9/6/2009 – The II Grand Slam Final Chess Master 2009 has begun, in Bilbao, Spain. In the first round a well-prepared Alexei Shirov played an Anti-Moscow and drew in 24 moves with black against Sergey Karjakin. Top seed Levon Aronian was smoothly outplayed by Russian GM Alexander Grischuk. There is a special scoring system in place, which sees Grischuk in the lead with three points. Illustrated report.

9/5/2009 – An incident at this grandmaster tournament in India has made it to the national and now the international broadsheets: one of the top seeds, GM Vladislav Tkachiev, who recently won the French Championship, appeared for his round three game in an intoxicated state, fell asleep a number of times at the board and was ultimately declared the loser. Details.

9/4/2009 – This week Nigel Short, aged 44, crossed the elite 2700 barrier once again, regaining the England number one spot he had lost for years. It was yet another twist in the remarkable career of the Athens-resident Englishman. We spoke to Nigel about form, longevity, and the secret of surviving at the top of world chess at middle age. Must-read interview.

9/4/2009 – A controversy is raging in the news media over a picture being put on sale by the British auction house Mullock’s. It depicts Hitler and Lenin playing chess, in 1909, when they are supposed to have met in Vienna. The etching, by Hitler's Jewish art teacher, has a preliminary price of £40,000. But is it genuine? The chess historian Edward Winter introduced us to the topic some years ago.

9/4/2009 – ... in games on the very highest level truly are a rare occurrence. Yet sometimes... Okay, this is what happened: 36.Nxf6+ Rxf6 37.Rxf6 Qxf6 38.gxf4 gxf4 39.Qe2 and soon after the peace pipe was smoked. How would you judge this sequence?
A) the moves were correct, so the draw was the logical result.
B) Black missed a forced win on the way.
C) using a little trick, White could have obtained a clearly better endgame.
The solution is here, but first ponder over it with a larger version of the diagram

9/3/2009 – Despite the admonitions of our readers we are once again unable to resist. A press release from the "World Chess Federation" informs us that Varuzhan Akobian will not compete in the announced World Chess Championship match in Las Vegas this December. However, now anyone can take part in or even stage the new World Championship cycle. Read on at your own risk.

9/2/2009 – Or at least to identify and retrieve positions that human beings consider beautiful? While computers may be able to play at top GM level, they are not able to tell a beautiful combination from a bland one. This has left a research gap which Dr Mohammed Azlan Mohamed Iqbal, working at Universiti Tenaga Nasional, Malaysia, has tried to close. Here's his delightfully interesting PhD thesis.

9/2/2009 – The lineup of the traditional Moscow Blitz Championship was, as usual, extremely strong. The usual suspects Alexander Grischuk and Alexander Morozevich were joined by the newcoming Muscovite Sergey Karjakin. The sky-high rated Dmitry Jakovenko and always tough Vladimir Malakhov were dark horses of the event. Big pictorial report by Misha Savinov.

9/2/2009 – This International Open chess tournament is like no other – held not in a small, touristy town but in the heart of the "City of Light" and is billed as the Paris Championship. The venue is the sports gymnasium Coubertin, where this year 643 players, divided in three groups, were able to take part. The winner was a Kazakh grandmaster who is in love with the city. Report by Diana Mihajlova.

9/1/2009 – The Rising Stars made one last attempt to catch the Experience team. But their 3-2 victory in the penultimate round was not enough. In the final round Experience struck back with a 3½-1½ win. Best player overall, with 6.5/10 and a 2752 performance: Peter Heine Nielsen. Jan Smeets of the Rising Stars won an invitation to next year's Amber tournament. Report with pictures by John Nunn.

9/1/2009 – This is new: FIDE will now be publishing a rating list every two months, i.e. six times a year (instead of previously four, and before that twice). The two top GMs on the latest list, Topalov and Anand, have remained in place, neither having played any rated games since the previous list. Levon Aronian is now third, a point ahead of Carlsen and Kramnik. Top rankings and statistics.

9/1/2009 – Playing flat out for the win against 1.e4 is never easy, but here's a variation where Black can do just that! IM Andrew Martin has produced a second DVD on the Scandinavian (or Center Counter) which will furnish good results in the shortest possible time. In four hours of video training he show you everything you need to know about this line. Order now or read this review with sampler.