3/10/2009 – The opening ceremony of the Is Bank Atatürk FIDE Women Masters in Turkey featured reigning Women's World Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk and Turkish media mogul Ahmet Çalik as special guests. After three rounds there are four players in the lead, with 2.5/3 points each. Top seeds Humpy and Hou Yifan, followed by Zhao Xue and IM Martha Fierro from Ecuador. Big pictorial report.

3/9/2009 – In our last column we began with a look at the "Annotation" tab of the Search mask in both ChessBase and Fritz. Our series on annotation searches continues in the new ChessBase Workshop. We'll discover how to find games with multimedia content as well as various other annotation forms. Find out more in the new Workshop.

3/8/2009 – For the ambitious chess player a well maintained and continually up-to-date database is a must. The foundations for this can be laid once a year with the Mega or Big Database. But the 2009 edition also allows you to remain up-to-date. For the first time ever, users of ChessBase 10 can have access to a regular online update for the reference database for the whole of the year 2009 included. Week by week you can automatically download to your reference database approximately 5000 games which are not yet in Mega or Big. Of course they will be of the usual ChessBase quality standard, i.e. with edited player and tournament names, as well as Elo ratings and where appropriate team names.
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3/7/2009 – Between the rounds of the Super-GM in Linares there are free days. The evening before a break is a great time to take dinner with even the most intense players; and on the free day itself there are usually outings and social gatherings for the journalists. Here's what we did on the last free day, together with pictures of pretty girls and some more-or-less harrowing tales around the tournament.

3/7/2009 – All four games of the last round were drawn, leaving two players at the top of the final table: Vassily Ivanchuk, who first won Linares 18 years ago, and Russian GM Alexander Grischuk. Both have plus two (8.0/14), but Grischuk has three wins to Ivanchuk's two. Third is Magnus Carlsen, fourth World Champion Vishy Anand. Pictorial report.

3/7/2009 – The Search mask in both ChessBase and Fritz is a handy and versatile tool for locating games in a database. In the new ChessBase Workshop we examine using the Search mask to find deleted games, games which start from non-standard positions, and those containing critical position annotations. Learn more in the new Workshop.

3/6/2009 – In the critical game of the tournament Magnus Carlsen took down Alexander Grischuk, who has been the sole leader by a full point since round seven. With his victory the Norwegian GM joined Vassily Ivanchuk in the second slot, half a point behind Grischuk. The other games were drawn, with Radjabov-Dominguez producing an exciting fight. Big pictorial report, commentary by Anish Giri.

3/6/2009 – Three weeks ago the Association of Chess Professionals (ACP) and ChessBase sent out a poll to top chess players. Their answers kept coming in, with more expected soon. Full results will be presented soon. However, we have decided to send the following preliminary results to the FIDE Presidential Board, which is meeting in Istanbul from the 6-8th of March 2009. Figures and opinions.

3/6/2009 – Vassily Ivanchuk, who won Linares in 1991, is poised to do so again, eighteen years later, when he defeated Levon Aronian to join Alexander Grischuk in the lead. The latter was unable to convert a very promising position against Vishy Anand. The tragedy was Magnus Carlsen, who had a well-deserved win on the bat, but spoilt it to a draw. Big pictorial report with annotations by Anish Giri.

3/5/2009 – For many years the Linares Super-GM was played in the ballroom of the Anibal Hotel (the tournament was created by the owner). Now it is in a theater, but the players still stay in the Anibal. The lobby and restaurant of the hotel are adorned with portraits from previous events, starting from 1991 – a moving experience to see the great players fifteen and more years ago. Let's talk a walk in time.

3/5/2009 – Today the players arrive, Friday are the technical meetings and opening ceremony, on Saturday the first event for a new FIDE Women Grand Prix series 2009/2010 starts, in the Is Bankasi Art Gallery in Istanbul, Turkey. Twelve of the strongest in the world will play a round robin event for a total prize fund of 40,000 Euros. Press release and pictures of the ladies.

3/5/2009 – ChessBase 10 contains a large variety of fields into which you can input player and tournament information when saving a game. Some of these can be confusing for new users. In our closeup look at ChessBase game header fields you'll discover some little-known tricks regarding annotators and publishing sources as we wrap up our three part series. ChessBase Workshop.