9/13/2017 – Checking in on World Championship candidates qualification, the twists and turns that have already occurred and are still to come as the drama mounts and the pool of players shrinks. For many potential candidates the World Cup is the only possible route to qualification, but some have multiple paths to follow. Will Mamedyarov and Caruana stay on track despite being eliminated from the World Cup? Who else can join Sergey Karjakin to attempt to overthrow Magnus Carlsen next year? | Player drawings: WorldChess.com/ratings

9/13/2017 – The pre-quarter finals of the World Cup 2017 began with a bang. Vassily Ivanchuk managed to beat super solid Anish Giri and Vladimir Fedoseev showed some fine calcuation to sacrifice two pieces before mating his opponent's king. The other six games ended in draws. The playing hall was now changed to much smaller place. But players didn't really seem to have any issues with it. We have the round four, game one report with anecdotes, and more importantly pictures and videos by Amruta Mokal.

9/12/2017 – Round three tiebreaks saw great excitement. Evgeniy Najer scored the biggest upset of the day, by knocking out Fabiano Caruana. Ian Nepomniachtchi and Li Chao were two more elite players who were sent back home by Baadur Jobava and Richard Rapport respectively. As we enter the round of sixteen, one can clearly see how the tournament is shaping up. The upper half is filled with super-strong players, while in the bottom half Wesley So is the clear favourite to keep advancing. Tiebreak report filled with pictures, videos and more. | Photos: Amruta Mokal

9/12/2017 – If they are in harmony, rook and knight can be quite powerful and have saved or won a lot of games. But they have to be in harmony.

9/12/2017 – "She has never really worked extremely hard," said Vladimir Kramnik, "and, of course, that's a big compliment — never working like the professional male top players and yet achieving so much." Chinese GM Hou Yifan, the greatest female talent in chess today, wants her life to be to be "rich and colorful, not narrow." In 2012 she enrolled in Peking University, and is now scheduled to do a course at the University of Chicago. Read all about her in this extensive ESPN article.

9/12/2017 – The Tactics app in the ChessBase Account suite is a wonderful tool that allows one to work on tactics and calculation skill while having it adapt the difficulty to the player. The snag is when you are sure you have the solution, but are told it is wrong. In this tutorial, you will learn how to have the engine analyse your wrong moves, to learn why they failed.

9/11/2017 – Every evening (CEST) we offer you a round-up show of the games played at the World Cup in Tbilisi. IM Lawrence Trent showed the elimination round 3, game 2 and Monday's tiebreak. Have a look...

9/11/2017 – In this Simon Says we take look at some of the most beautiful and interesting positions that Simon has recently come across. Watch live from 18:00 CEST (12 Noon EDT):

9/11/2017 – Magnus Carlsen made the bold decision to play in this unpredictable knock out format of the World Cup, and on Sunday he was eliminated by world number 35 Bu Xiangzhi of China. Along with Magnus, also Kramnik and Nakamura have had to book their return tickets. Out of the top ten players in the world that were playing at this event, only one has qualified to round four. Five have been knocked out and four will play the tiebreaks. We have a huge round three, game two, report from Tbilisi. | Photos: Amruta Mokal

9/10/2017 – Dresden has become a hotbed of chess activity. This year the East German city hosted the World Chess Solving Championship, which has grown from 18 participants in its inaugural event 40 years ago to 89 solvers in this year. John Nunn, who has been an avid and successful competitor in the past, took a number of medals in Dresden, and sent us an interesting report, with selected problems for you to solve. | Photos: Franziska Iseli

9/10/2017 – Round three of the World Cup 2017 witnessed the biggest upset of the tournament — World Champion Magnus Carlsen was outplayed and defeated by China's Bu Xiangzhi. Carlsen's task of making a comeback is further complicated by the fact that he will be black on September 10th. Bu would require only a draw to make it to the next round. In the other results of the day, Wesley So managed to beat Francesco Vallejo Pons and Levon Aronian showed some of his class to get the better of Maxim Matlakov. We have analysis of all three of these encounters, plus some interesting posts about the "shorts incident" involving Anton Kovalyov. | Photos: Amruta Mokal

9/9/2017 – While watching yesterday's tiebreaks of the World Cup, my attention got caught by an endgame played between Richard Rapport and Wei Yi. With impressive ease, Rapport showed an exciting winning plan in a typical scenario "Rook vs Bishop". I consulted my (admittedly rarely used) copy of Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual and look at this: Rapport's plan was already shown in a game, coincidentally played in Tbilisi, 46 years ago! | Photo: Georgios Souleidis