7/30/2119 – From July 20th to the 31st, the Swiss watch metropolis of Biel/Bienne will once again be a focus of chess activity in Europe. The festival features many interesting and young players as well as a new format that combines rapid, classical and blitz chess. Vidit won again with Black adding to his immpressive run. Shankland is second. Live games and commentary from 12:00 UTC (14:00 CEST / 8:00 AM EDT).

8/29/2019 – The 2019 Sinquefield Cup playoff ended up with Ding Liren beating world champion Magnus Carlsen to win the title and take home $82.500. After two draws in the rapid games, the Chinese star beat Carlsen in both blitz encounters. The commentators and the world champion deservedly praised Ding's performance. Express report. | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour

11/17/2019 – Alexander Grischuk won a thrilling tiebreak match against Jan-Krzysztof Duda. The latter took the first rapid game but lost the second. Grischuk dominated the 10+10 games to clinch his victory in Hamburg, and with it 10 Grand Prix points. His total of 20 points will be difficult to beat. The pair played to a draw in the second game of their final match, after Game 1 also ended in a draw. Sixteen players began the tournament competing for Grand Prix points in the penultimate event of the series from November 5th to November 17th, in Germany's Hanseatic metropolis. Games and commentary. | Pictured: Duda during his final match with Grischuk. | Photo: Valeria Gordienko

7/7/2019 – We saw history in the making, as Magnus Carlsen won his eighth tournament in a row at the second leg of the Grand Chess Tour in Zagreb. The world champion defeated Maxime Vachier-Lagrave from the white side of a Grüenfeld to finish in clear first place a full point ahead of his closest pursuer with a 'plus five' score. Carlsen's official rating in August will equal his own peak rating of 2882 points — the highest ever achieved. Wesley So finished in sole second place. Express report. | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour

11/13/2019 – Alexander Grischuk knocked Maxime Vachier-Lagrave out of the Grand Prix in Hamburg by beating him in the second classical game of the semi-finals. Grischuk thus massively increased his chances to reach the 2020 Candidates Tournament through the series. Meanwhile, Daniil Dubov got a slight edge against Jan-Krzysztof Duda, but could not make much of it — their semi-final match-up will be decided in tiebreaks. | Photo: Valeria Gordienko

8/30/2019 – Ding Liren carried the day in St. Louis, surprising spectators by winning a rapid and blitz tiebreak against World Champion Magnus Carlsen. Carlsen was consistently behind on the clock which proved a decisive factor, as a tentative move in the first blitz game actually resulted in his losing on time, despite the 3-second delay. After that Ding needed only a draw to secure his first Sinquefield Cup and a nearly certain ticket to the Grand Chess Tour final in London later this year. IM VENKATACHALAM SARAVANAN reports all action from the venue. | Photo: Lennart / Grand Chess Tour

11/10/2019 – Levon Aronian and Sergey Karjakin surged in the final day of blitz to finish joint first in the overall standings in Bucharest. Aronian won a two-game rapid playoff to be declared the winner of the Superbet Rapid & Blitz. Live games and commentary from 13:00 UTC (14:00 CET, 8:00 AM EST). | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour

11/11/2019 – Levon Aronian only finished in 5th place with 10 points from 18 games in this weekend's blitz tournament, but when combined with his 10 points in the rapid, his total tally tied him for first place with Sergey Karjakin, who won the blitz portion jointly with Le Quang Liem scoring 11/18. In the resulting playoff, Aronian scored a full point in the second game to snare the overall victory in the Romanian capital, Bucharest. | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour

10/30/2019 – In Candidates Tournament 2020, eight players will compete to determine the challenger for the current World Champion, Magnus Carlsen. Four participants have been confirmed and four more are still being sought. Two of them will be determined by the FIDE Grand Prix, the third stage of which will take place from November 5th to 17th in Hamburg, with the first round less than a week away!

