10/30/2025 – What makes a chess club feel like home? The Saint Louis Chess Club shows that it's the people, the stories and the shared love for the game. They form the heart and soul of this legendary chess club. From world champions to beginners, everyone is welcome at this place, which is driven by a community of passionate chess lovers. Recently, the club hosted the Clutch Chess Legends 2025, where two icons, Garry Kasparov and Viswanathan Anand, faced each other once again. In the middle of all the action, IM Sagar Shah interviewed the person behind this beloved chess club, Rex Sinquefield, the visionary whose dream turned Saint Louis into the chess capital of the world.

10/30/2025 – Budva is all about chess as the 2025 European Youth Chess Championship gets underway. The best young players from across Europe have gathered in the Montenegrin coastal town to compete in twelve age groups, from U8 to U18, with separate competitions for boys and girls, to determine their European champions. The tournament is being played with a classical time limit, with each player having 90 minutes thinking time, plus an additional 30 seconds per move. | Photos: Mark Livshitz

10/30/2025 – Magnus Carlsen secured overall victory at the Clutch Chess: Champions Showdown in Saint Louis with two games to spare, finishing on 25½ points after winning four consecutive games on the final day. Fabiano Caruana, coming from his US Championship triumph, took second place on 16½ points, while Hikaru Nakamura finished third with 14. Gukesh Dommaraju, who had led after day one, ended in fourth on 10 points ahead of the upcoming FIDE World Cup. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

10/30/2025 – GM Surya Ganguly’s Calculation Training – Part 2 takes players beyond the structured basics of the first course (forcing moves, elimination, short calculation, visualization, and comparison) into a more complex, tournament-like environment. The lessons mix attack, defense, long calculation, imagination, and unusual tactical patterns, forcing students to think without hints and develop practical decision-making under pressure. Ganguly also emphasizes psychology and mindset, sharing his own instructive experiences against elite players like Morozevich and Nigel Short - moments of missed tactics, emotional struggle, and recovery. The goal is to help players train calculation depth, accuracy, and resilience as if playing real tournament games.

10/29/2025 – Wijk aan Zee is set to welcome the chess world once again as the 88th Tata Steel Chess Tournament takes place from 16 January to 1 February 2026. Known as the 'Wimbledon of Chess', the event boasts its youngest lineups to date, with four top-10 players and a 23-year average age. Rising stars, established elite competitors and a passionate local community promise a thrilling and vibrant edition by the Dutch coast. | Photo: Official website

10/29/2025 – Clutch Chess: Champions Showdown is a high-profile rapid tournament gathering four elite competitors. Reigning world champion Gukesh Dommaraju joins Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana in a concentrated three-day battle. The competition runs from 27 to 29 October and follows a "clutch" structure of three double round-robins, where results become progressively more valuable with each round-robin. | Follow the action live starting at 18.00 CEST (13.00 ET, 22.30 IST)

10/29/2025 – In Saint Louis, Fabiano Caruana has just won the U.S. Championship for the fourth time in a row and is currently playing in the Clutch Chess Champions Showdown. Sagar Shah from ChessBase India is also in Saint Louis to cover the event and took the opportunity to interview Caruana. In their conversation, Caruana spoke about the Clutch Chess Champions Showdown and the 2014 Sinquefield Cup, and also shared fond memories of Daniel Naroditsky. | Picture: Video screenshot

10/29/2025 – Magnus Carlsen took the sole lead after day two of the Clutch Chess: Champions Showdown in Saint Louis, reaching 11½ points following four wins from six games - despite expressing dissatisfaction with his play. Fabiano Caruana climbed from last place to second on 10½ points by scoring 9 points across the day, while Hikaru Nakamura and Gukesh Dommaraju slipped to joint last on 7. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

10/29/2025 – In this second October Monthly Dragon, Chris Ward let Arne pick two games. Game 1 (Yugoslav, Chinese variation) shows classic opposite-wing play, while Game 2 (Yugoslav, with g3) is a model Dragon win. The episode highlights practical Dragon themes—pawn sacs on the queen side, neutralizing Bh6 ideas, pinned-knight motifs on d5, and the power of coordinated rooks and queen on the b-file. | Photo: John Upham

10/29/2025 – The 33rd FIDE World Senior Championships are underway in Gallipoli, Italy, with a record 467 participants competing across four age-group categories. After seven rounds, the standings remain tightly contested, particularly in the largest section, the 65+ Open. Leading figures such as Victor Mikhalevski and Ketevan Arakhamia-Grant currently top their respective groups, but with four rounds still to play, the battle for the senior world titles remains wide open. | Photos: FIDE

10/28/2025 – We take a unique behind-the-scenes look at how top chess masters organize their digital workspace. Grandmasters and trainers like Svitlana Demchenko, Robert Ris, Michael Prusikin, Harald Schneider-Zinner, Frederik Svane, Felix Blohberger, and Dorian Rogozenco share their screens to reveal their personal ChessBase 18 setups — from meticulously clean desktops to chaotic databases full of ideas. They show us their board designs, current projects, and discuss their favourite or most-used ChessBase functions, offering fascinating insights into how great minds prepare, study, and work with chess every day.

10/28/2025 – Some days ago, we presented the tough and complex battle that ensued between Emanuel Lasker and Mikhail Ivanovich Chigorin. In a semi-endgame the young German world champion held the pair of bishops, but it was the Russian forefighter with the pair of knights who emerged victorious in the end. The game has been the subject of controversy for 130 years, so we asked readers five questions about critical positions to shed some more light on it.