It's Almira vs Irina in New York

8/19/2004 – On September 16 the web search company Accoona will be staging a spectacular rapid chess match between the best female players in America and France. Former US champion Irina Krush faces former European champion Almira Skripchenko. The latter has annotated a key game for us, and also took us on a spectacular tour around her home town of Paris

Computer chess at 43 degrees Celsius

8/18/2004 – That's about 110° Fahrenheit, i.e. hotter than most chess programmers knew it could get. "We try to go swimming at 6 am, when it is bearable," says Shredder author Stefan Meyer-Kahlen. After taking a 2:0 dubbing in the first two games Shredder has scored two draws, even pressing for a win with black in game three. Here's an illustrated report.

Maria does the broadsheets

8/18/2004 – On August 2nd we published an interview and some moderately daring pictures of Russian WGM Maria Manakova. Two weeks later letters and calls are still coming in, from newspapers and magazines all over the world. If you are not disturbed by partial nudity take a look at these followup stories in the Telegraph and Spiegel

Malaysia – Truly Asia

8/18/2004 – The 1st Dato’ Arthur Tan Malaysian Open Chess Championship 2004 will be held from the 21st to the 26th of August Kuala Lumpur ("Kay-eL"), Malaysia. This FIDE-rated, 11-round tournament will be played at a time control of 90 min + 30 sec. The prize fund is US $12,000. Edwin Lam Choong Wai tells us all about the host country.

'Bobby Fischer and I have decided to marry'

8/17/2004 – Bobby Fischer, the former world chess champion, plans to marry the president of the Japan Chess Association (and four-time Japanese women's champion) Miyoko Watai. This was reported in newspapers and wire services last night. Now Watai-san has sent us a statement explaining the background of her personal relationship with Fischer.

Kasparov vs Deep Blue on BBC Four

8/17/2004 – The Hollywood documentary "Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine", is being aired tonight on free-to-view BBC Four TV. It's a "gripping Storyvill film about world chess champion Gary Kasparov's controversial battles against IBM's Deep Blue computer". The broadcast is at 9pm British time, with a repeat at 11:50pm. Don't miss it...

Hydra shocks Shredder with 2-0 lead

8/16/2004 – When is the last time you saw the multiple world champion Shredder lose a game? In Abu Dhabi it lost twice in succession to the 16-processor hardware program Hydra, which is turning out to be quite the many-headed monster its name implies. We bring you the games and some beautiful pictures from the start of the computer challenge.

Alterman on the Accelerated Dragon

8/15/2004 – Many players are attracted to the Dragon Sicilian, but are put off by the fierce mating attacks that White can launch. So why not try the Accelerated Dragon, where Black has a few nasty surprises in store for White. In Sunday's Playchess lecture GM Boris Alterman tells us all about them.

Fischer renounces US citizenship

8/15/2004 – Bobby Fischer has been moved to a new detention facility in Tokyo, pending a decision on his deportation to the US, where he faces a 10-year jail sentence. A lot of new material has surfaced, including Fischer's handwritten renouncement of his US citizenship and a blow-by-blow description and picture of his arrest at Narita Airport. Harrowing stuff...

The greatest chess game ever played...

8/15/2004 – Anderssen-Kieseritzky? Byrne-Fischer? Botvinnik-Capablanca? No, none of these. According to our Playchess.com trainer Dennis Monokroussos the award goes to Estrin-Berliner from the 5th Correspondence World Chess Championship. Well, maybe. Judge for yourself in Dennis' Monday night lecture

Printing out the news

8/14/2004 – We often receive letters from visitors who want to print out our news articles, more often in summer, when people like to read things in the garden. Unfortunately the printout functions of most browsers tend to cut off some of the text. Good news: we have fixed the problem with a new print facility.

Goh Weiming: Ready for war over the board

8/14/2004 – Some people think that chess players in the Internet are just statistics, nicknames, fluctuating rating, chatters. Well, we have news for you! They do have their lives and their formidable experiences. Here's the story of "KGWM", a Playchess.com member who plays for Singapore and trains in the jungles of Brunei.

