A better Kim vs. Trump 'Endgame'

10/3/2017 – Ten days ago we proposed a contest to "fix" the cover of New Scientist magazine's September 23rd issue, which featured a fictitious illustration of President Trump squaring off against North Korea's Kim Jong Un, in what was dubbed 'Endgame'. The position was nonsensical. Of the many creative suggestions, here are our favourites. | Illustration: Robert Carter (crackedhat.com)

Join the Negros International Open in Bacolod

10/2/2017 – Have you heard of the City of Smiles? When a crippling economic depression hits your region, how do you recover? Would you just cry for aid or would you start a tradition called the Masskara festival to rouse the masses? When GM Srinath Narayanan was invited to Bacolod to take part in the Negros International Open, he felt inspired by the spirit of the Negrenses and decided he had to pay this wonderful place a visit. Read on to find out more!

Four knights vs queen challenge

10/2/2017 – Inspired by the image of endgame expert Alexey Troitzky sitting in a Siberian forest, analyzing night after night whether king plus four knights can always beat king plus queen, Prof Azlan Iqbal set his AI composer Chesthetica on finding a nice 4N-Q chess problem. It took his program a week, and the result was deemed not aesthetically perfect. So we issued a challenge to our readers: come up with a better problem of four knights vs queen. Here are the results.

Magnus Carlsen wins Isle of Man Open

10/2/2017 – It was a much awaited return to form for Magnus Carlsen, who dominated the Chess.com Isle of Man Open from start to finish, defeating his nearest challengers one after the other. His final game against Hikaru Nakamura was expected to be a quick draw, and it was. Among the challengers who might join Nakamura for a share of second was none other than Vishy Anand who played a superb game to beat Hou Yifan in the last round. | Photo: John Saunders

October 2017 FIDE ratings: Levon Aronian strikes again

10/1/2017 – 2017 has been literally the Year of the Levon, with an amazing series of major wins, now culminating in the second World Cup title, guaranteeing him a place in the next Candidates tournament. Perhaps one of the most noteworthy things is a change in the balance of power, since now the Top 20 contains four Russian players... and four Chinese players, the oldest being 28. Enjoy this report on the latest lists and results. | Photo: Amruta Mokal

The Kovalyov Report

10/1/2017 – The organisers of the FIDE World Cup 2017 invited a local freelance journalist named Ioseb Qipshidze to look into the circumstances surrounding the abrupt departure of Canadian GM Anton Kovalyov at the start of the third round, and shared his reporting with ChessBase. We publish the key portions of it and link to the full version. Although Qipshidze did not reach Kovalyov himself for comment, we did, and will include his response in an editorial postscript to follow shortly. | Photos: Amruta Mokal / ChessBase India (except where noted)
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Isle of Man: Round 9

10/1/2017 – Magnus Carlsen has only one obstacle between him and his first tournament victory in over a year: Hikaru Nakamura. Carlsen's a clear favourite with white and a half point edge in Isle of Man. His eighth round win over Caruana, with the black pieces was extremely impressive, and he has only lost a classical game to Nakamura (with any colour) once (in Bilbao, 2016)! Hou Yifan, since taking a bye in round 5 has one three in a row and faces Anand on board 2! Watch games from the ninth and final round live... | Photos: Alina l'Ami
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Isle of Man Open: Magnus Carlsen beats Fabiano Caruana

10/1/2017 – It was a much awaited clash, as Magnus Carlsen faced Fabiano Caruana in round eight of the Chess.com Isle of Man Open on the top board. Caruana unleashed the novelty, but then got cold feet and was soon swept away by the Carlsen tsunami. Hikaru Nakamura dispatched Emil Sutovsky and set up a final duel with the World Champion for gold. Hou Yifan scored her third straight win over GMs and is now tied for third. | Photo: Chess.com / Maria Emelianova

Who is Ding Liren?

9/30/2017 – World Cup runner-up, Ding Liren, the chess player, is well known to everyone. But what about Ding Liren the person. Not much is known about his personal life, his education, his likes, dislikes, hobbies, his girlfriend, daily routine, future aims and so on. It was with the aim to fill this void that IM Sagar Shah met with Ding after his World Cup 2017 journey and interviewed him. The answers of Chinese player show you the kind of person he is. To put it succinctly: his feet are firmly secured to the ground, but his mind thinks big and he aims high — very high! | Photo: Ding Liren's archives

Isle of Man Open: Nothing is written

9/30/2017 – With so many great players, it is little wonder the tournament has had so many great clashes, and rounds six and seven were that in the spades. The sole leader is now Magnus Carlsen, after smashing Pavel Eljanov in round six, but only by the thinnest of margins, and will meet Fabiano Caruana in round eight. After Hou Yifan returned to action, she scored two convincing wins. Enjoy this report plush with GM analysis and great photos! | Analysis: Elshan Moradiabadi; Photo: Chess.com / Maria Emelianova

Blindfold chess poetry

9/29/2017 – Yes, it's a real thing! Yesterday was National Poetry Day, an annual celebration of poetry in the United Kingdom, and it reminded us of a unusual chess connection involving Jennifer Shahade playing blindfold while a computer "ChessBard" generated live poetry based on the moves played. Shahade has pioneered events combining chess and art, and annotated games for the book Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Chess. A new book on Duchamp, coming out next week, is a collection of his games as reimagined by the "ChessBard". You can compose your own works of art on chesspoetry.com. | Photo: Tony Yueh

A new computer? Move with ChessBase!

