7/14/2020 – In his weekly show IM Lawrence Trent takes a look Magnus Carlsen's convincing win of the Chessable Masters. The focus will be on Carlsen's win with White against Giri in the Semi-Tarrasch, a spectacular game which, to quote Lawrence, "might be the best game ever seen in such a tournament at these time controls". | Lawrence' show is available at 17:00 UTC (19:00 CEST, 13:00 EDT) on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here. | Photo: Lennart Ootes (Archive)

7/12/2020 – International Chess Day will be celebrated next week, on July 20th, a date that also marks FIDE’s 96th anniversary. The International Chess Federation has a simple but ambitious plan: we want to make an appeal to the members of our chess community and ask you to teach someone how to play chess to mark this day.

7/9/2020 – After confirming his participation to play at the fourth stage of the Magnus Carlsen Tour, former world champion Vishy Anand talked to The Hindu. The “Tiger of Madras” praised the current world champion for having organized the tour and showed he is more than willing to try new formats in this time of crisis. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

7/9/2020 – “Game Changer” by Matthew Sadler and Natasha Regan, published by New in Chess, won the Averbakh-Boleslavsky Award to the best book of 2019. Artur Jussupow, who was a member of the jury, said of the book: “It is a unique project that combines human achievements with remarkable development in AI and opens a new approach to our beloved game. We could not choose a more deserving winner”. Books by Sam Shankland and Davorin Kuljasevic were shortlisted. | Photo: Alina l’Ami

7/7/2020 – The Turkish Chess Federation is organizing online matches in which the best players from the country face international stars. Starting July 7, Turkey’s number four Vahap Sanal will face Shakhriyar Mamedyarov on the PlayChess platform. They will play sixteen 15-minute games (with 10-second increments) over the course of four days. | Photo: Turkish Chess Federation

7/6/2020 – To celebrate its 100th birthday the German Chess Club Bamberg organizes a big international jubilee tournament. Paul Keres won the tournament smoothly and before the last round he leads with 11.0/14 and is 1½ points ahead of World Champion Tigran Petrosian who is sole second with 9½/14. In round 15 Keres plays with Black against Helmut Pfleger and might want to finish the tournament with a win. The transmission of the last round starts 18.00 local time (14:00 UTC, 10:00 EDT).

7/4/2020 – Magnus Carlsen won the Chessable Masters online tournament by scoring a third consecutive straight-set victory in the final against Anish Giri. In Saturday’s second set of the deciding matchup, Carlsen got an impressive win in the first game, while Giri missed chances to tie the score in games 2, 3 and 4. This was the third event of the Magnus Carlsen Tour — and the second one that sees the world champion taking first place. Full report to follow shortly. | Photo: FIDE

7/1/2020 – The International Chess Federation just announced the FIDE Online Olympiad 2020. The international team event, in which all federations affiliated to FIDE, have the right to participate will be held between July 22nd and August 30th, 2020.

6/30/2020 – In an interview with the Russian news agency TASS, FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich has announced that the match for the World Chess Championship will be postponed until 2021. Originally it was supposed to take place in Dubai at the end of the year. | Photo: FIDE/ Alexander Scherbak (TASS)

6/23/2020 – The third volume of Nicholas Pert's 1.d4 repertoire concludes his trilogy. Pert shows how White can get promising positions against the King's Indian and the Grünfeld, how White can counter offbeat openings by Black, and he also offers comprehensive analysis how to fight the Dutch, the Modern and the Pirc.

6/20/2020 – As the Chessable Masters is about to begin, Anish Giri talked to the Times of India about the future of online chess. The Dutch star thinks that "all the positive things that happened to chess online (like the tournament and twitch and youtube streamers) are there to stay". | Photo: FIDE

6/20/2020 – Earlier this week, former world champion Vladimir Kramnik was interviewed by Tania Sachdev for Red Bull's series ‘The Mind Behind’. Among other subjects, the Russian talked about how he is coping with the lockdown, his biggest chess influence as a kid, his main strength as a competitor and his favourite world championship match to date. | Photo: Amruta Mokal

6/19/2020 – The Croatian Chess Federation is the first to organise a "real" chess tournament after the worldwide Corona Lockdown. From June 19 to 29, twelve players will meet face to face in the Croatian Championship. Host of the event is the town of Vinkovci where Bobby Fischer won a strong international tournament in 1968.

6/18/2020 – The first version of ChessBase (the database) was launched in 1986. Much has happened since then! The company has developed a wide array of products for chess fans and professionals. For those looking to improve their game, training with DVDs has become a useful and comfortable way to learn. In this article, we give you a glimpse of what's available by listing the bestsellers from the past decade — the 2010s.

6/17/2020 – The final of the Clutch Chess Champions Showdown was thrilling: the world's two best players, Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana, showed excellent chess and fought until the very end. It was the last of 12 games that decided the match. In his Power Play Show Daniel King took a close look at this game.

6/17/2020 – International Master Sagar Shah decided to make a huge tutorial about our flagships - the ChessBase 15 software and the Mega Database. Both software applications are full of content. Once you know what they are capable of, you can't get enough of them and if you use them thoroughly, your chess skills will improve without a doubt.

6/15/2020 – Do you find the Sicilian difficult to cope with? Are you afraid to play the Sicilian with White because you do not want to learn a huge amount of variations by heart? Well, Roeland Pruijssers and Nico Zwirs can help. The two Dutchmen have created a complete repertoire against the Sicilian based on the Open Sicilian. A repertoire that is easy to learn.

6/11/2020 – José Raúl Capablanca was world chess champion between 1921 and 1927, when he lost the title to Alexander Alekhine in Buenos Aires. A clear favourite in that match, Capablanca strived to get a rematch against his Russian rival. Despite his efforts, he never managed to fight for the world championship again. In this interview from 1932, he talks about Alekhine's alleged unwillingness to face him, the best players in the world, money in chess, and the importance of learning the game as a child. | Pictured: Alekhine and Capablanca in 1914