3/3/2020 – The Candidates Tournament 2020 will begin on March 17th and surely is one of the highlights of the chess year 2020. Until April 3rd, eight of the best players in the world will fight for the right to challenge Magnus Carlsen for the world title. To get into the mood for the tournament which will take place in Yekaterinburg, the fourth-largest city in Russia, Daniel King introduces all eight participants in his Power Play Show on YouTube. So far King has made portraits of four candidates, four more will follow, each with an introduction to the player and typical and beautiful games.

3/3/2020 – Mating attacks also occur in the endgame. Here's an example with king and queen cooperating well.

3/3/2020 – The third leg of the Women's Grand Prix 2019/20 kicked off with draws on all six boards at the Mövenpick Hotel in Lausanne. World champion Ju Wenjun played Black against Zhao Xue's replacement, Zhansaya Abdumalik, while her latest challenger, Aleksandra Goryachkina, could not take advantage of the slim edge she got against Alina Kashlinskaya. Goryachkina will get a second White in a row on Tuesday. | Photo: Official website

3/2/2020 – Top seed Dimitri Reinderman got clear first place at the 12th edition of the Café Batavia Chess Tournament in Amsterdam. The Dutchman won seven, lost one and drew one to finish a full point ahead of Polish GM Tomasz Warakomski on 7½ out of 9. Third place went to Aljoscha Feuerstack from Germany. Fighting chess was the rule at the single round robin. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

3/2/2020 – The third Grand Prix tournament for women starts today in Lausanne, Switzerland. The top seeds are World Champion Ju Wenjun and Aleksandra Goryachkina (pictured). Live games and commentary by Mikhail Gurevich and Keti Tsatsalashvili from 14:00 UTC (15:00 CET, 9:00 AM EST) | Photos: FIDE

3/2/2020 – Do you often encounter unnecessary mishaps in your tournament games? Do you sometimes panic, are you are sometimes too relaxed, over-confident in an endgame that needs special attention? There are research organizations developing AI systems to track and record human emotions – recently we came across one such initiative that is applying this to chess. Initial experiments with 2700 GMs are showing great promise. Maybe this will soon be one of your standard training tools?

3/1/2020 – This Agony and Ecstasy features some English games from an experienced club player from Wales, which GM JON SPEELMAN gives his usual pedagogic attention. As a bonus, Jon recorded a video version of his analysis. | Send in your own games! | Jon welcomes submissions from readers. If your games are selected for the Agony column, not only will you get free detailed commentary of your games by one of chess’s great authors and instructors, and former world no. 4 player, but you also win a free three-month ChessBase Premium Account!

3/1/2020 – With the 2020 Candidates looming, there were few tournaments held in February to attract the world's top grandmasters, with two notable exceptions in Prague and Saint Louis. Alireze Firouzja (pictured) was the winner at the Prague Masters and Humpy Koneru took the second annual Cairns Cup. Gibraltar was also rated in February and provides the only change to the top 10: Maxime Vachier-Lagrave notched up one spot back to number eight, while Shakhriyar Mamedyarov slips to the tenth position after withdrawing prematurely due to illness. | Photo: Vladimir Jagr

3/1/2020 – There will be plenty of action to keep chess enthusiasts entertained in March. The month will kick off with the third leg of the Women's Grand Prix in Lausanne, and four days after that event comes to an end the long-awaited Candidates Tournament will begin in Yekaterinburg. Team tournaments (Nutcracker and Senior Teams), strong opens (HD Bank and Dubai) and a couple of invitational events in Saint Louis will serve as first-rate complements. | You'll find all of these events and more covered in our live games broadcast area Live.ChessBase.com and we'll also be providing News coverage.

2/29/2020 – This Study of the Month column concentrates on the “Maestro of Practical Studies” (as he is called by Sergey N. Tkachenko), Tigran B. Gorgiev. SIEGFRIED HORNECKER takes you on a tour of the life of this microbiologist and composer, whose beautiful studies are described as "a perpetual adornment to the treasury of world composition.”

2/29/2020 – During the 90th FIDE Congress in Abu Dhabi, the President of the Federation Arkady Dvorkovich mentioned that this year's World Championship match will almost certainly take place in Dubai as part of the 2020 World Expo, clarifying that this is not yet a formal announcement. Dvorkovich also hinted that the match might be delayed until the end of December in order to better fit within the Expo's schedule. | Photo: Ahlawe, via Wikimedia Commons

2/29/2020 – CM Alex Averbukh of Japan, scored a perfect 5.0/5 to win Tachikawa Chess Open 2020. He finished a full point ahead of the competition. Wang Hao was on hand to give the winner his trophy (pictured)! Four players finished at 4.0/5. Koji Noguchi and top seed Atsuhiko Kobayashi secured second and third place respectively according to their tie-break score. The tournament was organized by Tachikawa Chess Club at two different venues in Tokyo, Japan on February 8th and 9th, 2020. Two rounds were played at Hamamatsucho on the first day and on second day the final three rounds were played in Tachikawa. Photos and Tournament report by one of the participants, Seiji Nakagawa.