8/2/2023 – Round 1 is over at the World Cup in Baku. A total of 33 matches (24 in the open and 9 in the women’s section) were decided in rapid and blitz tiebreaks. Now that the first round has been completed, all the players who received byes — the rating favourites — will join the fray on Wednesday. Magnus Carlsen will face Levan Pantsulaia (Georgia, 2564), while Ju Wenjun will face Eva Repkova (Slovakia, 2312). | Photo: FIDE / Stev Bonhage

8/1/2023 – At the beginning of August FIDE published its new rating list. Magnus Carlsen remains the only player with a rating of more than 2800 and is still the clear number one. Hikaru Nakamura follows in second place, five points ahead of world number 3 Fabiano Caruana. Indian juniors Gukesh D. and Praggnanandhaa gained a lot of rating points in July and continue their way to the top.

8/1/2023 – Michael Adams and Lan Yao (Women's Championship) are the new British National Chess Champions. This is Michael Adams' eighth National Championship, while Lan Yao not only won the title but also made a WGM norm. A big surprise is the second place of the untitled Steven Jones, who started as 32nd seed. | Photo: Official site

8/1/2023 – Weird History is a YouTube channel that provides chronicles of history in a form never covered in high school. It looks at the extreme, the unexpected, the untold and the flat-out weird parts of history. "Because as weird as people seem today, we don't hold a candle to history," they claim. They have 4.31 million subscribers and have registered over half a billion views. After posting over 700 videos they have descended on Bobby Fischer. Here is the video portrait, for what it is worth.

8/1/2023 – Pawn races can be very sharp. And it is not always best to push the pawns. But what else can and should White do in the diagram position?

8/1/2023 – A few major upsets left rating favourites out of the World Cup in the first round of the multitudinous competition. In the open category, Gianmarco Leiva (Peru) and Pablo Salinas (Chile) gave the biggest surprises. In the women’s section, Qianyun Gong (Singapore), Turmunkh Munkhzul (Mongolia) and Maili-Jade Ouellet (Canada) pulled off the biggest stunners. | Pictured: Nurgyul Salimova | Photo: chess.com / Maria Emelianova

7/31/2023 – In this week's show, Karsten Müller goes over a number of outstanding endgame positions from the very strong Global Chess League. | You can watch the Endgame Magic Show on-demand with a ChessBase Premium account.

7/31/2023 – Opposite-coloured bishops (OCB) are tricky beasts. In many (but not all!) endgames, they turn the fight on the board into a boring tea-party, mostly ending in a draw. Many club players therefore expect that in the middlegame they will behave similarly. However, nothing can be further from truth. | Photo: pixabay.

7/31/2023 – The tenth edition of the much-anticipated FIDE World Cup kicked off on Sunday in Baku. The 50 top seeds in the open and the 25 top seeds in the women’s section received byes and will join the fray on Wednesday. The remaining 234 contenders (156 in the open and 78 in the women’s) played their first classical encounters, though. There was no lack of surprises on the first day of action, with 14-year-old Ediz Gurel from Turkey (the youngest participant in the open) stunning Velimir Ivic in brilliant style. | Photo: chess.com / Maria Emelianova

7/30/2023 – John Jacob Loewenthal is largely remembered as a prominent character in the legend of Paul Morphy. The American champion defeated him twice in two continents: once when he was a boy in New Orleans, and then again when he was a young man during his famous tour in Europe. In his own right, however, Loewenthal was a great master who did more for chess than most of the luminaries of his time. His was a life given solely to the game. On the recent 147th anniversary of his passing, it is fitting to remember his life and career.

7/30/2023 – Herman Grooten is an International Master, a renowned trainer and the author of several highly acclaimed books about chess training and chess strategy. In the 136th instalment of his ChessBase show "Understanding before Moving", Herman continues his series "Chess history in a nutshell" and takes a look at the groundbreaking positional ideas of Aron Nimzowitsch. | Photo: Pascal Simon

7/29/2023 – Packed to the brim with players, guests, officials and staff, the Baku Convention Centre hosted the festivities, including speeches, music, dance, as the 2023 edition of the FIDE World Cup was inaugurated in the capital of Azerbaijan. In the open section, Ivan Cheparinov, the top player starting in round 1, as well as Magnus Carlsen, the top player overall and joining in round 2, will start with white in the first game. | Photo: Stev Bonhage / FIDE