6/9/2024 – The Cairns Cup, an elite-level female chess tournament created by the Saint Louis Chess Club, returns this June and will feature ten of the world’s best female chess players. The ten-player round robin tournament will be hosted at the World Chess Hall of Fame from June 12 to 23. The top seeds are Tan Zhongyi, Mariya Muzychuk and Nana Dzagidze, while rising star Alice Lee and defending champion Anna Zatonskih (pictured) are also included in the field. | Photo: Crystal Fuller

6/9/2024 – The inaugural edition of the Norway Chess Women tournament, an event featuring the same format and the same prizes as the open super-tournament, saw top seed Ju Wenjun grabbing outright victory after beating Lei Tingjie in their classical-chess confrontation. Anna Muzychuk, who beat Humpy Koneru in Armageddon, finished in sole second place. | Photo: Stev Bonhage / Norway Chess

6/9/2024 – Magnus Carlsen won the Norway Chess super-tournament for a sixth time in his career after beating Fabiano Caruana in their final-round Armageddon encounter. Hikaru Nakamura grabbed second place despite losing in the rapid tiebreaker against R Praggnanandhaa. It was precisely Pragg who finished third, leaving Alireza Firouzja, Fabiano Caruana and Ding Liren behind, in the bottom half of the tournament standings. | Photo: Stev Bonhage / Norway Chess

6/8/2024 – The Romanian Chess Federation started the Romania Grand Prix in 2022 with the objective of providing young Romanian players the chance to play in strong tournaments in their home country. The federation has made great efforts to make Romania the new European Chess Capital. The total prize fund in the entire GP 2024 is €175000, €30000 for each of the five Grand Prix events and €25000 for the Finals. | Photo: Federația Română de Șah

6/8/2024 – In his new Fast & Furious episode, Robert Ris takes another look at one of his favourite subjects - wins by the underdog, the nominally weaker player. The underdog win in this episode came at the World Junior Championship and it was Abhimanyu Mishra, the world's youngest ever grandmaster, who suffered. | Fast & Furious is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

6/8/2024 – In the diagram position White set up a threat with 32.Kh4, which you are welcome to carry out after 32...Ba7??. Mate is great!

6/7/2024 – The 12th edition of the Norway Chess super-tournament is taking place from May 27 to June 7 in Stavanger. An open event and a women’s event are being played concurrently with an identical number of players, the same format and an equivalent prize fund. Both world champions — Ju Wenjun and Ding Liren — are participating, besides world number one Magnus Carlsen. | Follow the games live starting at 17.00 CEST (11.00 ET, 20.30 IST)

6/7/2024 – There are many interesting repertoire suggestions in the Opening Encyclopaedia. You'll have to try them out for yourself to see if they suit you! The best way to do this is to play against Fritz19 using the “Play against database book” function, i.e. you can load databases, games for opening articles and opening analyses directly as an opening book and play against them. Fritz 19 not only displays the very informative articles of the encyclopaedia, with Fritz you can explore the repertoire suggestions in a playful way, against different types of players! See for yourself how you can test Robert Ris' recommendation for the Max Lange Attack in the Two Knights with just a few mouse clicks using Fritz 19.

6/7/2024 – After nine rounds no less than five players finished first with 7.0/9 each at the Chess Festival in Munich: Vladimir Fedoseev, Giga Quparadze, Dmitrij Kollars, Pavel Eljanov and Frederik Svane. Fedoseev, who started the tournament as the number one seed, had the best tiebreak. | Photo: Fedoseev (left, with White) against Kollars | Photo: Katharina Reinecke/German Chess Federation

6/7/2024 – Bodhana Sivanandan is another name on the list of super talents, which you should keep in the back of your head. The 9-year-old girl, playing for England, beat WIM Mariam Mkrtchyan from Armenia. Roughly 300 Elo points, and 10 years of age, separated the two players. Robert Ris shows us how this happened.

6/7/2024 – Lei Tingjie scored a crucial classical win in round 9 of the Norway Chess Women event, as she defeated R Vaishali with white to remain in contention for tournament victory. Lei is now tied for second place with Anna Muzychuk, 1½ points behind sole leader Ju Wenjun. Ju and Lei are set to face each other in Friday’s final round. Meanwhile, Muzychuk will play white against Humpy Koneru. | Photo: Stev Bonhage / Norway Chess

6/7/2024 – Magnus Carlsen, Ding Liren and Fabiano Caruana all won their round-9 encounters in Armageddon at the Norway Chess super-tournament in Stavanger. Carlsen, who defeated Alireza Firouzja, now leads Hikaru Nakamura (who lost to Ding) by 1½ points. In Friday’s final round, Carlsen will face Caruana with white, while Nakamura will play black against R Praggnanandhaa, who still has an outside chance of winning the event. | Photo: Stev Bonhage / Norway Chess