2/17/2021 – "It's just a machine. It has no consciousness or feelings as we understand them. We have specific connections in our brain that make us react according to the circumstances, the situations we are experiencing. We interpret them as pleasure, pain and all other kinds of emotions. We would have to invent a new word to express what computers 'feel'." Here's the second part of the Europe Échecs discussion with Frederic Friedel on the subject of Artificial Intelligence.

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?

2/15/2021 – Albert Silver is the head coach of Fat Fritz, and its successor. His path to inventing the 2.0 engine is worth talking about, because once he was almost ready to publishing it he came across a new neural network technology from Japan – "NNUE". Silver reconsidered his close-to-finished project, and dedicated his mind and soul to the efficiently updatable neural network. It paid off! Fat Fritz 2.0 is out and ready now, defining opening theory with a "human" touch, and being as precise as can be in endgames.

1/19/2021 – Lubomir Kavalek was born in Prague in 1943. He 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 helping Bobby Fischer in Reykjavík. He was also a prolific writer, with dozens of well-read chess columns, including one he shared on ChessBase over the years. Kavalek passed away on January 18 at the age of 77. He will be sorely missed.

12/21/2020 – For long-time chess fans this might already sound like a tiring question. But for newcomers and those still invested in finding out how far computers can go in terms of solving the game, this remains to be a fascinating subject. British daily newspaper The Guardian recently published a 6-minute video — featuring Garry Kasparov, Maurice Ashley, Daniel Gormally and Alexandra Botez — exploring the issue.

12/18/2020 – ChessBase Magazine offers a window to the world of professional chess, and it also provides an arsenal for the tournament player. This issue offers coverage of two major events, the Carlsen Chess Tour Final and the FIDE Online Olympiad. 5759 games, 11 opening surveys, demo lectures and exercises for training. It also includes games annotated by Wesley So, Jan-Krzysztof Duda and Peter Heine Nielsen, just to mention a few. Our columnist Nagesh Havanur takes a look. | Photo: Frederic Friedel

12/11/2020 – Jeroen van den Belt has already explained how the search booster came about and how it works in an interview with Frederic Friedel. But how the high-speed tool will be used in practical tests may still be unclear to some. That is why we have simply opened ChessBase 16, and let the booster work.

12/11/2020 – Earlier this year five-time World Champion Vishy Anand spent three months stranded in Germany, waiting for a flight back to India. Now he is with his family – in lockdown in his apartment in Chennai. But "chess has enjoyed a surprise boom during the pandemic," he said in an Economic Times interview yesterday. "And it has been helped by the runaway success of 'The Queen's Gambit'. People sitting at home seem to have discovered the game of chess."

12/8/2020 – ASD stands for Autism Spectrum Disorder, a complex developmental condition that leads to challenges in social interaction, speech and nonverbal communication, and restricted or repetitive behaviors. People with autism or Asperger's often have special interests to which they apply themselves with great dedication. One such interest can be chess, and that provides opportunity and benefits – as described from personal experience by a young man with ASD. | Illustration by Bobby Lopez

12/2/2020 – Shortly before the death of former World Champion Bobby Fischer his Icelandic bodyguard during the Spassky match in 1972, Saemundur Pálsson, participated in the production of a documentary entitled "Vinur minn Bobby" (“My Friend Bobby”). Fischer protested, stating that the material used in the film was obtained by fraud. Now for the first time the full film is available in YouTube. You can watch it – but warning: it contains harsh language!

11/26/2020 – In this week's show, well-known Dutch trainer Robert Ris takes a look at an old favourit of Garry Kasparov: the Petrosian Variation of the Queen's Indian Defense. | "Fast and Furious" is available from 18:00 UTC (19:00 CET / 16:00 EDT) on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here. | Photo: Frederic Friedel

11/23/2020 – How did ChessBase begin? It's been nearly 35 years now! When co-founder of ChessBase Frederic Friedel was in India, IM Sagar Shah decided to record the story of how it all began. In this article Frederic speaks about the humble beginnings of the big chess technology company and how the 13th World Champion Garry Kasparov played a big role in its success!

