10/25/2016 – It was a huge shock for the entire chess world when, on September 26th 2016 Mark Dvoretsky passed away at the age of 68 years. At the Candidates tournament, which were held in Moscow in March 2016, ChessBase editor Sagar Shah and his wife Amruta Mokal met Mark at his home in Tallinskaya. In an interview that lasted well over two hours you get to know a lot about the legend's personality. This is Dvoretsky's last in-depth interview which deals with his life as a player, trainer and an author. Mark is no more but his teachings live on.

10/25/2016 – Every week ChessBase magazine author and renowned endgame expert Karsten Müller presents a remarkable or particularly instructive endgame in his blog. A click on the diagram opens a larger board. Test your endgame skills, improve and have fun!

10/24/2016 – Held in St. Louis, Missouri, the 2016 SPICE Cup was held from Oct 17-22 with a strong and attractive field of players that included Le Quang Liem (2723 FIDE) as top seed, as well as a number of GMs and top US juniors such as Jeffery Xiong, Samuel Sevian, and more. The event saw a strong fight right to the end when Sevian and Robson were left equal first which was decided by a tiebreak game won by Sevian. Report, photos, and games.

10/24/2016 – Abhijeet Gupta won the 2016 Hoogeveen Open after scoring a comfortable 7.5/9. Lalith Babu, who had been leading with Gupta after seven rounds suffered an unfortunate accident to end on the third spot. Sandipan Chanda jumped in with a strong finish to take the runners up position. Lucas van Foreest performed excellently and ended on the fifth spot. The matches saw vistories by both Short and Sokolov respectively. We have pictures, tactics, stories and much more – in our final report from the Hoogeveen Festival 2016.

10/23/2016 – … in the Women’s event at least. The men’s competition is now led by six players out of twelve on plus one after a full seven rounds with a massive 76% draws. It is milkmaid chess at its best. The women on the other hand have shown who is wearing the pants in the event as they go all-out at each other every round setting an example of combativeness. Nevertheless, it hasn't all been the chess equivalent of watching paint dry as there has also been a fair share of fascinating positions.

10/22/2016 – The recently finished Isle of Man tournament was one more piece of evidence of how much the professional chess landscape has changed. No longer can one describe Opens as events a top player will shun, and the Isle of Man was one of those 'super' opens where one might find the world's elite playing just a table or two away, toiling at the board no different than the rest of us. Bringing us this retrospective is Alina L'Ami with her photos and comments.

10/21/2016 – He calls it "one of the most romantic of all openings", one you can play with white when you go 1.e4. Savielly Tartakower said that this attacking opening was invented to make men understand that chess is a gift from the gods. You cannot get higher praise than that. Or a better teacher than GM Simon Williams, whose aggressive style has brought down a number of top-class opponents (like Carlsen and Gelfand). His latest DVD has 4½ hours of gripping video.

10/21/2016 – A traditional chess tournament in Netherlands has 81 players competing in the Open section. Thirteen of them are Indians, and aftere seven rounds seven of these Indians are sitting pretty on top-ten. GMs Abhijeet Gupta and Lalith Babu are both performing remarkably at over 2800, and lead the remaining field by at least one point. We have beautiful pictures and remarkable positions from the games – with some tactics for you to solve.

10/21/2016 – Tactics can seem deceptively simple, particularly when seeing an engine analysing grandmaster games. Strange, however, how difficult it is to find the right move and to calculate variations properly when playing yourself. It is easier if you solve tactical puzzles regularly. In the ChessBase Magazine and his tactics column Oliver Reeh helps you to do so.

10/20/2016 – 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ is known as the Jerome Gambit, a wacky, completely unsound invention of a US Civil War veteran in the 19th century. Morbid curiosity led Rick Kennedy to do a lot of historical research and in fact start a Jerome Gambit blog on the opening, which currently has over 2,300 posts. He submitted two games to our Agony and Ecstasy columnist, who presents Rick's analysis while dropping in the odd note of sanity.

10/20/2016 – Two decisive games in the matches of Hoogeveen, one involving a technical king walk from a Catalan and the other a total demolition by Sokolov against Van Foreest's King's Indian. Yifan really suffered straight from the opening when her novelty left her in an inferior position, and Short's technique was simpy great. In the Open section the Indian domination simply continues.

10/19/2016 – No, it's not a typo! Background: there is vigorous chess activity in New York's Washington State Park, and plenty of hustling going on there. Sometimes, though, someone turns up who is really, really strong. And then the hustlers get owned, as in a video shot in 2010 that recently went viral: World Champion Magnus Carlsen took a detour to the park, watched his manager get "crushed" and then, with Liv Tyler watching, proceeded to restore the honour of Norwegian chess.