The most beautiful knight-and-pawns ending every played

4/9/2008 – That, according to GM Andy Soltis, occurred in a 1899 encounter between Georg Marco and the Hungarian great Geza Maroczy, starting in a position that would appear impossible for any sentient life form to lose. Our Playchess.com lecturer Dennis Monokroussos takes us through this extraordinary engame full of opportunism, amusing maneuvers and tactical ingenuity. Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET.

A new angle on understanding the draw problem

4/8/2008 – Some people say it is a serious danger, others say it is not. Gene Milener, who works for Microsoft by day, believes that the problem of unfought draws is an artifact of the high draw rate among hard-fought games. In a remarkable essay he examines other games and explains a different perspective on how the high draw rate problem could be addressed. Must read.

Derren Brown's chess trick – once more with feeling

4/8/2008 – A few years ago British magician, illusionist and mentalist Derren Brown performed a chess trick: he played against a group of very strong English players, many of them grandmasters, in a simultaneous exhibition and beat them. It is a well-known trick and was explained by Brown after the show. We reported on the experiment at the time – now you can watch it as a YouTube video.

Ernst, Muhren lead in Dutch Championship 2008

4/8/2008 – After six rounds of play in the Dutch city of Hilversum three young grandmasters are in the lead: Sipke Ernst, Jan Smeets and Daniël Stellwagen – Ernst leads on tiebreak points. The women's section has started, with ten players. After four rounds Bianca Muren leads with a perfect 4.0/4 points. Many-times champion GM Peng Zhaoqin is half a point behind. Pictorial report.

On Tuesday night it's 'Radio Rustam'

4/7/2008 – Former FIDE Chess World Champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov is giving live online training every Tuesday from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. CEST/GMT +2 on the Playchess server. In tomorrow's show Rustam shows us a game he played against Anatoly Karpov, explaining the mechanisms that are required to execute a successful assault on an uncastled enemy king. Entry is free.

Foidos broadcast: Kramnik beats Sebag + Werle 2-0

4/6/2008 – The October World Chess Championship in Bonn, Germany, will be broadcast on the Internet using a new system developed by Dutch technology company DGT, using six cameras to show the action during the game. As a dry run the company staged a clock simul between Vladimir Kramnik and French IM Marie Sebag and Dutch GM Jan Werle. Pictorial report.

Russian Team Championships 2008 in Sochi

4/6/2008 – The yearly event in Dagomys, a health resort just 18 kms from the center of Sochi, on the shores of the Black Sea, has once again attracted a galaxy of very strong players: over 90 grandmasters, 61 of them over 2600, 16 over 2700. Coverage on the official web page is purely in Russian, but with a little help from our Cyrillic translation tables you should be able to navigate the site. First report.

Installation Tips

4/5/2008 – When new programs are released, certain recurring questions are traditionally asked regarding their installation. Are the default folders necessary? How do I uninstall old versions? How do I get my new engines into ChessBase? Our ChessBase Workshop columnist tackles these questions (and others) in his latest column. Workshop...

Dutch Championship 2008 under way

4/4/2008 – The Championship of the Netherlands is taking place from April 2nd to 13th, 2008, in the TV Studio 2, Media Park, Hilversum. The event is a twelve-player round robin with an average rating of 2536 (= Category XII). First prize is € 10,000. After two rounds GM Friso Nijboer is leading, followed by Tiviakov and Visser. Pictorial report by Frits Agterdenbos.

The Georgy Agzamov Memorial Tournament, Edition 2

4/4/2008 – Once a year there is a memorial tournament in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, for Georgy Agzamov, a well-loved player who died at the age of 32 when he fell off a mountain. This year’s tournament saw a total of 73 players from nine countries. And a ladies' tournament where in some cases you had a tough time guessing which is the mother and which the daughter. Splendid pictorial by Jamshid Begmatov.

Anand leads April 1st 2008 FIDE ratings, Carlsen fifth

4/2/2008 – The World Champion gained four points to cross the 2800 mark and top the rankings alone. Vladimir Kramnik and Veselin Topalov shed points to move to second and fourth; Alexander Morozevich gained points to move to third place. But the sensation is of course Magnus Carlsen, who at 17 years and four months is in place five, just 38 points below the leader. Is this a record?

Van de Loo vs Hesslin – the game of the week

4/2/2008 – Forget Tal and Fischer, Topalov and Kasparov when you're looking for excitement; what you want to see is a game between these two players! According to our Playchess.com lecturer Dennis Monokroussos it has all you could hope for in a tactical game: an insane opening, one sac after another, a steel king and pawn races. Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET.