11/16/2019 – In the first game of the FIDE Grand Prix in Hamburg, Alexander Grischuk was the one missing a good chance to get ahead on the score board. The Russian got a promising position with White, but could not make the most of it, after both he and Jan-Krzysztof Duda survived a deep time trouble scramble. Another draw in game two will mean the final will be decided in Sunday's tiebreaks. | Photo: Official site

11/14/2019 – The second finalist at the FIDE Grand Prix in Hamburg is Jan-Krzysztof Duda. The Polish grandmaster will be facing Alexander Grischuk starting Friday to decide who will become the champion in the second-largest city of Germany. Duda defeated Daniil Dubov in rapid tiebreaks despite losing the first encounter against the Russian. | Photo: Official site

11/17/2019 – For a second day in a row, Alexander Grischuk got the upper hand against Jan-Krzysztof Duda at the final of the FIDE Grand Prix in Hamburg. Duda lost the opening battle but managed to find correct defensive moves one time after another until the draw was agreed. The champion will be decided in Sunday's tiebreakers. | Photo: Official site

11/1/2019 – November will kick off with the third leg of the Grand Prix in Hamburg, the penultimate stage of the FIDE series that awards two spots for the 2020 Candidates Tournament. This month will also feature the last two rapid and blitz events of the Grand Chess Tour, which will decide who will join Magnus Carlsen in the London finale. In the midst of all that elite action, the European Club Cup will take place in Montenegro. | You'll find all of these events and more covered in our live games broadcast area Live.ChessBase.com and we'll also be providing News coverage.

11/10/2019 – Only one match-up will be decided in tiebreaks at the second round of the FIDE Grand Prix in Hamburg, as Russians Peter Svidler and Daniil Dubov drew for a second day in a row and will be playing rapid and blitz on Sunday. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Alexander Grischuk and Jan-Krzysztof Duda secured their spots in the semi-finals in the classical phase, thus getting one extra point at the overall GP standings. | Photo: Nadja Wittmann

11/18/2019 – Alexander Grischuk defeated Jan-Krzysztof Duda 2½:1½ in the rapid tiebreakers of the final match at the FIDE Grand Prix in Hamburg. He thus claimed tournament victory and greatly increased his chances of reaching next year's Candidates. The Russian lost the first game of the day but bounced back with two straight victories. In the fourth encounter of the day, he had a winning position when the draw was agreed. | Photo: Valeria Gordienko

11/12/2019 – The first classical games of the semi-finals at the FIDE Grand Prix in Hamburg ended in draws. Both games went into theoretical lines that led to draws in less than thirty moves. In Tuesday's rematch games, Alexander Grischuk and Daniil Dubov will have the white pieces against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Jan-Krzysztof Duda, respectively. | Photo: Valeria Gordienko

11/5/2019 – German chess fans (especially those in Hamburg) can look forward to a nice chess event in the countries second largest city. Today, the opening press conference took place at the Kehrwieder Theater in the "Speicherstadt" district, the venue of the Hamburg Grand Prix tournament which runs from November 5th to November 17th. | Photos: Nadja Wittmann

9/24/2019 – Although it is not hard to pick out moves that Fat Fritz finds more easily than Stockfish, or vice versa, sometimes a move stands out that just begs to be shared. This happened to Fat Fritz creator, Albert Silver, while he was casually following the recent Sinquefield Cup won by Ding Liren. Enjoy this example of positional judgement and technique. | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour

10/24/2019 – A jury appointed by FIDE, headed by Vladimir Kramnik, has chosen the coaches of the year 2018. The awards go to John Donaldson (pictured), Yu Shaoteng, Michal Konopka, Ramachandran Ramesh and Adrian Mikhalchishin. | Photos: FIDE

9/20/2019 – The new FIDE administration headed by Arkady Dvorkovich has made a number of organizational changes in its first year in charge. Some are more visible than others, and most have been generally regarded as positive. Now the FIDE website has received a fresh new look. What do you think?

10/7/2019 – An editorial from CHESS Magazine's executive editor IM MALCOLM PEIN announcing the 11th London Chess Classic, the latest news from Chess in Schools and Communities, thoughts on the FIDE calendar, and the standings of the Grand Chess Tour.

7/25/2019 – FIDE continues to encourage public participation in its wide-ranging survey with research firm Nielsen and the survey closes this weekend. Now is your last chance to participate! Meanwhile, another Nielsen, Magnus Carlsen's second Peter Heine Nielsen, continues to engage FIDE leadership in a public discussion around financial transparency and leadership.

7/12/2019 – No, not Carlsen-second Peter Heine Nielsen, but rather the global measurement and data analytics company which has been contracted by FIDE to evaluate the chess market. Chess players of all levels from casual fans to grandmasters are encouraged to participate in a survey, and the international chess federation is offering an incentive in the form of two hours of training with none other than the 14th World Champion, Vladimir Kramnik.

