4/8/2020 – Feeling locked up? Are you missing the chess club, tournaments that came fast and furious? In order to combat depression, the sinking feeling that comes with abstinence, we bring you a number of classical chess problems that will doubtlessly brighten up your day. They are from Werner Keym's upcoming book and all share a common feature: they are off-beat and clever, and require thinking outside the box. In addition: you can win a prize!

4/6/2020 – There's a new book in the making, one that contains the classics of chess, but also of the intricate art of chess problems and studies. The author is Werner Keym, one of the most versatile composers in the chess world. The book starts with the most famous games in history. Most of them you will know, but have you looked carefully at the moves, have you understood the plans and the tactics. You can do that on our news page, using our interactive JavaScript player. It's an opportunity to understand chess history better.

4/5/2020 – Last month, on March 9 2020, Bobby Fischer would have turned 77. We could have commemorated it with a detailed biography of the 11th World Champion – but who doesn't know all the details of the life of the most charismatic and enigmatic player in the history of the game? So instead I would like to retell one of my favourite stories, a birthday present to Fischer, wherever he might be. It is a lovely story, and has ideas that you can use in your own games.

4/4/2020 – Are you 27 years old or younger? Then you can take part in a competiton run by "Schwalbe", the German society for problem chess – on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the "German Chess Youth". You get ten (actually very delightful) problems to solve. You mail your answers to the supervisor of the competition, and can win one of many prizes. Comments are welcome. In any case the problems are lots of fun.

4/1/2020 – The April Fool prank has become progressively more difficult over the years. Of course it is easy to fool people with some unverifiable made up report ("Chess banned in North Korea"), but it misses an essential ingredient: the joke should be funny. And if you construct a genuinely funny story, our friends at Google usually make it possible to detect as a hoax within minutes. So we are, once again, restricting ourselves to past pranks – and to some humour to help strengthen our immune systems.

3/31/2020 – Yesterday the saddest possible news hit us. "I have no words to express my grief over my wife Arianne's death," wrote Levon Aronian. "She was an intelligent, hard working and joyous person that lived a beautiful life. I love you, honeybun, sleep tight..." An unspeakable tragedy. Arianne was a strong WIM, but also a visionary, social worker, political advisor, MD, dancer, boxer, mountain climber, biker and excelled at just about everything she did. Her death at the age of 33 comes as a huge shock.

3/24/2020 – The entire world is in disarray, everything has ground to a halt. No more parties, movie theaters, pubs or restaurants, no more public sporting event – even the 2020 Olympic Games and the Chess Olympiad have been cancelled — both today. One chess tournament after the other is being abandoned, leagues, opens, everything. And at least one top player has caught the virus, another is trapped. Everyone is search for a cure — even the AlphaZero team of DeepMind!

3/2/2020 – Do you often encounter unnecessary mishaps in your tournament games? Do you sometimes panic during the game, are you are sometimes too relaxed, over-confident in an endgame that needs special attention? There are many companies and research organizations developing AI systems to track and record human emotions. Recently we came across one such initiative that is applying this to chess. Initial experiments with 2700 GMs are showing great promise. Maybe this will soon be one of your standard training tools?

2/3/2020 – Last August former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik trained six Indian super-talents in Geneva. They went on to score remarkable tournament success and GM norms, attributing their performance directly to the training session. The sponsor, Microsense PL, decided to stage another training camp, this time with fourteen players and in south Indian city of Chennai, with two super-GMs. FREDERIC FRIEDEL visited the camp and found it deeply impressive. Here is his pictorial report. | Photos: Amruta Mokal

1/12/2020 – Last year we rivived our twenty-year tradition of giving you unusual puzzles for the Christmas holidays — puzzles that cannot be easily solved with a computer (the point of this endeavour), tasks which require you to think all by yourself. Sadly the greatest problematist, Pál Benkö, who faithfully contributed to this endeavour, could only make one contribution, for Christmas day, before passing (at 91 last August). We hope you enjoyed the puzzles and were able to solve some yourself.

1/5/2020 – In the early 1980s, FREDERIC FRIEDEL spent a week in Moscow with Unix pioneer Ken Thompson, who was supposed to demonstrate his computer chess world champion machine Belle to the Soviet Chess Federation, and to former World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik, who was developing a rival strategy in chess programming. He takes us on a trip down memory lane. Read part 1.

1/4/2020 – In the early 1980s, FREDERIC FRIEDEL spent a week in Moscow with Unix pioneer Ken Thompson, who was supposed to demonstrate his computer chess world champion machine Belle to the Soviet Chess Federation, and to former World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik, who was developing a rival strategy in chess programming. Unfortunately Thompson's computer did not arrive with him in Moscow. But in spite of this, the trip turned out to be quite an adventure.

12/29/2019 – When grappling with a challenging chess puzzle, there's often the temptation to feed it to a chess engine to a little help. For today's puzzles, that's not an option. Emeritus Editor FREDERIC FRIEDEL has selected problems by Dr Karl Fabel and Thomas Rayner Dawson, "the father of Fairy Chess". Not sure what that means? Read on!

12/27/2019 – During the Christmas puzzle week we normally strive to bring you puzzles that cannot be solved by simply pressing some key on your computer. But here I would like to simply tell you a story of how ancient, well-known problems can electrify budding young chess players. In the board position shown, it's White to play and draw!

12/26/2019 – Christmas Puzzle week, which we bring you for the twentieth year in succession, is time for unusual and entertaining puzzles — tasks that are not amenable to computer assistance, but require human ingenuity. Try, for instance, to imagine how the position in the picture could have possibly arisen. Determining that needs lateral thinking. One of the foremost composers of chess problems "out of the box" sent us some highly entertaining examples. At least one of them looks quite impossible. Merry Boxing Day!

12/25/2019 – Every year Pal Benko, grandmaster, former World Championship candidate, and one of the best problem composers in the world, sent us some very special seasonal greetings. They came in the form of chess problems for our readers. Just weeks before his death (at 91 last August) Pal started working on this year's Christmas puzzles. Unfortunately he was only able to suggest the first one, for Christmas Day. It is a problem by Sam Loyd and was supposed to fool our readers (Pal retained his humour and mischievous nature to the end). We share this puzzle with you today.

12/12/2019 – Just imagine you had a chess computer — the auto-sensor kind. Would someone who had no knowledge of the game be able to work it out, just by moving pieces. Or imagine you are a very powerful computer. By looking at millions of images of chess games would you be able to figure out the rules and learn to play the game proficiently? The answer is yes — because that has just been done by Google's Deep Mind team. For chess and 76 other games. It is interesting, and slightly disturbing. | Graphic: DeepMind

11/14/2019 – In the past decade brute force programs became stronger than any human chess player, and now self-learning artificial intelligence programs like AlphaZero, Leela and Fat Fritz take these skills even further. What this all means is of great interest, and chess is simply the first area in which we are acutely feeling the impact of Artificial Intelligence. Thankfully computer experts, philosopher, and thinkers are beginning to discuss the subject seriously — as in this fairly profound podcast with Judea Pearl and Sam Harris, who use the chess paradigm extensively in their discussion. Definitely worth listening.