4/29/2025 – Max Euwe became the fifth World Chess Champion after beating Alexander Alekhine in the 1935 World Championship match. A maths teacher by profession, Euwe remained an amateur throughout his life, but was still the best chess player in the Netherlands, and one of the world's best players.

4/22/2025 – I have told the story often: in an interview in 2020 I said that in five years I expected at least two of the top ten players in the world would be Indian. My prediction was met with deep scepticism. It was clearly the unrealistic optimism of a friend and admirer of young Indian talents. It is true I was wrong. In five years since the prediction three have risen into the top ten bracket, and a fourth is on his way into it.

4/5/2025 – Sunil who? He is one of the most successful chess coaches in the USA, running the National Scholastic Chess Foundation (NSCF) teacher training programs. Sunil Weeramantry has looked after literally thousands of budding chess players - including his stepson, who ascended to the top of the chess world. Know who we are talking about. | Pictures by Frederic Friedel and NSCF

4/1/2025 – For decades we rigorously celebrated April Fool's day. But our pranks became progressively more difficult over the years. If we were able to construct a fake story, one that was genuinely funny, our friends at Google made it possible to check it in seconds. So we abandoned the tradition. Today, however, we present you with hoaxes and counterfeits in the history of chess. We had expert assistance in doing so.

3/11/2025 – Today is publishing day. Susan Polgar's book, Rebel Queen, is available in book outlets, or on Amazon, where you can also get the Kindle edition. It describes the trials and tribulations of a super-talent at odds with her federation, and how she overcame it to rise to the very top of women's chess. Today we excerpt a passage from her book that describes her encounter with ChessBase. We are proud to have played a role in her chess career. | Photo Renata Goreczk

3/10/2025 – On July 13, 2004, Bobby Fischer was detained in Japan with an invalid U.S. passport. That marked the beginning of a nine-month ordeal for him in Japanese custody. Among the supporters fighting for his release was former World Champion Boris Spassky, whom Fischer had dethroned thirty years earlier. Spassky, who passed last week, even wrote a personal letter of appeal to President George Bush, asking to be locked up in the same cell as Fischer. "And give us a chess set," he said.

2/28/2025 – Boris Spassky, the tenth World Chess Champion, was a chess prodigy who became a grandmaster at the young age of 18. He won the World Chess Championship in 1969, and held the title until 1972, when he lost to Bobby Fischer in the famous "Match of the Century". Boris passed on Thursday at the age of 88. He was a decades-long personal friend of the author. | Photo Frederic Friedel, taken in June 2007

2/12/2025 – Impressions from the semi-finals of the Weissenhaus Freestyle event: Vincent Keymer won against Magnus Carlsen. Anna Cramling vs. Alexandra Botez was the Freestyle evening event. Gukesh reunites with Frederic Friedel and the World Champion receives an unexpected gift. And finally, we see the perhaps most famous chess button in the world!

2/3/2025 – The 2025 Tata Steel Chess Tournament concluded with a thrilling final day in both the Masters and Challengers sections. Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu emerged as the Masters champion after defeating fellow Indian star Gukesh Dommaraju in a dramatic blitz playoff. The classical games saw Arjun Erigaisi and Vincent Keymer upsetting the frontrunners, while Max Warmerdam stunned top seed Fabiano Caruana. In the Challengers, Thai Dai Van Nguyen claimed first place on tiebreaks, securing a spot in next year’s Masters after finishing level on points with Aydin Suleymanli. | Photo: Tata Steel Chess / Lennart Ootes

1/26/2025 – Today, 26 January 2025, the legendary Icelandic Grandmaster Fridrik Olafsson celebrates his 90th birthday. Heartfelt congratulations to the Chess Coryphaeus! Our author Eduard Frey presents highlights from a remarkable biography.

1/9/2025 – At the start of the World Championship in Singapore, on November 25th 2024, a new chess puzzle game, inspired by the incredibly popular 'Wordle', was launched. It was developed by a young lad from Singapore, a problem expert, together with a member of the ChessBase family. We have been experimenting with the World Championship game, to see how people who are confronted with it, react. We recorded a strong chess player's first interaction with the game. It was instructive and entertaining.

