11/27/2025 – DeepMind Technologies has revolutionized AI research and, in its still relatively short history, produced many valuable results and breakthroughs. With its Go and chess programs AlphaGo and AlphaZero, DeepMind caused quite a stir in the gaming world, but of course the aim is about far more than winning games. A compelling film on this was shown at the Tribeca Festival and is now available on YouTube.

11/1/2025 – A new study by researchers at Google DeepMind explores whether artificial intelligence can exhibit genuine creativity through the composition of chess puzzles. By generating positions designed for aesthetic appeal and originality, the team invited leading experts to evaluate their quality and artistic value. The reviewers' assessments, combining praise and constructive critique, shed light on how AI-generated chess problems compare with traditional human compositions in terms of beauty, depth and innovation.

9/22/2025 – "How to think like a chess player and win at life" is the latest book by three-time US national chess champion, Jennifer Shahade. It offers essential life lessons from the world of chess - from making smarter choices to building focus and confidence. Chess players are experts in considering their options, allowing them to seize an opportunity, idea, or make a move that no one else saw. Shahade calls this "thinking sideways".

2/11/2025 – Vincent Keymer will keep good memories of his Tuesday game in Weissenhaus, as he managed to beat Magnus Carlsen in the first semifinal game at Freestyle Chess tournament. Keymer's win was achieved in the only decisive game on the day. The other semifinal saw Javokhir Sindarov missing a chance to beat Fabiano Caruana in a tricky endgame. | Photo: Freestyle Chess / Lennart Ootes

12/14/2024 – On Monday the 2024 Nobel Prizes were awarded in a Stockholm, Sweden. The prize for chemistry went to three scientists, one of whom has an illustrious background in chess. Demis Hassabis was a chess prodigy with a 2300 rating at the age of 13. He founded DeepMind, a subsidiary of Google, and went on to develop the groundbreaking artificial intelligence program AlphaZero. Frederic Friedel has known Demis since he was 17. | Photo European Biotechology/Nanaka Adachi

11/28/2024 – The International Chess Federation and Google are calling on developers worldwide to reimagine chess-playing AI with efficiency at its core. As part of Google’s sponsorship of the FIDE World Chess Championship 2024, this competition challenges participants to create smart, resource-light chess engines that perform impressively without relying on powerful computers or extensive data. Hosted on Kaggle, with a $50,000 prize fund, the initiative draws inspiration from Claude Shannon's vision of AI as a problem-solving tool.

11/9/2024 – The upcoming FIDE World Championship Match in Singapore, presented by Google, promises a grand chess celebration featuring elite players, chess legends and AI insights. Beyond the main event, visitors can enjoy interactive exhibitions, masterclasses, and simul games against grandmasters. Legends like Xie Jun and Boris Gelfand, alongside AI expert Nenad Tomašev, will provide fascinating perspectives on the game's evolution. The Singapore International Open, held alongside the match, offers an arena for aspiring players to compete.

10/9/2024 – DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, a DeepMind researcher who led the company's efforts to build AI models that could predict protein structures, shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, along with David Baker from the University of Washington. Through his AI company, he had already spearheaded breakthroughs in Go and chess with AlphaGo and AlphaZero, and he has now won the Nobel Prize thanks to AlphaFold2. (photos: DeepMind)

4/4/2024 – Alpha Zero has revolutionised chess programming. The programme taught itself chess by playing against itself and storing its training knowledge in a neural network. All programmes have followed suit with this technique. Roger Lorenz uses a simple example to show how neural networks work and how they can be trained.

12/24/2023 – From a very young age, Rita Atkins has been active in the chess community, achieving notable success in various chess tournaments, reaching the title of Women's International Master (WIM) and winning the Hungarian Women's Chess Championship in 1992. She has also been involved in teaching chess and mathematics to school children and youth. In a lengthy interview with Uvencio Blanco, she remarked: "Give it another hundred years, and there will be just as many good female players as male ones".

12/14/2023 – Nowadays you can easily download chess engines that play better than Carlsen, Caruana, Keymer or Nakamura. But if you feel like it, you can also try to program them yourself. Roger Lorenz has tried it. In one weekend - and with the help of ChatGPT. | Photo: Coding robot (image created with Automatic1111 and Stable Diffusion)

4/24/2023 – An international Go tournament, the Chunlan Cup, with a $200,000 prize fund, has been wrapped in controversy. In the semifinal round, newcomer Li Xuanhao (China) managed to defeat the reigning world champion Shin Jin-seo (South Korea). Li’s own teammate accused him of receiving AI support during the game.