Computer titans clash in Abu Dhabi

8/14/2004 – This could be the highest level of computer chess ever played – and you can watch it unfold live on Playchess.com. An eight-game match between multiple world champion Shredder, running on a superfast four-processor system, and Hydra, a Deep Blue style hardware program running on a 16-way Linux cluster. Here are all the details...

The science of chess

8/13/2004 – Science – good science – does not try to corroborate theories. It attempts to destroy them, to falsify the prime theses, as Karl Raimund Popper so eloquently described. Now it turns out that strong chess players behave like good scientists – a conclusion reached by cognitive scientists Michelle Cowley and Ruth Byrne. It is all in Nature magazine.

Light clothing, beautiful legs

8/12/2004 – In the height of summer there are exciting chess events being staged all over the world. We bring you reports and links from the British Championship in Scarborough, the Hogeschool event in Holland, the Tournoi d'échecs in Montréal and the Russia-China match in Moscow. We also have a lot of exciting pictures.

Short on blunders – part two already

8/11/2004 – Some time ago we spoke to Nigel Short about the FIDE world championship in Tripoli, which he disparagingly called a "blunderfest". Well, guess who committed the biggest flub-up of them all? We probe the mechanisms of Nigel's incredible blunder in Libya, all the way to the bone, in part two of our interview.

Spassky to Bush: Arrest me!

8/10/2004 – Boris Spassky, who played the contentious return match against Bobby Fischer in Yugoslavia 1992, for which the latter is currently facing deportation and incarceration in the US, has appealed to President Bush to show mercy and charity for his tormented successor. If for some reason that should be impossible, Spassky suggests a very imaginative alternative...

Anand wins Mainz rapid over Shirov

8/8/2004 – India's Viswanathan Anand continued his hot German summer and added to his wardrobe for the fourth consecutive year in Mainz. He was awarded the winner's black jacket by organizer Hans Walter-Schmitt for his 5-3 Rapid Duel victory over Spaniard Alexei Shirov. Alexander Grischuk and Peter Svidler also defended their 2003 Mainz titles. Photos and report.

Ilyumzhinov and the Chess City in Dubai

8/8/2004 – Who can say he doesn't think big? FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov has just unveiled a plan to build a new "chess city" in the Emirate of Dubai. It's a US $2.6 billion project that is expected to play host to (hold on to your hats) 60 million amateur and professional chess followers annually. You don't believe he can do it?

Alterman on the Dragon

8/8/2004 – The Dragon Variation of the Open Sicilian is one of the most-feared openings in chess, with generations of players and experts creating a monumental body of theory. The double-edged play makes it an opening nobody can ignore. In Sunday's Playchess lecture GM Boris Alterman tells us why.

Free points from Pal Benko

8/8/2004 – He twice made it to the Candidates' Tournament – Hungarian-born Pal Benko, today a respected chess columnist, is someone from whom you can learn a trick or two. In his Monday night Playchess.com lecture Dennis Monokroussos illustrates the point with a remarkable 45-year-old game.

Chess Classic 2004: Anand leads Shirov 4:2

8/8/2004 – With one day and two games to go India's Vishy Anand leads Alexei Shirov by two points in their Rapid Chess match. In the Chess960 (Fischer Random) between Peter Svidler and Levon Aronian all six games were decided for a 3:3 score. The FiNet Chess960 Open was won by Zoltan Almasi. Details in our illustrated report.

Almira wins Ural Supertournament

8/8/2004 – One of the strongest women's tournaments of all time ended with a resounding victory by Moldavian-French WGM Almira Skripchenko. After returning to Paris Almira spoke to us on the phone, telling us about the tournament and her colleagues. She even annotated her best game for us. Here is an extensive illustrated report.

Mate search in Fritz

8/7/2004 – Fritz' Mate engine is a useful tool for solving the "mate in x" problems that we find in chess books and magazines. Today we take a closer look at the Mate engine and answer a nagging question that some users occasionally ask: "Why does Mate analyze so slowly?" ChessBase Workshop...