12/30/2024 – It happened during a training session we arranged for three young talents in the ChessBase office. It was conducted by Dr. Karsten Müller, who is a leading endgame expert. Some time later, Karsten wrote an article in the (German language) Chess Calendar describing how the pre-teen Dommaraju Gukesh refuted a Tal brilliancy by the legendary Mikhail Tal. Here's an English translation of Karsten's article.

12/26/2024 – After he was crowned the world champion, Gukesh named Vincent Keymer as one of the players who was a part of his back-room team. In The the SPIEGEL news magazine Vincent revealed behind-the-scenes preparation that led to World Championship win. At the same time GM Efstratios Grivas looks at some games of the German super-talent. | Photo: Marcus Brandt/dpa

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

12/3/2024 – The book was originally published in German, has now been published in English by ChessBase India. The luxury hard cover version, printed in full colour, is available for less than $12, and the eBook version for just $9.50 – with all proceeds going to the HelpChess Foundation. Advanced copies of the book were given to former World Champions and other notable personalities in Singapore.

11/28/2024 – Finally, in this three-part series, we come to the first full Babson task endgame study, composed by Gady Costeff. Many thought it was not possible to fulfil this extremely difficult task. Harold van der Heijden describes the full story. But one problem remains: the position is not legal. Costeff had already constructed it in 2011 and tried in vain to find a legal version. So this is still an open problem. Maybe you can give it a try?

11/24/2024 – Just in time for the great event, a new chess puzzle game, inspired by the incredibly popular 'Wordle', is being released. It was developed by a young lad from Singapore, a problem expert, together with a member of the ChessBase family. Today we will show you how it works, on Monday, November 25, you will get a daily puzzle to solve.

7/14/2024 – In our previous section on how playing chess may affect your life, we asked our readers to guess whether chess players could expect to live longer or shorter lives, on average, than the rest of the non-chess people surrounding them. Today in the final section of the series, Frederic Friedel and Christian Hesse present some statistical results on this question.

6/27/2024 – In an in-depth interview, the founder and CEO of ChessBase India, Sagar Shah, talks about how chess is developing in India and what projects are keeping him busy. The interview was conducted by Stefan Liebig for the German chess magazine Schach 64 and tells us about Sagar's professional career, and his work with top Indian talents.

6/19/2024 – There is something very special about playing chess. During a game your heart often races and your blood pressure rises. Evolution has set this up: in times of stress, pour out adrenaline and prepare the individual for a physical fight – or a lightening retreat. Can it be healthy for chess players to experience this while they sit motionless, for a number of hours? In part three of their series, Prof. Christian Hesse and Frederic Friedel discuss this question.

6/11/2024 – In this section we compare the risks playing a game of chess brings to your life – as compared to other activities a person may undertake. For example, riding a bike for 25 miles, running a marathon, climbing Matterhorn – or marrying Henry VIII. The assessment is given in micromort units, which can be used to generally calculate the risks under which people are in everyday life. | Picture Willie Benegas and Doug Pierson on Mountainmadness.com

6/5/2024 – It is a passionate game. There have been studies which have demonstrated that in dramatic positions with chances on both sides the adrenalin levels and the pulse rates of the players involved can rise to heights experienced by paragliders, extreme mountaineers or deep sea divers. Hence, it is not surprising that some people actually have died at the chess board when the setting became extremely stressful and prolonged.

4/24/2024 – Cheating in chess took centre stage when Magnus Carlsen lost to Hans Niemann in September 2022, and then tweeted about it. Now, top grandmasters Vladimir Kramnik and Fabiano Caruana are sharing numbers about how many cheaters there are. What is being debated, what is known, and what is only a feeling? In its latest issue, New In Chess magazine deals with a subject that concerns us all.

4/22/2024 – Gukesh D, an incredibly level-headed 17-year-old from Chennai, became the World Chess Championship challenger by winning the very strong 2024 Candidates Tournament in Toronto. Gukesh entered the final round as the sole leader, and safely held a draw with black against direct contender Hikaru Nakamura. Either Fabiano Caruana or Ian Nepomniachtchi could have caught the youngster with a win, but their direct encounter saw Caruana failing to make the most of a number of winning chances before agreeing to a 109-move draw in what turned out to be a titanic struggle. | Photo: FIDE / Michal Walusza