10/4/2020 – Two days ago, October 2, it was Jon Speelman’s 64th birthday. Given that 64 is a canonical number for chess players, our columnist used this chance to remind us that every single square of the chessboard may be important. In order to illustrate his point, he goes on to show a game in which, as Black, he placed his knights on both h1 and a8 during a single game. Happy birthday, Jon! And many thanks for your ever-ingenious columns! | Pictured: Speelman usin PressTel Chessbox to play long distance chess | Source: British Chess News

10/3/2020 – World numbers one and two will participate in the over-the-board Altibox Norway Chess tournament starting Monday. Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana will be joined by Armenian star Levon Aronian (pictured), Polish number one Jan-Krzysztof Duda, wunderkind Alireza Firouzja and local representative Aryan Tari. No matchup will split the points evenly between the contestants, as an Armageddon decider will follow each and every drawn classical game. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

10/3/2020 – Almost ten years ago, English actress Keira Knighley caused a stir among motorbike enthusiasts when she roared through the streets in style for a promotional clip on a Ducati 750 Cafe Racer. Now the chess community can rejoice, as the royal game was featured in Coco Chanel’s latest promotional video with Mrs Knightley. | Photo: Coco Chanel

10/3/2020 – Alberic O'Kelly de Galway was a Belgian Grandmaster of Irish descent. One of his trainers was Akiba Rubinstein, and after World War II O'Kelly belonged to the extended world class. He won the 3. World Championship of Correspondence Chess and supported chess as arbiter and author. O'Kelly died 40 years ago, on October 3, 1980. | Photos: Dutch National Archive

10/3/2020 – A 17-year-old Hou Yifan, already the women’s world champion at the time, tied for first place with Nigel Short at the main event of the 2012 Gibraltar Chess Festival. Short won the playoff, but Hou’s performance was a milestone in her career, as she proved she could compete neck-in-neck with the very best in the world. Hou also defeated Judit Polgar in their first-ever encounter. | Photos: Zeljka Malobabic / Ray Morris-Hill

10/2/2020 – In the latest episode of ‘In conversation with...’, Surya Shekhar Ganguly talked for an hour and a half with former world champion Vladimir Kramnik. The Russian star, who retired from classical chess almost two years ago, discusses some of his games, refers to the young Indian players he recently trained and shares a bit of the wealth of knowledge he gathered during his career. | Photo: Amruta Mokal

10/2/2020 – Some might think that ChessBase was the inventor of the chess database. That is true to some degree, but there is a predecessor, and Frederic Friedel was a part of it. In the video we talk about one of the very first commercially available chess database systems, called "Intelligent Chess", and we opened our little ChessBase museum to present to you, the original prototype including a database on audio cassette.

10/2/2020 – "With the games and analyses in this article, I'm confident you are well-equipped to face 6.f4 against the Najdorf in a practical game." That's how Niclas Huschenbeth closes his article on 6.f4 in the Najdorf in the current ChessBase Magazine #197. Only a few days after the editorial deadline, he had the opportunity to test his analyses in practice at the German Masters. Andreas Heimann promptly attacked Huschenbeth's Najdorf with the aggressive 6.f4. And? Huschenbeth came out of the opening without any problems, but missed a nice winning chance in the middlegame.

10/2/2020 – In the diagram position White is a pawn down but Black has not castled yet and is far from being fully developed. Black's last move 13...Qb8 targets White's pawn on e5 but did not do anything for Black's development. Don't you let him get away with it!

10/1/2020 – The 2700chess.com webpage has been keeping track of top players’ ratings on a daily basis for quite a while now. Besides presenting the highest rated players in classical, rapid and blitz, both in the open and the women’s categories, they have included a list of the highest live ratings ever achieved. Let us recap the top ten of this list, and look at the games which gave each of the players their highest-ever live rating.

10/1/2020 – After the corona lockdown the players gradually play again over-the-board, which led to some movement on the rating lists. However, while World Champion Magnus has been very active online, he did not play a single elo-rated game. But with a rating of 2863 Carlsen is still the world's number one, and he is currently 35 points ahead of Fabiano Caruana who indeed played some over-the-board games in September.

10/1/2020 – Chess Classics are an integral part for every young chess player's development. These are the building blocks which help you to develop your style of play. IM Sagar Shah has started a new series on the ChessBase India YouTube channel where he has taken on the challenging task of covering some of the most important classics in chess! The first one he begins with is his personal favourite - Botvinnik vs Capablanca AVRO tournament 1938. A young Botvinnik takes on an experienced Capablanca and outplays him both strategically as well as tactically. 10 positions to solve, an hour long video and detailed game analysis for you to understand this duel.