2/25/2020 – Über-talent Nihal Sarin (and his coach) trains with GM Karsten Mueller in Hamburg, and you can too! On-demand for ChessBase account holders (but free this week!). Don't have an account yet? You can register a free 90-day account to watch!

2/25/2020 – Usually, the rook endgame with f- and h-pawn is a draw but the side with the pawns has good chances to win when the defending king is cut off on its back rank.

2/25/2020 – Dutch grandmaster Jan Werle returns to Hamburg, and joins Karsten in the ChessBase Studio. Live at 14:00 UTC (15:00 CET; 9:00 AM EST) and on-demand for ChessBase account holders. Don't have an account yet? You can register a free 90-day account to watch!

2/25/2020 – Rauf Mamedov is alone atop the standings of the annual Aeroflot Open after six rounds. In round five, Mamedov defeated 12-year-old Indian IM Bharath Subramaniyamin, who came from defeating three strong grandmasters in the first four rounds. Sanan Sjugirov, Mustafa Yilmaz and Manuel Petrosyan are sharing second place, half a point behind Mamedov. | Photo: Boris Dolmatovsky

2/24/2020 – The annual Bunratty Chess Festival was held for the 27th time over the weekend, at the Bunratty Castle Hotel in western Ireland, and ended with GM Nigel Short as the winner of the Masters. The top seed finished undefeated with two draws for a final tally of 5.0/6. GERRY GRAHAM is the tournament director and sent his post-tournament reflections.

2/24/2020 – A subplot of the recent Women's World Championship in Shanghai and Vladivostok was the plight of accomplished arbiter Shohreh Bayat from Iran. She was the target of political and religiously-motivated media critiques in her home country when she was photographed, while working as the chief arbiter in Shanghai, wearing a loose-fitting hijab — too loose for conservative observers in the Islamic Republic. That led her to fear for her safety and forgo her return ticket home in favour of a detour to the U.K. In a tearful interview, she recently recounted her story for the BBC.

2/23/2020 – Traps, tricks, pattern recognition, all in one FritzTrainer! And of course a deeper understanding of the London system! Finding the right ideas for each position starts with knowledge of the typical tactical patterns. But equally important is to anticipate Black's plans and be able to neutralize them! DAVIDE NASTASIO takes a first look at a FritzTrainer on his iPad!

2/23/2020 – Just under twenty-three years ago Garry Kasparov made history by losing a match against a computer named Deep Blue. Today smartphones are capable of running chess engines as powerful as IBM's giant mainframe in 1997. More significantly, thanks to recent progress in artificial intelligence, machines are learning and exploring the game for themselves. So what does the legendary World Champion think about the progress of AI in chess, and its effect on humanity in general? He told Wired Magazine that he has made his peace with AI.

2/22/2020 – Creating a good and reliable opening repertoire is a difficult task. Fritz 17 offers an alternative: premade opening repertoires, on four levels, from "Easy" to "Professional". All of them are solid repertoires that have stood the test of practice and will give you a good (though not necessarily better) position after the opening.

2/22/2020 – After an exciting final round in which two key encounters finished decisively, five players ended up tied in first place on 5 out of 9. Vidit and Alireza Firouzja had the best tiebreak scores and decided the championship in a blitz playoff. 16-year-old Firouzja won both quick-play encounters to take the title. Jorden van Foreest got clear first place in the Challengers and qualified to next year's main event. | Photo: Vladimir Jagr

2/21/2020 – Here's an opportunity to support chess research. Tom Koolen bills himself as an "interdisciplinary data scientist" and a chess player, who's attempting to get a research project off the ground using the crowdfunding platform GoFundMe. Commentator WIM Fiona Steil-Antoni has promoted the project on social media. | Photo: Michal Vrba on Unsplash

2/21/2020 – The Power Play Show returns live this week. Grandmaster Daniel King looks back to a couple of games from Wang hao. Power Play is live most Fridays at 17:00 UTC (18:00 CET, Noon EST) on playchess.com. You can watch the episode live for free! All the usual puzzles, games and instruction will be on offer. Puzzle and the live video...