9/22/2119 – The 2019-2020 FIDE Women's Grand Prix, part of the Women's World Championship cycle, takes place in Skolkovo, a business centre in Moscow also known as the Russian Silicon Valley. Twelve players are competing in the first of four single round-robin events that will grant two spots at the next Women's Candidates Tournament. In the final round, Humpy Koneru earned the final half point needed to clinch victory ahead of Ju Wenjun. | Photo: Official site

11/2/2019 – Wesley So was the winner of the Fisher Random World Championship, defeating the classical World Champion Magnus Carlsen. Ian Nepomniachtchi beat Fabiano Caruana to finish third. Live game commentary from 16:30 UTC (17:30 CET / 12:30 EDT) Note: Europe has already switched to Winter time! | Photo: www.frchess.com

11/3/2019 – Wesley So needed only six out of the twelve scheduled games to take down Magnus Carlsen at the final of the Fischer Random World Championship in Bærum. The final score was a resounding 13½:2½ in favour of the American, who thus became the official world champion in this format. In the match for third place, Ian Nepomniachtchi got the better of Fabiano Caruana after recovering from his painful loss against So in the semis. | Photo: Lennart Ootes / frchess.com

8/6/2019 – At the Lindores Abbey tournament in Scotland in May 2019, IM SAGAR SHAH travelled from India to cover the tournament. Apart from doing the daily reports, he was able to interview Henrik Carlsen — father of the World Champion Magnus Carlsen. Henrik has been by Magnus' side right from the time he was a beginner to him becoming a World Champion. Their journey is a story worth sharing with the chess community.

10/5/2019 – Azerbaijani Grandmaster Teimour Radjabov defeated rating favourite Ding Liren in tiebreaks at the final match of the FIDE World Cup in Khanty-Mansiysk. After draws in all four rapid games, Radjabov got victories in both blitz encounters to take home the title and USD 110,000. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave prevailed in the match for third place with a commanding 2:0 victory over Yu Yangyi. IM LAWRENCE TRENT sent a video recap of the play-offs. | Photo: FIDE

9/25/2019 – Alexander Grischuk and Ding Liren sat opposite each other in the fifth round of the World Cup 2019. The game was followed with great excitement by chess players all across the world. In their first game, after 13 moves, Grischuk made a move that led the engines to give an evaluation of nearly -3 points. Online kibitzers went wild, criticizing the players. IM SAGAR SHAH reflects on whether this is an unfortunate trend. | Photo: FIDE

11/2/2019 – Wesley So impressed during day two of the finals at the Fischer Random World Championship as he defeated Magnus Carlsen twice to get a whopping 10½:1½ lead, which means he only needs two more points to take the title. In the match for third place, Ian Nepomniachtchi beat Fabiano Caruana once to get a three-point edge before Saturday's 'fast rapid' and blitz games. | Photo: Lennart Ootes / frchess.com

9/19/2019 – In 1970 Bobby Fischer played his last Olympiad — in Siegen, Germany. After the Olympiad he gave two simuls in Germany, one in Solingen, one in Münster. Now the score sheets of the games, unknown pictures of Fischer and newspaper articles about the simul in Münster were rediscoved. A remarkable find! | Photos: Norbert Rauch

10/29/2019 – World Champion Magnus Carlsen finished off Fabiano Caruana and Wesley So got the better of Ian Nepomniachtchi in the two semi-final matches which ended Tuesday. The Final match begins on Thursday. Live game commentary from 16:30 UTC (17:30 CET / 12:30 EDT) Note: Europe has already switched to Winter time! | Photo: Lennart Ootes

10/30/2019 – The semi-finals of the Fischer Random World Chess Championship came to an end on Tuesday. Wesley So and Magnus Carlsen advanced to the final match with categorical victories over Ian Nepomniachtchi and Fabiano Caruana respectively. So surpassed the 12½ points mark needed to win after three of the eight games scheduled for day three, while Carlsen played one more encounter before being declared the winner. | Photo: Lennart Ootes / frchess.com

9/27/2019 – The Ruy Lopez is a perennially popular opening and all World Champions have played it, with White or with Black or with both colours. Studying it will improve your chess understanding — and your results! On three new FritzTrainer DVDs Fabiano Caruana, World Championship Challenger 2018, now explains the intricacies and attractions of this opening, offering White a complete repertoire. These FritzTrainers also impress with a technical novelty: they run on Macs, iPad, Android, and Windows!