9/29/2017 – When you finally bought a new computer you probably would love to immediately install ChessBase and Fritz to test the new machine. But you should take care to deactivate your ChessBase programs and Fritztrainers on your old computer. This helps to let the programs run smoothly on the new system. Here's how to go about it.
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Tune your tactics - Checkmate against 0-0-0

9/29/2017 – A solid tactical understanding is sure to help any chess player in critical situations. Whether it is a simple exchange or a mating attack, tactics are ubiquitous. Take advantage of the opportunity to develop your tactical understanding in this series with IM Oliver Reeh and Pascal Simon! Friday at 3.30 pm CEST it's all about checkmate against 0-0-0!

Hugh Hefner, Playboy, and Chess

9/29/2017 – It might seem odd to write a tribute to Hugh Hefner, founder of the legendary Playboy magazine, who died now at the ripe age of 91. However, in its own way, Playboy magazine has had a significant impact on chess and some of its big names. Famed chess figures to mark their presence are Bobby Fischer, Garry Kasparov, Veselin Topalov, and even Judit Polgar. | Photo: Jeff Rayner / Mirror.co.uk

Hedgehog evergreen

9/29/2017 – Following 24.e5 Bc5+ 25.Kh1 in the diagram, the draught in White's king position becomes a hurricane. Black wins on the spot. Can you see how — or maybe even remember this spectacular game played 25 years ago?

Meier shows class at Fall Classic

9/29/2017 – German GM Georg Meier narrowly won the A-group of the latest invitational tournament hosted by the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis. The tournament brought together 20 GMs and IMs in two sections. In the B-group GM Josh Friedel secured tournament victory with an impressive 6½/9 score. Grandmaster Ruifeng Li was there, and sends his account of the round-by-round action. | Photos: Austin Fuller, CCSCSL

The Power Play Show

9/28/2017 – Thursday at 8pm UK time Daniel King will go on air on playchess.com. You can watch the episode live for free. Daniel King will focus on the Chess.com Isle of Man International which is going on right now. Danny will take a look at Magnus Carlsen's games. Puzzle and the live video...

Isle of Man: The show must go on

9/28/2017 – Through rain and snow.. or in this case controversy or duress, the competition proceeded, with few big surprises. Magnus Carlsen overcame Granda Zuniga as expected, and Fabiano Caruana also scored well. Meeting Carlsen next will be Pavel Eljanov, who defeated Rustam Kasimdzhanov and is the only other player with 4½/5. | Photo: Maria Emelianova / Chess.com

Investigating Hou's pairings

9/28/2017 – There is a bit of déjà vu in the current controversy surrounding Hou Yifan's pairings Isle of Man. Readers will recall how Hou resigned her last round game in the Tradewise Gibraltar Masters after just five moves to protest what she felt had been manipulated pairings against women in seven out of nine rounds. Four rounds paired against women in the Chess.com Isle of Man International, was unnerving enough to lead her to take a fifth round bye. To set everyone's mind at ease, we investigated and share the results. | Photo: John Saunders, Gibraltar 2017

World Cup 2017 Final, Tiebreak: Round-up show

9/28/2017 – Every evening at 9 pm CEST we offer you a round-up show of the games played at the World Cup in Tbilisi. Yesterday Daniel King showed the highlights of the tiebreak between Ding Liren and Levon Aronian. Aronian did win the World Cup for the second time in his life. Have a look here...

12 years later: Aronian wins the FIDE World Cup again!

9/28/2017 – Levon Aronian became the first person in the history of the game to twice win the 128 player knock-out World Cup. After the four classical games ended in draws, the action shifted to tiebreaks. Aronian was able to win both the 25'+ 10" rapids and thus clinched the World Cup title. The closing ceremony was held a few hours after the game was over. We have analysis of both the encounters, pictures from the games and closing ceremony and a huge list of videos that you can watch and feel as if you are in Tbilisi. | Photo: Amruta Mokal.

FIDE World Cup Final: Aronian wins tiebreak! (Express report)

9/27/2017 – After four draws in Classical games, we are now down to the tiebreaks. It's going to be two games of 25+10 followed by 10+10 if required, and then 5+3 and finally armaggedon. Games kick off at 13:00 CEST (7:00 AM EST) with live commentary from Tbilisi by GMs Evgeny Miroshnichenko and WGM Keti Tsatsalashvili and live updates by our reporters Sagar Shah and Amruta Mokal.
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CHESS Magazine: Forgetting our Intention

9/27/2017 – The practical point of this article is to minimise certain errors. Standard chess mistakes usually occur when a player misses a move or moves available to his adversary. FIDE Master Amatzia Avni, a psychologist by profession, focuses on mistakes that occur when you play a move without going back and rehearsing prior calculations and previous conclusions. Like Pal Benko in the 1962 Curacao Candidates, when he missed a clean draw against none other than Bobby Fischer when he forgot his original plan.

Hou mystified by pairings, sits out round five

9/27/2017 – Since round four ended with the four leaders drawing their respective games, now seven share first with 3.5/4, from Magnus Carlsen to Alexander Lenderman. Hou Yifan, who faced her fourth consecutive female opponent, requested a half point bye in round 5, but contrary to rumour has no intention to withdraw for now. | Analysis by GM Elshan Moradiabadi; Photo: Alina L'Ami