Meeting the King's Indian – with Petrosian

6/13/2004 – To commemorate the 75th birthday of the late world champion Tigran Petrosian our Internet trainer Dennis Monokroussos will look at his distinctive way of meeting the King’s Indian Defense. Join him on Monday night, especially if you would like to add a new anti-King’s Indian weapon to your repertoire. Catch it on the Playchess server.

Miniatures in Moscow

6/13/2004 – Team Petrosian finally won another game, thanks to Peter Leko, but the World won two to make the lead 11-7 at the halfway point. Anand and Vallejo scored with black. Three games were over before move 25, only one of them a draw. Gelfand lost his second while Kasparov missed an endgame victory against Bacrot.

The Traxler Counter Attack

6/13/2004 – When you get to know him, Boris Alterman is an amicable, peace-loving fellow – not the uncompromising militarist he appears to be when you see the title of his recent online lectures (Fried Liver Attack, Morphy Attack, Max Lange Attack). Today he shows us another hyper-aggressive opening. Visit GM Alterman's lecture and simultaneous exhibition.

Women in Red goes down to the Computer

6/13/2004 – It is with a touch of melancholy that we report the loss, in game two, by a very bright young lady to a notebook computer. Ex world champion Zhu Chen suffered her second loss to the 64-bit Star of Unisplendour. In game one the Chinese girl had dominated, in game two it was the machine all the way. Here's an illustrated report...

Kiriakov tames the monster

6/13/2004 – In his second game against the Dual Xeon 3.06 GHz Russian GM Petr Kiriakov showed the audience how to get a safe draw: close up the position, block any breakthrough chances and then simply do nothing! Opponent Shredder was reduced to shuffling its pieces around, wondering why nothing was happening in this game...

Team Petrosian gets a draw in round four

6/13/2004 – In the first three rounds the Armenians were overmatched by the World all-stars. Today was like two separate tournaments with the heavyweights on each team battling it out in a Linares-caliber line-up. The decisive games came from below, however, as van Wely and Lputian crashed to their third losses. The World kept its four-point lead.

World team wins again on day two

6/12/2004 – So far it's been rough going for the sons of Petrosian in Moscow. Anglo Mickey Adams and anglophile Peter Svidler notched wins for the visitors and the home team had no answer. Kasparov's Najdorf was held by Vallejo and Anand also drew. The two-point win leaves the World team with a three point lead.

Petr Kiriakov vs the monster machine

6/12/2004 – Last night former Russian junior champion Petr Kiriakov drew the first of a two-game match against Deep Shredder on the Playchess.com server. His opponent was running on an awesome Dual Xeon 3.06 GHz computer, with 2 GB of RAM. The second game will be played on Saturday, June 12, at 19:00h CET (1 p.m. NY). Details...

Hot start for stars in Petrosian Memorial

6/11/2004 – The world's top two players, Garry Kasparov and Viswanathan Anand, wasted no time in living up to their status. In round one they beat van Wely and Lputian, respectively. The other decisive game was Svidler's win over Gelfand, giving the World team a 3.5-2.5 advantage. Games and analysis here.

Clash of the Titans – man vs woman

6/11/2004 – Two legendary world champions are scheduled to play a match to promote chess in the USA. Anatoly Karpov, 12th world champion, faces the 8th women's world champion Susan Polgar in September the city of Lindsborg, Kansas. We use the opportunity to bring you up to date on the women's world champions.

Chess president threatens the Kremlin

6/11/2004 – The Russian news service Pravda is reporting that the President of the autonomous Republic of Kalmykia, Kirsan Ilyumdzhinov, is telling the Kremlin that if Moscow dismisses him, there will be the second Chechnya in Kalmykia. Ilyumzhinov is also the president of the world chess federation FIDE. Here are the details of this ominous story...

Protest by Georgian women grandmasters

6/9/2004 – In an open letter two Georgian WGMs complain bitterly about the conditions surrounding the FIDE Women's World Chess Championship. Meanwhile the newly crowned women's world champion and vice champion have penned a reply in defense of FIDE. Here are the originals and summaries.

