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?

12/25/2020 – Do you know how many chess variants there are? In 1994 David Pritchard counted 1,450. Many are complex and require long explanations of the rules. Here's a variant that takes just a few seconds to explain, but completely changes the spirit of the game: Checkless Chess! Try it over the holiday season with friends – or solve a few brain-numbing puzzles. A Merry Christmas to all our readers!

12/4/2020 – This weekend, ChessTech organizes a major international online conference on chess and technology. Numerous speakers will give online lectures on a variety of topics. In addition to the English lectures, there are contributions in Spanish, French and German. ChessBase is represented by Matthias Wüllenweber and Albert Silver.

10/9/2020 – Modifying the existing rules for chess to make it more dynamic or decisive, needs years of experience and a large numbers of games if we are to assess the quality and appeal of any new variant. The company DeepMind has used their AI technology to evaluate nine variants proposed by former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik in a much shorter period of time. Here are their findings for "Torpedo Chess", where pawns can move two squares forward from anywhere.

9/30/2020 – Modifying the existing rules for chess to make it more dynamic or decisive, is a non-trivial task: you need years of experience and large numbers of people playing new versions in order to assess the quality and appeal of any new variant. Former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik has proposed new variants, and DeepMind has used their AI technology to evaluate them in a much shorter period of time. Here are their findings for No-castling, Pawn one square and Stalemate=win chess.

9/14/2020 – Publishing chess problems on this news site has a long tradition: especially at Christmas time we publish a set of entertaining puzzles for our readers to solve. But over the years – two decades actually – it became progressively more difficult to find problems that chess engines could not solve in seconds. It became pointless to issue a challenge and provide prizes. So we have taken to giving you problems which cannot be solved by computers. Here are some samples from a collection by Burt Hochberg.

9/10/2020 – Modifying the existing rules for chess, attempting to make it more dynamic or decisive, is a non-trivial task: You need years of experience and large numbers of people playing new versions in order to assess the quality and appeal of any new variant. Former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik has proposed nine new variants, and DeepMind has used their AI technology to evaluate them in a much shorter period of time. Here are their findings.

7/9/2020 – “Game Changer” by Matthew Sadler and Natasha Regan, published by New in Chess, won the Averbakh-Boleslavsky Award to the best book of 2019. Artur Jussupow, who was a member of the jury, said of the book: “It is a unique project that combines human achievements with remarkable development in AI and opens a new approach to our beloved game. We could not choose a more deserving winner”. Books by Sam Shankland and Davorin Kuljasevic were shortlisted. | Photo: Alina l’Ami

3/24/2020 – The entire world is in disarray, everything has ground to a halt. No more parties, movie theaters, pubs or restaurants, no more public sporting event – even the 2020 Olympic Games and the Chess Olympiad have been cancelled — both today. One chess tournament after the other is being abandoned, leagues, opens, everything. And at least one top player has caught the virus, another is trapped. Everyone is search for a cure — even the AlphaZero team of DeepMind!

12/12/2019 – Just imagine you had a chess computer — the auto-sensor kind. Would someone who had no knowledge of the game be able to work it out, just by moving pieces. Or imagine you are a very powerful computer. By looking at millions of images of chess games would you be able to figure out the rules and learn to play the game proficiently? The answer is yes — because that has just been done by Google's Deep Mind team. For chess and 76 other games. It is interesting, and slightly disturbing. | Graphic: DeepMind

12/9/2019 – From lay fans to top grandmasters, more or less everyone in the world of chess feels upset today about the significant number of draws that take place in virtually every classical elite tournament. Too much theory reinforced by extensive engine work is seemingly rendering the game of chess sterile and lifeless. One alternative is Chess960 and FIDE sanctioned the first Fischer Random World Championship this year. Recently the legendary Vladimir Kramnik has also proposed a solution to the problem that is simpler and more efficient than the Fischer Random, and which he believes will ensure more than 50% decisive games in top-level play.

11/25/2019 – A new edition of the Computer Chess Ratings List, published on November 23, ranks Fat Fritz as number one. Now the engine is available to consumers through the new Fritz 17 release. A recurring question by users new to Fat Fritz and Leela, and even by veterans, is: How do I modify the settings in the engine and how do I obtain the best performance with both a standard GPU, as well as a top-end system sporting two powerful graphics cards? Read on to find out!

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!

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

9/12/2019 – It is inspired by the remarkable Google/DeepMind development that shocked the world: AlphaZero. Using the open source code of Leela we generated a neural network based on millions of auto-play games — but also added millions of high level human and computer-vs-computer games, and endgame tablebases. The result: a program that strong GMs are experimenting with — and they are fascinated with the ideas our engine produces. Even very young chess geniuses are fans of Fat Fritz. | Photo Frederic Friedel

8/20/2019 – Some people keep a Komodo dragon in their yard, and some keep it in their living room, safely inside their computer! In this interview with Grandmaster Larry Kaufman, one of the creators of Komodo, the World Chess Software Champion, we gain new insight into the latest release of the popular chess program. Komodo has gained strength both in the standard version, but particularly in the Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS), making the engine a valuable research tool for correspondence games, and openings.

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.

6/16/2019 – AlphaZero changed the chess world and the way chess players think. But how does the program think and what makes its chess so special? In their book "Game Changer" Matthew Sadler and Natasha Regan give answers and present a lot of games by AlphaZero. Carl Portman liked the book so much that he invited Sadler and Regan for a simul and a lecture about AlphaZero. Which was instructive and fun. | Carl Portman

2/21/2019 – Last year's World Chess Championship in London was an exciting affair. All twelve games were drawn, and not everyone was there for the final tiebreak day, to see Carlsen win three games and retain his crown. But Frederic Friedel did attend the spectacular opening gala and the first two rounds. He describes the many interesting people he met and the impressions they left. This is the first in a series on chess-related encounters.