8/30/2019 – Ding Liren carried the day in St. Louis, surprising spectators by winning a rapid and blitz tiebreak against World Champion Magnus Carlsen. Carlsen was consistently behind on the clock which proved a decisive factor, as a tentative move in the first blitz game actually resulted in his losing on time, despite the 3-second delay. After that Ding needed only a draw to secure his first Sinquefield Cup and a nearly certain ticket to the Grand Chess Tour final in London later this year. IM VENKATACHALAM SARAVANAN reports all action from the venue. | Photo: Lennart / Grand Chess Tour

11/10/2019 – Levon Aronian and Sergey Karjakin surged in the final day of blitz to finish joint first in the overall standings in Bucharest. Aronian won a two-game rapid playoff to be declared the winner of the Superbet Rapid & Blitz. Live games and commentary from 13:00 UTC (14:00 CET, 8:00 AM EST). | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour

11/16/2019 – The Chess Olympiad in Novi Sad began 29 years ago today, and ran from November 16th to December 4th, 1990. The 1990 U.S. Women’s team finished in sixth place at the Chess Olympiad held in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia (present-day Serbia). In board order, the team members were WGM Elena Akhmilovskaya Donaldson, WGM Anna Akhsharumova, WIM Esther Epstein, and alternate WIM ALEXEY ROOT, who shares her alternate experience here.

11/11/2019 – Levon Aronian only finished in 5th place with 10 points from 18 games in this weekend's blitz tournament, but when combined with his 10 points in the rapid, his total tally tied him for first place with Sergey Karjakin, who won the blitz portion jointly with Le Quang Liem scoring 11/18. In the resulting playoff, Aronian scored a full point in the second game to snare the overall victory in the Romanian capital, Bucharest. | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour

8/27/2019 – He was a world-class grandmaster, twice World Champion candidate, friend of Bobby Fischer (whose participation in the 1972 World Championship match he directly enabled), inventor of the eponymous Benko Gambit and the 1.g3 Benko Opening (which he used to beat Fischer and Tal). He is also known as the composer of some of the finest endgame studies and chess problems we have ever seen. Pál was also a loyal friend who provided us with countless articles over the last decade. He will be deeply missed. | Photo Diana Mihajlova.

10/4/2019 – Fabiano Caruana is already qualified for the Candidates Tournament 2020 and Ding Liren too de facto. They should now be joined by two World Cup finalists. Instead, the situation is less clear. Anish Giri is banking on a rating spot freed up by Ding's new qualification. Radjabov is also in, if he wants it, but that is very much an open question. CONRAD SCHORMANN explains. | Photos: FIDE

9/12/2019 – Bobby Fischer is a legend, so much so that even people who knew him sometimes find it difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction when they hear stories about Fischer. Vlastimil Hort knew Fischer and played against him. Recently, Hort rediscovered a letter Fischer had sent him and this letter evoked memories of the controversial chess genius. | Photos: Wolfgang Betzen (Schachclub Wangen)

11/12/2019 – In our most ambitious release yet, Fritz 17 brings a slew of features such as new functions to help you build your repertoire, special tools to help memorize it, new ways to generate exercises from your games, and more! It also brings not one, but several new engines such as the latest Fat Fritz with new percentage displays, the new Fritz 17 engine, and an easy-to-install Leela for the fans of the open-source project, and more! Get it at a 25% discount!

11/6/2019 – Our recent article on Fat Fritz elicited some criticism and predictions. In one comment a reader concluded "Stockfish is STILL the champion." While we look forward to testing that proposition in formal competition soon, we have naturally "run the experiment" so to speak, already: We ran two engine vs engine matches, a pre-release build of Fat Fritz against Stockfish 8 and then against Stockfish 10. The result? Fat Fritz won both! Here are some of the games along with grandmaster analysis from GM ELSHAN MORADIABADI.

11/7/2019 – Yesterday we announced the results of an internal 100-game match pitting our new Fat Fritz engine against two versions of Stockfish. Today, further annotated highlights from Grandmaster ELSHAN MORADIABADI along with some of your feedback and questions. Stay tuned for more news next week on Fat Fritz that you won't want to miss!

