9/23/2017 – Can you guess when the first chess program was written – relative to the invention of computers? Ten years later? Wrong. The great mathematician Alan Turing did it earlier than that. During the celebrations of his 100th anniversary, in Manchester, June 2012, Garry Kasparov and Frederic Friedel delivered a lecture on the reconstruction of the engine Turing had programmed. Now the process has been described in a scientific paper.

9/8/2017 – It is a seven-piece ending over which Troitzky once toiled. In the meantime endgame databases have mastered it and can solve billions of non-trivial positions, each in an instant. But can a computer program be taught to generate interesting studies or problems with the given material? KI researcher Dr Azlan Iqbal has instructed his software to try, and it has produced a mate-in-five. We ask our readers: can you do better?

9/4/2017 – It is an old puzzle, proposed in 1848: place eight queens on a chessboard so that none are attacking another one. The solution was published two years later, but the problem of n queens on an n x n chessboard (e.g. 100 queens on a 100 x 100 board) ramains illusive. Modern computers would take thousands of years to solve the puzzle for large numbers. If you can write a program that is much faster you can win a cool million dollars. Go for it!

9/1/2017 – The score was 11½-8½ for Challenger Bobby Fischer, who needed 12½ to win the title. In game 21 he had the black pieces and he played a Sicilian variation he had never before shown any liking for. He gained a distinct advantage, but then allowed Boris Spassky to sacrifice an exchange to get a drawn position. However, the still-reigning World Champion went on to blunder and finally lose his title.

8/30/2017 – The score was 10½-7½ for the Challenger, who needed 12½ to win the title. Was Bobby Fischer content merely to sneak in by split points? "I don't believe it — it's never been his style," wrote commentator GM Robert Byrne. "I think the explanation for the draws is to be found in Spassky's improvements in his openings." In games 11 and 12 Fischer kept coasting, but he also relaxed somewhat with social encounters.