11/10/2020 – The Candidates 2007 took place in "City Chess" in Elista, Kalmykia, a large residential complex devoted to chess and chess competitions. It was built by the then President of the country, and then President of FIDE Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who invited Frederic Friedel to attend the tournament. After the event was over Ilyumzhinov showed him around the city. Pictorial impressions.

11/5/2020 – Back in 2007 Frederic Friedel was invited by FIDE to attend the Candidates Matches in Elista. You can google "Candidates Elista 2007" for full details of the event, or use Mega Database to find all the games. We do not intend to retrace the course of the event, but instead tell you about the adventure of travelling to Kalmykia and attending it personally. We start with the first leg of the journey.

10/2/2020 – Some might think that ChessBase was the inventor of the chess database. That is true to some degree, but there is a predecessor, and Frederic Friedel was a part of it. In the video we talk about one of the very first commercially available chess database systems, called "Intelligent Chess", and we opened our little ChessBase museum to present to you, the original prototype including a database on audio cassette.

9/15/2020 – The online presence of chess has only increased throughout the years, and more so during the pandemic. A great medium for an abstract game, the web does not only serve as a place to share moves played in tournaments all over the world but also for people to share their passion for the game. Ben Johnson’s “Perpetual Chess Podcast” serves for the latter purpose, having shared in-depth interviews with top-level players, well-known authors and educators for almost five years — the podcast is now closing on two-hundred episodes!

9/8/2020 – In the prestigious news magazine Der SPIEGEL, edition 49/1982, we found the following chess problem, which a reader had solved on his chess computer. It was a 7-mover and the computer required more than 48 days to solve it. In an article at the time Frederic Friedel tried to explain not why it took so long, but how it could manage to process theoretically three trillion positions so quickly! In the meantime things have changed and regular chess engines have become much, much faster. You can find out how much faster yourself.

9/4/2020 – The chess periodical SCHACH is one of the oldest and most prestigious in the German language. It appears once a month and usually includes an interview with a chess personality, who answers twenty set questions. In their September 2020 issue they turned their attention to ChessBase co-founder and editor emeritus Frederic Friedel, who had just turned 75. We reproduce the interview with kind permission of the publishers.

8/18/2020 – In 1983 rookie chess journalist Frederic Friedel wrote an article for a German magazine, defining and celebrating "Super Grandmasters" – players who were rated 2600 or higher. There were 13 such players, and they were led by World Champion Anatoly Karpov, with a young upstart named Garry Kasparov hard at his heels. The top female player in the world, Pia Cramling, was rated 2355. Today things have changed somewhat – to put it mildly.

8/13/2020 – How far away are you from the World Champion, in terms of handshakes, we asked our readers? At least one traced his handshake route all the way back to Philidor. Now we have a new challenge: have you beaten someone who has beaten someone who has beaten a World Champion? Prof. Christian Hesse describes the idea. You are invited to participate.

8/13/2020 – If you are logged on with your ChessBase Premium account and if you have a moment: click on the video button on the right side of your screen! It's worth it: We have filled up the video portal massively, with fresh training videos for openings, middlegames and endgames! You don't know the video portal yet? In a short video we explain everything. There are more than 13,000 training videos to discover! Enjoy!

8/7/2020 – Known for their team camaraderie, Armenia obtained back-to-back gold medals at the 2006 and 2008 Chess Olympiads, played in Turin and Dresden respectively. Levon Aronian, Vladimir Akopian, Gabriel Sargissian and Arthases Minasian played in both events, with Akopian and Sargissian getting undefeated scores on both occasions — and individual gold medals in 2008.

8/2/2020 – What do you get when you celebrate a birthday? What happens when it is an especially auspicious birthday, e.g. one marking that you have made it to 3/4 of a century? Champagne, gifts, family party with the grandkids (in pandemic times in the garden). Chess friends have special things in store. They will write you a column in a national newspaper, or compose "number problems" for the years you have reached.

7/26/2020 – How far away are you from the World Champion, in terms of handshakes? Have you shaken hands with someone who has shaken hands with him? How far from Boris Spassky? Capablanca? Morphy? We asked about this a couple of weeks ago, and it led to some fascinating historical research, all the way back to European experts/authors who lived in the 1500s and 1600s. And we have a winner!