11/24/2019 – Japan has hardly appeared on the chess map so far. But since Yumiko Hiebert took over the office of President of the Japanese Chess Federation, but seems to sprout a small plant. GEORGIOS SOULEIDIS spoke during the FIDE Grand Prix in Hamburg with Hiebert (photo), who belonged to the tournament's Appeals Committee.

10/30/2019 – In Candidates Tournament 2020, eight players will compete to determine the challenger for the current World Champion, Magnus Carlsen. Four participants have been confirmed and four more are still being sought. Two of them will be determined by the FIDE Grand Prix, the third stage of which will take place from November 5th to 17th in Hamburg, with the first round less than a week away!

6/7/2019 – S´Arenal in Mallorca. A place where others spend their holidays was the venue for the 8th edition of the Llucmajor Open. ChessBase author Georgios Souleidis travelled from Hamburg to Llucmajor, hoping to enjoy sunny days and win rating points. A travel report. | Photo: Tournament Organisation

3/8/2019 – Over Easter, from April 18th to 22nd, one of the strongest open tournaments in the world takes place in Karlsruhe: the GRENKE Open. At the same time, ten of the world's best will face off in the GRENKE Chess Classic. Carlsen, Caruana, Aronian, Anand and Vachier-Lagrave are all confirmed, but also Vincent Keymer, the surprise winner of the 2018 GRENKE Open, who will have a prime opportunity to show what he can do against the world's best. Details via the tournament press release.

3/3/2019 – From Friday to Sunday the German capital of Berlin is also the capital of chess. Then the central rounds of the "Schach Bundesliga" and the women's Bundesliga are to be played and many global stars will be there. ChessBase will also be present with a booth from Friday onwards. Live games of Round 10 at 13:00 CET (12 Noon UTC, 7:00 AM EST) plus a preview from GEORGIOS SOULEIDIS. | Photos: Georgios Souleidis

11/13/2018 – The defending champion of the German top league, OSG Baden-Baden, had a difficult hurdle on the first weekend of the new season facing Werder Bremen. The favourites pulled through, thanks to a victory from Peter Svidler over Luke McShane in a game that was so interesting for the St. Petersburg grandmaster that he postponed his return journey to Hamburg. | Photos: Dariusz Gorzinski

7/27/2018 – Arkady Dvorkovich has been on tour for his electoral campaign and made stops at the Biel International Chess Festival and, a day after, at the Sparkassen Chess-Meeting in Dortmund (where he made the ceremonial first move for the game Kovalev-Kramnik). Macauley Peterson and Georgios Souleidis interviewed him on topics ranging from his plans for FIDE if elected, his connection to the Russian government, Agon, and political campaign wrangling. | Photo: Georgios Souleidis

5/7/2018 – Tan Zhongyi has a rating of 2522, is number ten on the women's rating list, and reigning Women's World Champion, but with a rating of 2571 challenger Ju Wenjun is number two on the women's rating list and favourite to win the Women's World Championship match in Shanghai. Ju indeed dominates at the start of the ten-game match and after three games leads 2½-½. In game three Tan lost in 27 moves after misplaying the opening. | Photos: Gu Xiaobing

12/18/2017 – The European Rapid Chess Championship in Katowice ended with a surprise. The 68th seed IM Maxim Vavulin from Russia won with ten points from eleven games for the gold. Silver goes to Jan-Krzysztof Duda (Poland) and bronze to Pavel Ponkratov (Russia). In the blitz championship, Grandmaster Sergei Zhigalko was the 24th by rating, but the 28-year-old from Belarus finished first with 18 / 22. Right on his heels were Luke McShane (England) and Peter Michalik (Czech Republic) both with 17½ / 22. | Photo: Official site / Walusza Fotografia

11/27/2017 – Norway has a second World Champion: in Tarvisio, Italy, Aryan Tari won the World Junior Championship with 8½/11. He shared first place with Manuel Petrosyan from Armenia and the Indian Aravindh Chithambaram Vr. but had the best tiebreak. At the World Junior Championship for Girls Zhansaya Abdumalik took clear first with 9½/11. | Photo: Bernd Vökler

10/9/2017 – The European Club Cup began with wins for top teams in both the Open and the Women sections. The Russian team Globus, with several of the world's elite grandmasters, won 6: 0 against the Icelandic team Fjölnir. Defending champions Alkaloid from Macedonia had a slightly harder time, initially giving up 1½ board points against Augusta Perusia from Italy. Among the Women's teams the favourites from Batumi won just 2½ : 1½ against Anatolia from Turkey.

11/9/2016 – Round three of the strong European Clup Cup brought the first surprises. The Italian team Padova which has Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Levon Aronian on the top boards lost against the Serbian team Sveti Nikolaj Srpski. And the Czech team Novy Bor, winner of the ECC 2013, lost against the Russian team Zhiguli. Favorite Syberia played with Vladimir Kramnik on board one and scored a narrow victory. Results, tables, games...

9/4/2016 – Even though the current World Champion is from Norway and the current Women's World Champion is from China, Russia is still a superpower in chess. And the European Youth Championship that finished last week in Prague showed that Russia still has a seemingly inexhaustible pool of talented young players: Russia won no less than 15 of 36 possible medals. The remaining 21 medals were shared among 16 different nations. Results and games.

8/23/2016 – From 21st to 29th August Abu Dhabi hosts a very strong Open. More than 100 titled players travelled to the capital of the United Arab Emirates, 40 of whom are grandmasters. The winner of the "Masters Open" will receive 13,000 dollar. Top seed is Dmitry Andreikin from Russia, second seed is Chinese grandmaster Wang Hao. However, both suffered slight setbacks in the first two rounds.

7/11/2016 – In the second round of the Sparkassen Chess-Meeting in Dortmund only one player managed to win: Ruslan Ponomariov. He beat Evgeniy Najer and with 1.5/2 he now leads together with Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, who played a bloodless draw against Vladimir Kramnik. Liviu Dieter Nisipeanu neutralized Fabiano Caruana's winning attempts and German GM Rainer Buhmann tried hard but in vain to win against Leinier Dominguez Perez.

7/10/2016 – After winning against Vassily Ivanchuk in round three of the category 20 grandmaster tournament in Danzhou, the Chinese Grandmaster Bu Xiangzhi took sole lead with 2.5/3. Ian Nepomniachtchi won in round three against Wang Yue while Pentala Harikrishna defeated Elo-favorite and Chinese number one Ding Liren, who is having a rough start and is last with 0.5/3.

3/30/2016 – 587 players used the Easter holidays to play in the GRENKE Chess Open in Karlsruhe, Germany. The huge open attracted five grandmasters with a rating of 2700+ and 21 2600+ grandmasters. But in the end the young German GM Matthias Blübaum (Elo 2605) left all favorites behind. With 7.5/9 he shared first place with five other players and won on tie-break.