Chess Queen vs Unisplendour Fritz

6/9/2004 – In this corner, Zhu Chen, the women's World chess champion. On the other side of the table: the Unisplendour Star laptop, powered by an AMD 64 bit 3400+ CPU and 2 GB RAM. In head to head competition, the air was tense. After two hours had passed, it was the human who cracked. Read about the latest (wo)man vs machine match in Beijing.

Installing endgame tablebases

6/9/2004 – There's more to installing endgame tablebases than just copying them to your hard drive. Before your engine goes into head-to-head combat, you should test the tablebases to make sure they're functioning properly. We step you through the process in this week's ChessBase Workshop.

The greatest chess tournaments of all time

6/8/2004 – Chessplayers love to argue. Who was the greatest World Champion? The greatest tactical player? What's the best way to face the King's Indian Defense? And, of course, there's the question "What were the greatest chess tournaments of all time?" A great new CD from ChessBase attempts to answer that last question; you'll find a preview of it in this week's ChessBase Workshop.

Armenia (and friends) versus the World

6/8/2004 – What do Lputian, Akopian, and Vaganian have in common? Easy one. Why put Kasparov, Leko, and Gelfand on the Armenian team with them? We'll tell all. They will face a World all-star team of Anand, Svidler, Adams, Bacrot, Vallejo, and van Wely in a spectacular team event starting June 10 in Moscow.

Konstantin Landa wins Third ACP tournament

6/8/2004 – It was a bit of a surprise, since he was not a top seed. But the Russian GM who now lives in Germany had a great day and, with great tenacity and a bit of luck, he was able to clinch the Third ACP Internet Blitz Chess event, staged on the Playchess.com server and sponsored by ChinaCom. Final report.

Sacrificing a rainforest of material

6/7/2004 – In his Immortal and Evergreen games Adolf Anderssen sacrificed great amounts of material. Surely this is impossible nowadays? Happily, no, as Dennis Monokroussos demonstrates in a recent GM game in which White sacrificed every one of his pieces! Learn all about it in his Radio ChessBase lecture...

Shirov crushes Svidler to take León

6/7/2004 – Advanced Chess has been left behind but Alexei Shirov didn't need computer help to win in Spain. After a narrow escape against Teimour Radjabov in the first round Shirov won convincingly against Peter Svidler to take the Leon rapid tournament title. We have a full report, photos and analysis.

Antoaneta Stefanova scores second win

6/5/2004 – After the sensational first-round victory with black in the Women's World Chess Championship in Elista Bulgarian WGM Stefanova today scored again to take the score to 2-0 against her Russian opponent Ekaterina Kovalevskaya. This means she has excellent chances to win title in this six-game final. We bring you the game and pictures.

US women meet professor Kasparov

6/5/2004 – A lesson in slam-dunking from Jordan wouldn't help you. But how about chess lessons from Garry Kasparov? That's what the US women's Olympiad training squad got last weekend. It was fascinating, but we were too busy taking pictures to learn anything. See why.

St Petersburg wrap-up – part 2

6/5/2004 – The last two rounds of the preliminaries for the Russian Championship in St Petersburg decided it all. Of special importance was the question: who would get a ticket to the super-final with Kasparov and Kramnik, planned for November? Misha Savinov tells us in part two of his pictorial report.

Antoaneta Stefanova new Women's World Champion

6/5/2004 – Today Bulgaria's top women player Antoaneta Stefanova drew the third game to clinch the title of Women's World Champion. Her opponent Ekaterina Kovalevskaya did not, however, go down without a fight: the Russian won a pawn and pressed hard, but some very tenacious defence by Stefanova saved the day. Here's our illustrated report...

Features designed to help you improve your game

6/4/2004 – The Fritz "family" of chessplaying programs offer a lot of features to help you while playing a game against the computer. In this week's ChessBase Workshop, Steve Lopez checks in with another roundup of features designed to help you improve your game. Workshop...