2/21/2017 – To be a piece up is nice. Usually. However, in the endgame you have to take care to keep enough pawns on the board that can queen and mate your opponent. In his endgame blog Karsten Müller shows how this is done.

2/21/2017 – Dorsa Derakhshani is a talented teenaged chessplayer residing in Spain, originally from Tehran, Iran. She is only the second female in Iran's chess history to have become an international master. Her younger sibling Borna Derakhshani is a talented lad of fifteen and has a good career ahead of him. Imagine their surprise when they were informed by Dorsa's friends that she and her younger brother had been 'banned' by the Iranian Chess Federation!

2/20/2017 – Although round three saw the vast majority of the games end in draws, the wild battle between Hikaru Nakamura and Richard Rapport left few doubts any such thing would happen to their game. After a QGD Chigorin, Rapport castled queenside, and the gloves were off! MVL continues sole leader. Illustrated report with analysis by Alex Yermolinsky.

2/20/2017 – With half of the matches going into the tie-break, the world championship saw another exciting, although slightly less dramatic, match-ups. however, the trend clearly favoured the higher rated players, who dominated their respective strong opponents. There were moments of great play and lapses worthy of mentioning. Joining Muzychuk, Stefanova, Dzagnidze, and Shiqun are four others. Here is the illustrated report with GM analysis.

2/20/2017 – Michael Jones, 30, is an English language teacher who has traveled the world, playing chess everywhere, "from the balcony of a youth hostel in Frankfurt and a thermal bath in Budapest, to a park in Kutaisi, Georgia, and a bazaar in Kyrgyzstan." Now back in the UK he plays for Stafford and has sent in two deeply annotated games: in one he got checkmated after blundering against a standard sacrifice; and in another he triumphed with a truly outrageous swindle.

2/20/2017 – The Frenchman Vachier-Lagrave showed superb form as he completely outclassed Rapport with black to score a second win. Yesterday's loser Ding Liren bounced back with a win over Saleh Salem, while Mamedyarov was the third winner of the day, defeating Tomashevsky in 37 moves. Full report with analysis by Tiger Hillarp-Persson.

2/20/2017 – It was the first super tournament of his life. B. Adhiban started as the last seed at the Tata Steel Masters 2017. Not much was expected from him. But he shocked the chess world with a performance of 2812 and finishing third behind So and Carlsen! We go in touch with Adhiban and spoke to him about his tournament, mind set, expectations, and last but not the least, his crazy opening choices.

2/19/2017 – Six out of eight games drawn, mostly in a peaceful manner. Among these draws, there were two that actually went very well in black’s favor until the players on the black side decided to call it a day and conceded a draw. All said and done, four players qualified for the Quarterfinals while the remaining eight will fight in the tiebreakers. Illustrated report.

2/19/2017 – It promised to bring levels of excitement and dynamism, and the new format did not disappoint. Three games ended in decisive results, with one hardly a surprise: Ding Liren - Rapport. The game was a mess as expected, and both players sopught to show who was the wilder of the bunch. Adams defeated Salem after he produced super piece centralization, and strangled his rival. Finally, MVL outplayed Li Chao in an endgame to score. Full report with analysis by GM Alex Yermolinsky.

2/18/2017 – The third round of Women's World Championship in Tehran saw a rather peaceful day in which ladies at the office tried to play cautiously. With five out of eight games drawn, and some of them being dull and uneventful, three players scored to go to the next round with high hopes. The pervasive theme of these three games was the fact that the winners played the whole game by the book and did not try to do anything eccentric but to execute the known plans of their respective positions, step by step. Here is the illustrated report with GM analysis.

2/18/2017 – The new FIDE Grand Prix cycle is about to start, and the first event will take place in Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates at the Sharjah Cultural and Chess Club, the world’s largest chess club. There are four events in all, but innovating on the previous system of a series of round-robins, this time 24 players in all will participate with 18 in each event playing a nine-round Swiss. Here is all the Opening Ceremony report with all the info.

2/17/2017 – The common theme in the tie-break games of the second round was as follows: the experienced players managed to keep calm, play the board, and with consistent play, they took their chances and scored in the most crucial moments. After all, in such a win-or-die format, one has to have the stomach and gut for such a nerve-wracking job in order to win. In addition, two thrilling Armageddons would tell us enough. decided in overtime. Here is the report with photos and GM analysis.