Fischer's Electronic Archives – just an April 1st hoax

4/2/2008 – It was simply too good to be true: Bobby Fischer corresponding with all the great players in the past years, giving them tips and lines to play in their games? Fischer secretly responsible for all the dramatic novelties over the past years? Naturally this was a carefully crafted prank with no basis in reality. Tragic but true. Most readers spotted it immediately. Here a selection of their letters.

Just uncovered – Fischer's Electronic Archives

4/1/2008 – Two and a half months after the death of the great chess legend Bobby Fischer, the examination of his legal estate has yielded some intriguing information, gleaned from the hard disk of his notebook computer. Apparently the reclusive former World Champion followed the chess activities of his colleagues quite closely, and in fact corresponded with a few of them. Today we received copies of his letters.

Garry Kasparov – taking up Shogi?

4/1/2008 – It was an interesting experiment: the former World Champion has, after his retirement from chess, tried his hand at the Japanese version of the game. Shogi is played on a 9 by 9 uncheckered board with flat wedge-shaped pieces with Kanji characters written on them. In his very first game Kasparov came ominously close to humiliating a three-dan player. Report and game.

The magic eye

3/31/2008 – Steve Lopez spent the last several ChessBase Workshop columns discussing a new training feature in Fritz 11. This time he examines a new graphical element which appears in 3D chessboard modes: the "Magic Eye". What is revolutionary training feature and how does it work? Learn more about it in the newest ChessBase Workshop column.

Iranian Chess Championship 2008

3/30/2008 – If you search the phrase “Iran Chess” in one of the search engines, what will appear on your monitor hardly has anything to do with chess as a sport. Most of the search results refer to the politics, the chess battle of Iran and USA, or the nuclear chess game the IAEA has accused Iran of playing. But this is not all that is happening in Iranian chess. Big pictorial report by Arash Akbarinia.

Täby – biggest Women's Open in chess history

3/30/2008 – It was as bold as brass, the intention of the Swedish organizers enter the Guinness record book with the largest women's event ever. In attendance: 46 women grandmasters and 44 international masters (the Moscow Women Open 2008 in February had 26 WGMs and 12 WIMs). The winner in this and the Moscow Open: IM Anna Muzychuk of Slovenia. Illustrated report by Valery Golubenko.

Chess in France – Top 16 in Clichy

3/30/2008 – The first three rounds of the French Top 16 League took place from March 21th-23th, 2008, in four separate venues covering leagues A and B. The teams are playing with eight players per teams and at least one French female player. Clichy and Mulhouse are leading in Group A, with nine points each, while Cannes leads Evry by a point in Group B. Results, games and picture gallery.

DGT presents: World Premiere of the Foidos Chess Broadcast

3/28/2008 – This October there will be a World Chess Championship between Vishy Anand and Vladimir Kramnik. The event will be broadcast on the Internet by the Dutch technology company DGT, using six cameras to show the action during the games. To demonstrate the new broadcast system DGT is staging a simultaneous exhibition between Kramnik and two strong players on April 2nd. Press release.

Fritz calculation training - part four

3/28/2008 – In our final installment of a series on Fritz11's calculation trainer, our columnist offers suggestions on creating your own "calculation training database", including the option to save your completed training tests. You can discover more about it in the new ChessBase Workshop.

Reader feedback: the great draw debate continues

3/27/2008 – "I propose," writes one reader, "that a draw proposal should reduce the time at your disposal to 30 minutes, so you receive a great penalty at the beginning of the game, decreasing to no penalty when you have only 30 minutes or less (at the end of the game)." These and many other imaginative proposals have reached us in the past weeks on a problem that is occupying the thoughts of our readers.

Melody Amber: Aronian wins with 2½ point lead

3/27/2008 – In the blindfold games 25-year-old Levon Aronian, Armenia's top grandmaster, scored 6.0/11, tying with Kramnik and Morozevich. In the rapid section he had 7.5/11, ahead of four players with 5.5 points each. In the combined scores he was (logically) 2.5 points ahead of his nearest rivals, Carlsen, Kramnik, Leko and Topalov. Aronian's performance: 2868. Illustrated report with videos.

The Nimzo-Indian with Rubinstein’s move 4.e3

3/26/2008 – After 4.Qc2 and 4.a3 in the last two weeks our Playchess.com lecturer Dennis Monokroussos today looks at a move introduced by the great Akiba Rubinstein, 4.e3. The game we look at is Taimanov-Averbakh from the famed 1953 Candidates tournament. It’s well worth watching, at 9 p.m. ET = 3 a.m. CET in Playchess.com’s Broadcast room. The show is free.