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.

2/18/2019 – In the first two sections of this series, originally published in Der Spiegel, Europe's largest (and most influential) news portal, Frederic Friedel described his decades-long involvement in computer chess. He was commissioned to make the story personal, and in part three he describes his encounter with the latest twist in this area of research: artificial intelligence and self-learning machines that are playing at the very highest levels of the game. Where are we headed and what will the future bring?

2/3/2019 – True Agony! Columnist GM JON SPEELMAN briefly rifs on AlphaZero and Giri-Shankland before turning his attention to this week's submission from Zimbabwean Class A player, Tapiwa Allister Gora. Feel free to send in your own games! Jon can always use more material from readers. If your games are selected for the Agony column, not only will you get free detailed commentary of your games by one of chess’s great authors and instructors, and former world no. 4 player, but you also win a free three-month ChessBase Premium Account! | Photo: Tapiwa Gora (right) vs Simon Bokamoso at a recent tournament

1/31/2019 – AlphaZero became a worldwide sensation when it defeated the world's strongest chess engine in a long match just hours after being fed the rules of the game. At the time, Garry Kasparov said that it had shaken chess to its roots. In the opinion of Matthew Sadler and Natasha Regan, the authors of the book 'Game Changer: AlphaZero's Groundbreaking Chess Strategies and the Promise of AI' this all-new silicon monster developed by DeepMind has helped us discover that there is lots of fresh potential in chess. ADITYA PAI spoke with the authors about their book, the impact AlphaZero has (and will have) on our royal game and whether chess will be solved one day in the light of such technological advancements.

12/19/2018 – The London Chess Classic was a top tournament in which four of the world's best players took part. But the London Chess Classic was also an event in which young children could see, feel and express the passion for chess - a life-changing experience. | Photos: London Chess Classic

12/17/2018 – Live games and commentary from the 10th London Chess Classic, the final leg of the 2018 Grand Chess Tour. All rounds start at 15:00 CET (14:00 UTC) with commentary by GM Yasser Seirawan, WGM Jennifer Shahade, GM Maurice Ashley, GM Cristian Chirila and GM Alejandro Ramirez.

12/13/2018 – The Kasparov Chess Foundation (KCF) and The Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis (CCSCSL) have run the very successful Young Stars program for 'Team USA' for the past six years. Meet the latest crop of talented kids from the recent New York training session. Plus, In a new article, Garry Kasparov reminds us that the recent World Championship match did not represent "a contest between the two strongest chess players on the planet, only the strongest humans." Brute force programs have long exceeded human playing strength. But that does not end the historical role of chess as a laboratory of cognition. A new pure AI system has superseded even those programs. Kasparov evaluates AlphaZero's play in Science Magazine and gives a political interview in the prestigious magazine The New Yorker. | Photo DeepMind Technologies, Igor Khodzinskiy

12/11/2018 – The 10th London Chess Classic is underway with the semifinal played at the headquarters of Google's DeepMind. Demis Hassibis (pictured in the background) joined tournament director Malcolm Pein and a schoolgirl — learning chess under the Chess in Schools and Communities umbrella — on stage at the start of the first classical game. Yesterday, at the London Pro-Biz Cup, chess-loving business people or celebrities joined grandmasters taking turns in a tandem chess team tournament. Garry Kasparov was among the professionals, but it was the team of Roiko Vujatovic and David Howell that won. | Photos: Lennart Ootes

12/11/2018 – There was not much of a breather for Fabiano Caruana after his defeat in the tiebreak at the World Championship. He is back in London joining Hikaru Nakamura, Levon Aronian and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave as the four players qualified for the London Chess Classic, the final leg of the 2018 Grand Chess Tour, from December 11th to 17th. Can Caruana regain his mojo in rapid chess against Nakamura? Meanwhile, the top four players in England fight for the British Knockout Championship in a parallel semifinal and final.