9/11/2020 – The Swiss Grandmaster Noel Studer convincingly won the Open Tournament of the 7th Chess Festival of Cattolica in Italy. Studer scored 8 out 9 and finished 1½ points ahead of IM Pierre Bailet and GM David Alberto. | Photo: Tournament page

9/11/2020 – Last Friday, September 4, 2020, Dmitry Svetushkin died. The Moldovan Grandmaster played ten times for his country at chess Olympiads and was also an active and renowned trainer. He was 40 years old. | Photo: Andreas Kontokanis, Wikipedia

9/10/2020 – From Friday on the St. Louis Chess Club will hold its Chess 9LX 2020 tournament, this year as an online tournament. Ten top players - Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Fabiana Caruana, Wesley So, Levon Aronian, Leinier Dominguez, Peter Svidler, Alireza Firouzja and Garry Kasparov(!) - play a Chess960 round robin at rapid time controls.

9/10/2020 – The recent online tournaments led to a huge number of interesting endgames, and it is amazing how often the top players find the right moves in these endgames though they sometimes have only seconds left on the clock. Karsten Müller took a look at the endgame highlights from the Chessable Masters. Thorsten Cmiel helped him.

9/10/2020 – It is already September, the trees are slowly changing colour and the summer is coming to an end, as are our summer offers. This is the last chance to strike again, and to do so properly. Twelve DVDs by Daniel King will lighten up the coming months for every chess player. With over 50 hours of material on the subject of "Attack" and "Strategy", King discusses all the important chess motifs. Every serious chess player should have these classics in their collection. Our final offer once again promises the chance to win a signed DVD for every buyer of the bundle.

9/10/2020 – Modifying the existing rules for chess, attempting to make it more dynamic or decisive, is a non-trivial task: You need years of experience and large numbers of people playing new versions in order to assess the quality and appeal of any new variant. Former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik has proposed nine new variants, and DeepMind has used their AI technology to evaluate them in a much shorter period of time. Here are their findings.

9/7/2020 – During the final of the FIDE Online Olympiad between Russia and India, the internet connection was not always stable, which affected the outcome of some games. FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich intervened in a solomonic way and declared both teams, Russia and India, as winners of the event. At the semi-final between India and Armenia there had been similar problems but the verdict had been different, and Armenia withdrew under protest. In an open letter to FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich, Serzh Sargsyan, President of the Armenian Chess Federation, addresses the issue.

9/7/2020 – In the top match of the Spanish championship, tournament leader Ivan Salgado drew with David Anton. In the match of the pursuers Alexei Shirov defeated Salvador del Rio de Angelis and caught up to Salgado. They now share the lead with 6.0/7 each.

9/7/2020 – In a review published in Chess Life, John Watson looks at two titles that seek to reestablish the Benoni as an elite opening, Rustam Kasimdzhanov’s “The Benoni Is Back In Business” and John Doknjas’ “Opening Repertoire - The Modern Benoni”. According to the renowned American author, coach and critic, both authors “share a number of original novelties that are essential to making the case for the lines they are advocating”.

9/6/2020 – An eight-time Spanish Champion, Miguell Illescas has excelled as a chess player, theoretician, educator and promoter. Having defeated a number of chess superstars — Viktor Korchnoi, Artur Yusupov, Veselin Topalov and Judit Polgar, just to name a few — he surely had difficulties choosing his most memorable game. In the end, he went for a win obtained in 1999 at the Dos Hermanas Tournament — his rival was none other than the 12th world champion himself, Anatoly Karpov.

9/6/2020 – Star columnist Jon Speelman was asked to write about Mikhail Tal, and he happily obliged. Speelman points out that, had Misha Tal been alive today, he would certainly be playing blitz and bullet online, and adds, “He was able to play extremely strongly, even in a state in which the rest of us would have struggled to remain upright”. | Pictured: Tal analysing with Dutch IM Coen Zuidema in Wijk aan Zee 1973 | Photo: Dutch National Archive

9/6/2020 – In a chat with Times of India during the Online Olympiad, Samay Raina spoke on how the idea of YouTube streaming chess took shape during the lockdown this year, his dream of starting and Indian Chess League in the coming months and much more. “I had to find my own niche — something I really like which was chess. I never thought so many people will take to this and it all feels so surreal.”