11/14/2019 – With the release of Fritz 17 with Fat Fritz, you may be strongly motivated to upgrade your computer to enjoy the best experience, or actually upgrade your entire machine if you feel it is time. In this first guide you will be shown the simplest upgrade possible: just adding a fast GPU to your computer. All the major cards as as well current prices and what performance to expect.

11/4/2019 – Fat Fritz for the club player: While the top players and grandmasters are leaping into the neural network boat, the question of value to amateurs is still left somewhat unanswered. Isn't one engine as good as another when it comes to sub-world-class players? We gave generous use to a former critic of Fat Fritz, TANMAY SRINATH, and not only was he extremely impressed, he was and was kind enough to share his experience with the readers.

9/27/2019 – The Ruy Lopez is a perennially popular opening and all World Champions have played it, with White or with Black or with both colours. Studying it will improve your chess understanding — and your results! On three new FritzTrainer DVDs Fabiano Caruana, World Championship Challenger 2018, now explains the intricacies and attractions of this opening, offering White a complete repertoire. These FritzTrainers also impress with a technical novelty: they run on Macs, iPad, Android, and Windows!

8/13/2019 – It's a semi-secret development, an AlphaZero clone, engineered over the past nine months for ChessBase. Fat Fritz was tested by some of the best players in the world, who expressed unmitigated delight over the ideas and improvements it came up with. Now the program is publicly available on the ChessBase Engine Cloud. And it is running on awesome hardware. ALBERT SILVER explains.

11/11/2019 – In a pure endgame a rook is usually much better than a bishop but winning often still requires good technique.

11/15/2019 – In the diagram position White, being a pawn down, delivered a surprising strike: 18.Nxh7. Can you see how after 18...Kxh7 he intends to regain the Nb8 by force - or even better, how Black refutes the idea in the end?

9/2/2019 – While the idea of Fat Fritz as a self-taught chess AI is tantalizing, many players may wonder why this impacts them if they already have a good engine and they are not grandmasters seeking nearly ineffable edges in their preparation. In the following article, we let a strong amateur study with it for some hours and compare notes with analysis he had made from other engines.

11/18/2019 – So you decided you want to upgrade your computer but don’t know where to start? In the following article you will get precise choices for a variety of budgets to help guide you through the maze of choices with precise setups designed to help you get the best bang for your buck. With Black Friday looming around the corner, or even Christmas or Hanukkah to decide on some end-of-the year purchases, this is the one you want to bookmark!

9/24/2019 – Although it is not hard to pick out moves that Fat Fritz finds more easily than Stockfish, or vice versa, sometimes a move stands out that just begs to be shared. This happened to Fat Fritz creator, Albert Silver, while he was casually following the recent Sinquefield Cup won by Ding Liren. Enjoy this example of positional judgement and technique. | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour

11/8/2019 – In the diagram position White had just played 12.Rac1 which didn't really threaten anything ... until Black replied 12...f6?? How would you take advantage of the new situation?

10/9/2019 – Sometimes seemingly innocuous questions can lead to the most interesting discoveries, and such was the case after deep analysis by ChessBase 15's “Tactical Analysis” with Fat Fritz on one of the best games from the World Cup. The positional masterpiece played by Nikita Vitiugov over Wesley So was compared to Karpov at his best. While the analysis was without question excellent, it was what was not explained that led to fascinating explorations and beautiful moves. | Photo: Kirill Merkuryev, khantymansiysk2019.fide.com

9/18/2019 – The expression is used to convey the idea that someone’s work and achievements were only possible thanks to the predecessors they build upon, and this is unquestionably true of Fat Fritz. You may think you know when or where the tale starts, but what if we told you that it all really started with a visionary computer scientist 60 years ago in 1959? | Photo: IBM

11/1/2019 – In the diagram position the central pawns c4 and e4 guarantee White a typical space plus. But if he wants to play for an advantage, 12.b3 is not the way to go. Why?

10/29/2019 – Knights are versatile and often cover surprisingly large areas of the board.

11/5/2019 – Usually, having material is good. However, sometimes one's own pieces are in the way or prevent stalemate ideas. In the diagram belowm how can Black save the draw?