter Steve Giddins continues to challenge his readership with Latin phrases. Ignorantia legis neminem excusat – ignorance of the law excuses nobody. Having said that, Steve's reports are unusually entertaining and a welcome change from the normally staid reporting we see in chess. Pictures by John Saunders.

1/1/2010 – ... of White in the diagram position was obvious, yet with 24...Qb6 Black had produced the double threat 25...Bxa3 and 25...Nxe5 26.Bxe5 Rxe5. How would you assess the position now?
A) White can win material;
B) he is optically better, but there is nothing concrete;
C) looks are deceptive, the first player is on the defence.

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

12/31/2009 – After the final rounds of the Russian Championship, our endgames expert Karsten Müller casts an eye back at the remarkable and extremely original endgame Timofeev-Khismatullin from round five. The position in the diagram arose after 50.bxa5, after which the two black rooks had to take up the fight against four linked passed pawns and a knight – and it turned out to be hopeless for them.

Karsten Müller shows you for CBM Online how this unusual position came about and how the game ended.

12/31/2009 – FIDE has just released its January 1st 2010 rating list, and it has the 19-year-old Norwegian grandmaster Magnus Carlsen with 2810 in the number one slot, five points ahead of number two Veselin Topalov, and twenty points above World Champion Viswanathan Anand. Magnus is the youngest player to cross the 2800 mark and to top the world rankings. Congratulations!

12/30/2009 – There were chances of a late-round upset, but in the end the two leading players stayed in front, winning the men's and women's sections by half a point. Alexander Grischuk had a 2851 performance that will put him on place nine in the world on the next rating list. Alisa Galliamova won the women's title with a 2715 performance. The two picked up $25,000 and $11,700 respectively. Final report.

12/30/2009 – In 1856 the great Sam Loyd composed a chess problem, which 75 years later inspired Alexey Troitsky, one of the greatest composers of endgame studies, to create a puzzle with a similar theme. It proved to be flawed. 75 years after Troitzky another great composer, Pal Benko, took up his problem, improved on it and submitted it for our Christmas Puzzle page.

12/22/2009 – Top seeds Peter Svidler and Alexander Grischuk lead after two rounds with 1.5 points each. The ten-player round robin is a category 18, missing only Kramnik and Morozevich. There is also a also a Women's Championship, with the top-rated Kosintseva sisters. Number one seed Tatiana lost her first game and drew the second, while sister Nadezhda started with 2.0/2 points. First report.

12/22/2009 – Vladimir Malakhov – not the soccer star, the ice hockey player of dancer, but the 29-year-old physicist and chess grandmaster – has won this very strong rapid chess event in Poland last weekend. He did it by defeating Alexei Shirov with the black pieces in the final round. Second was Vassily Ivanchuk, who defeated top seed Vugar Gashimov in the round 13. Pictures, results and games.

12/21/2009 – The first were held in 2006 in Doha, Qatar; the second a year later in Macau. The third edition in Vietnam saw 4500 athletes from 45 Asian countries competing in 24 sports – including chess. There 19 countries participated. China won three Gold, two Silvers and a Bronze, India won Bronze in all four categories. Pictorial report by Mehrdad Pahlevanzadeh.

12/20/2009 – ‘Goal-oriented oppositionally paired dualities’ are certainly enjoyed by our readers, whether they realize it or not. In plain English, the term means ‘games’, but not all authors seem capable of writing plainly. A selection of pretentious and trite passages about our beloved duality is offered by the Editor of Chess Notes in an article which is guaranteed to have your head spinning well before Christmas.

12/20/2009 – When Magnus Carlsen convincingly outplayed that well known openings connoisseur Peter Leko in the very first round of the tournament in Nanjing, the world of chess pricked up its ears, because the Norwegian had done so with a Scotch, an opening which in modern times has been associated above all with the name of Garry Kasparov, who is now known to be Carlsen's trainer. This game spurred Igor Stohl on to take an extremely close look at the variation employed. Here is the complete article, one of a total of 12 on the DVD of CBM 133.
Stohl: Scotch with 10.f4

12/19/2009 – A number of subsidiary events took place during the Chess Classic in London, one of the most attractive of which was the Women's Invitational. It was won by a "chess tourist", Arianne Caoili of Australia, who had planned to visit London with her boyfriend Levon Aronian to see the sights. When he did not obtain his visa Arienne decided to play in the Invitational. Big pictorial report.