4/8/2026 – Together with his brother Robert, Donald Byrne was among the best players in the United States in the 1970s. He won many games, but he became best known for a loss — against the then little-known Bobby Fischer. Donald Byrne died 50 years ago from an autoimmune disease. He was only 45 years old.

2/16/2026 – On 16 February 1906, Vera Menchik was born. After the Russian Revolution, her family lost their property, her parents separated, and Vera Menchik moved to England with her mother. As she did not have a good command of the English language, she devoted herself to chess. In this way, she became the first woman to be invited to top tournaments. Today marks the 120th anniversary of her birth.

2/5/2026 – Paula Wolf-Kalmar only came to chess at the age of 30, but then went on to compete in three Women’s World Championships. However, she died young from diabetes. Much about the biography of the Austrian chess pioneer remains unclear. With his detective-like flair, Alan McGowan has brought order to the available data and uncovered new sources.

1/30/2026 – Matthias Blübaum is currently stunning the chess world with his performance at the Tata Steel Masters in Wijk aan Zee. After ten rounds, he shares second to fourth place and is half a point behind leader Nodirbek Abdusattorov. In the last two rounds, Blübaum defeated Gukesh and Anish Giri, which helped him break the 2700 rating barrier for the first time in his career. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

12/11/2025 – 11 December 2025 marks the 120th anniversary of Ludwig Engels's birthday. He was one of the best German chess players in the 1930s. Following the 1939 Chess Olympiad, he, like many others, remained in South America due to the outbreak of the Second World War and settled in Brazil. At the height of his career, Engels defeated renowned players such as Alekhine, Bogoljubow, Keres and Maroczy. | Photo source: Friedrich-Karl Hebeker

6/23/2025 – FIDE’s latest transfer list reveals that several strong players have changed federations. The most prominent of them is Gata Kamsky (pictured) who is moving to France after decades of membership in the US Chess Federation. Olga Badelka is transferring to the Austrian Chess Federation, and Gulrukhbegim Tokhirjonova is returning to the Uzbek Chess Federation. | Photo: John Saunders

4/30/2024 – Have you ever been there? You're happy with the advantage you've worked so hard for, you've been holding on to it for hours, and then: one mistake and the point goes down the drain! In his ChessBase video series "Understanding Middlegame Strategies", now in its ninth part, Ivan Sokolov, one of the world's best trainers, gives deep insights into his wealth of experience and reveals how to find the right moves in the future.

4/16/2024 – Jan Markos is a Slovakian grandmaster and successful author. In addition to several books, he has now recorded a much acclaimed Fritztrainer course. Stefan Liebig spoke to the author and trainer about the secrets of effective chess training.

2/2/2023 – Today, chess legend Svetozar Gligoric, who passed away in 2012, would have turned 100 years old. In World War II he fought as a partisan against the Germans, and after the war he became one of the world's best chess players. He was very popular among his peers and even managed to be friends with Bobby Fischer. Dagobert Kohlmeyer remembers the King's Indian expert. | Photos: Dagobert Kohlmeyer

1/30/2023 – With Sara Khadem Iran has lost another top chess player. The 2018 rapid and blitz vice world champion has moved to Spain with her family, but plans to continue playing under the Iranian flag. The well-known Spanish journalist Leontxo Garcia met with her and published a portrait of the young Iranian woman in the Spanish newspaper "El Pais". | Photo: El Pais

3/1/2021 – Victorija Cmilyte is a top chess player and a successful politicain. She is a Grandmaster, Lithuania's number one women player and number seven on the World's Women Ranking List, and since 2015 she has been a Member of the Lithuanian Parliament. She was leader of the Opposition and in 2020 the elected Speaker of Parliament. Cmilyte is married to GM Peter Heine Nielsen and has four children. A portrait. | Photo: Clément Bucco-Lechat

4/15/2020 – The Argentinean Grandmaster Miguel Najdorf was one of the world's best players after the Second World War, name-giver of the most popular variation of the Sicilian, a great personality and a successful entrepreneur. Today is his 110th birthday. | Photo: Durch National Archive

3/26/2020 – Today, Canada has a number of strong players, the best-known are probably Eric Hansen and Evgeny Bareev. But in the 20th century Canada had only one really strong player: Daniel "Abe" Yanofsky, the son of Polish immigrants and Canada's first grandmaster. On March 26, 2020 Yanofsky would have celebrated his 95th birthday. Max Berchtenbreiter dedicated a portrait to him.| Photo: Abe Yanofsky and Max Euwe (Dutch National Archive)

5/30/2019 – During his peak the Ukrainian born Soviet Grandmaster Leonid Stein (November 12, 1934 – July 4, 1973) was one of the best players of the world. He had a fantastic flair for the attack and was famous for his ability to demolish his opponents quickly. But fortune did not smile on him. Vlastimil Hort knew Stein well and shares memories. | Photo: Alina l'Ami

5/12/2019 – The Kan Variation, also known as Paulsen Variation, is a popular line of the Sicilian. It is named after Ilya Kan, a Russian player who was born 110 years ago last week, on May 4, 1909. He lived most of his life in Moscow where he worked as a lawyer. Kan played in ten Soviet Championships and helped Botvinnik to prepare for his World Championship matches against Smyslov but outside of Russia he is still rather unknown.

4/28/2019 – During the 1950s and 1960s Svetozar Gligoric was one of the world's best players and the Yugoslavian number one. Gligoric was also happily married, a successful journalist and writer, and had fought for the Yugoslavian partisans during World War II. Vlastimil Hort often met Gligoric and now shares his memories.

11/19/2018 – Today, November 19th, José Raúl Capablanca, would have celebrated his 130th birthday. After World War I the Cuban was the world's best player and World Champion from 1921 to 1927. During his career, he played more than 500 tournament games but lost only 36 of them. | Photo: Screenshot from the movie "Chess Fever"

10/11/2018 – David Bronstein was certainly one of the most creative players in the history of chess. In 1951 he drew a World Championship match against Mikhail Botvinnik who thus narrowly defended the title. Vlastimil Hort remembers encounters with "my David Ionovich", including how a promise to play the King's Gambit in 1970 came back to haunt him 24 years later!

10/5/2018 – Vladimir Petrovs had a tragic life. He was born in 1907 and became one of the strongest players in Latvia. His biggest success was the international tournament in Kemeri 1937 where he finished joint first with Reshevsky and Flohr, ahead of Alekhine and Keres. When Germany occupied Latvia in WW II he fled to Moscow but after critical remarks about the commuist regime he was arrested and in August 1943 he died in a Soviet labour camp. | Photo: Vladimir Petrovs with his wife Galina (Russkije.lv)

8/9/2018 – Lubomir Kavalek was born in Prague, but left his country in 1968 and found a new home in the USA. In the 1970s, he was one of the world's best players and also successful as a second and coach, including Bobby Fischer, and a prolific writer with dozens of columns shared on ChessBase over the years. Today he celebrates his 75th birthday. | Photo: (left) Kavalek and (right) World Chess Hall of Fame

7/5/2018 – Ludek Pachman was an important theoretician, an industrious author, and a controversial personality. In Czechoslovakia he was a staunch communist but after the "Prague Spring" he changed from Saul to Paul or, as some people think, from Saul to Saul. Vlastimil Hort shares memories of Ludek Pachman. (Part 1) | Photos: Archive Michalek