3/24/2023 – The historic Sparkassen Chess Trophy will celebrate its golden jubilee edition this year. The 50th Dortmund Chess Days Festival will take place from June 24 to July 2 at the Westfalenhallen Goldsaal in Dortmund, Germany. The NC World Masters will feature the 14th world champion Vladimir Kramnik, former World Championship challenger Fabiano Caruana, defending champion Dmitrij Kollars, and the winner of the two previous editions of the Deutschland Grand Prix, Pavel Eljanov.

8/11/2022 – André Hollstein is a professor for information technology and digitisation at the International University of Applied Sciences (with over 90,000 enrolled students). In a podcast for his students and for the general public he interviewe ChessBase co-founder Frederic Friedel. The subject of their discussion: the digitization of chess, and the revolutionary changes ChessBase brought to the game. The podcast is in German, but André sent us a full English transcript.

7/23/2022 – Vishy Anand continues to lead the standings in the No-Castling World Masters after drawing Dmitrij Kollars on Friday. In the Sparkassen Open-A, one of many tournaments taking place as part of the Dortmund Chess Festival, Dutch GM Max Warmerdam has scored 7 points in as many games. Warmerdam beat Thomas Beerdsen in style and analysed his victory in the post-game interview. | Photos: Michelle Lassak

5/16/2022 – Midsummer is traditionally the time of the Dortmund Chess Days. After last year's relaunch, the festival will be expanded this year with, among other things, a large international open. At the weekend, the pairings have been drawn, which also means that the schedule is fixed. It all starts on 17 July. | Photos: Dortmunder Schachtage

3/19/2022 – After the successful first edition last year, the No-Castling World Masters Tournament will be expanded in Dortmund in July 2022, as former world champions Vladimir Kramnik and Viswanathan Anand will be joined by Krishnan Sasikiran and local hero Daniel Fridman. Concurrently, the Deutschland Grand Prix, the NRW Youth Cup and two opens will take place at the massive festival set to kick off four months from now.

11/18/2021 – Researchers at DeepMind and Google Brain, in collaboration with Grandmaster Vladimir Kramnik, are working to explore what chess can teach us about AI and vice versa. Using Chessbase’s extensive historical chess data along with the AlphaZero neural network chess engine and components from Stockfish 8, they ask: what can we learn about chess history by studying AlphaZero, how does AlphaZero learn to evaluate positions, and is AlphaZero computing anything human-like? Their paper, “Acquisition of Chess Knowledge in AlphaZero”, has just been published.

9/7/2021 – The pioneering ‘NC World Masters 2021’ saw Vladimir Kramnik and Vishy Anand playing No-Castling chess — an interesting experiment. Kramnik analysed the games together with Deep Mind experts Ulrich Paquet and Nedad Tomasev. The Russian explains motifs and ideas in three instructive videos.

8/10/2021 – Chess tournaments in Dortmund, Germany, have a long and illustrious tradition. In 2021, the Sparkassen Chess Trophy continued this tradition. Vishy Anand won a "No Castling" match against Vladimir Kramnik, Pavel Eljanov won the "Deutschland Cup". Now, the organizers released a video that reviews highlights of this year's tournament. In a personal statement during the award ceremony, Carsten Hensel, former manager of Kramnik, and driving force behind the organisation of the tournament, had already explained why Dortmund 2021 was a real highlight for him.

7/14/2021 – Yesterday, 13 July 2021, the 48th Schachtage Dortmund began in Dortmund's Westfalenhalle. In the opening round of the Deutschland Grand Prix the young German Dmitrij Kollars (pictured) defeated the even younger German Vincent Keymer. Pavel Eljanov (against Andreas Heimann) and Daniel Fridman (against Mateusz Bartel) also won their games. | Photos and video: The Organiser

7/7/2021 – Vladimir Kramnik and Viswanathan Anand will play a special 4-game match in Dortmund starting on July 14, as castling will not be allowed. The event will be supported by world-leading AI company DeepMind. Online audiences will get to experience novel AlphaZero insights first hand in the post-match commentary of the no castling tournament.

2/19/2021 – This summer Vladimir Kramnik and Viswanathan Anand will face each other in an innovative chess variant, proposed by Kramnik: No-Castling chess. There is one simple rule change – no castling allowed, everything else remains the same as in the regular chess – is meant to combat over-preparation and drawing tendencies in chess. Experience shows that it also leads to more exciting games. In parallel the online Sparkassen Playchess Open for participants from all over the world will be in the "No-Castling“ format. This is your chance to try it out.

2/15/2021 – In 1987 Frederic Friedel co-founded ChessBase – a company that leads the world in chess software. It created the first professional chess database in history and the iconic Fritz chess playing program. The "guru" of ChessBase believes that Artificial Intelligence can be the key to mankind's future. He is as optimistic and enthusiastic, as ever, expressing hopes, but also his fears and doubts. How will we coexist with computers of a new type when they have become as intelligent as we are, and even more so?