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.

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.

6/19/2024 – 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.

8/28/2023 – After arriving from Baku and resting the first day, R Praggnanandhaa continued where he left off at the FIDE World Cup 2023. The sensational teenager scored four wins in-a-row for WR Chess at FIDE World Rapid Teams 2023. Meanwhile GM D Gukesh (Kompetenzakademie Allstars, 2629) faced the 14th world champion, GM Vladimir Kramnik (Chess Pensioners, 2739) for the first time in an over-the-board rated game. He made the most out of his opportunity and won comfortably. Impressions from Düsseldorf with videos by Sagar Shah.

7/23/2023 – World Chess Day is celebrated annually on July 20. It is the date when FIDE was founded, 99 years ago. The idea to celebrate this was proposed by UNESCO, and its purpose is to raise awareness of the game and its benefits (improving cognitive skills, problem-solving abilities, and strategic thinking). In an article in a German science portal mathematics professor Christian Hesse, who has written quite extensively about chess, tells us how chess offers a profound intellectual duel with a surprising thrill factor. | Image Süleyman Kayaalp

6/18/2023 – ‘Chess4refugees’ was the motto of the Emanuel Lasker Society Chess Culture Day, which took place a week ago in Hamburg. The event kicked off with a simultaneous exhibition given by Dr. Richard Lutz and Dr. Helmut Pfleger (final result: 20-5). In the evening, the chairman of the Emanuel Lasker Society, Thomas Weischede, handed over a symbolic cheque for €5,000 to the UN Refugee Aid and a lively panel discussion about 40 years of chess history followed with Frederic Friedel, Prof. Christian Hesse and Dr. Helmut Pfleger. | Photos: Nadja Wittmann (ChessBase)

5/24/2023 – In recent years there has been a revival of interest in the "old masters". Those who study the subject intensively, as Frank Hoffmeister does in his work "Chess Theory from Stamma to Steinitz, 1735-1894", will find that the ideas of the "old ones" are surprisingly young. Review and interview with the author.

11/26/2022 – Garry Kasparov was the eight of the twelve World Chess Champions whom Frederic met. In our new weekly series he tells us how he met and befriended the top players, and the adventures they experienced together. Frederic has written a new book, together with Professor Christian Hesse, with fascinating chess stories from the last 50 years. It appeared (first in German) in October.

11/19/2022 – Garry Kasparov was the eight of the twelve World Chess Champions whom Frederic met. In our new weekly series he tells us how he met and befriended the top players, and the adventures they experienced together. Frederic has written a new book, together with Professor Christian Hesse, with fascinating chess stories from the last 50 years. It appeared (first in German) in October.

11/12/2022 – Anatoly Karpov was the sixth of the twelve World Chess Champions whom Frederic met. In our new weekly series he tells us how he met and befriended the top players, and the adventures they experienced together. Frederic has written a new book, together with Professor Christian Hesse, with fascinating chess stories from the last 50 years. It appeared (first in German) in October.

10/22/2022 – Bobby Fischer was the fifth of the twelve World Chess Champions whom Frederic met. In our new weekly series he tells us how he met and befriended the top players, and the adventures they experienced together. Frederic has written a new book, together with Professor Christian Hesse, with fascinating chess stories from the last 50 years. It appeared (first in German) in October. | Foto: YURIKO NAKAO/ REUTERS

10/8/2022 – Boris Spassky was the fourth of the twelve World Chess Champions whom Frederic met. In our new weekly series he tells us how he met and befriended the top players, and the adventures they experienced together. Frederic has written a new book, together with Professor Christian Hesse, with fascinating chess stories from the last 50 years. It appeared (first in German) in October.

10/1/2022 – Mikhail Tal was the third of the twelve World Chess Champions whom Frederic met. In our new weekly series he tells us how he met and befriended the top players, and the adventures they experienced together. Frederic has written a new book, together with Professor Christian Hesse, with fascinating chess stories from the last 50 years. It will appear (first in German) in October.

9/24/2022 – Mikhail Botvinnik was the second of the twelve World Chess Champions whom Frederic met. In our new weekly series he tells us how he met and befriended the top players, and the adventures they experienced together. Frederic has written a new book, together with Professor Christian Hesse, with fascinating chess stories from the last 50 years. It will appear (first in German) in October.

9/11/2022 – Max Euwe was the first of the twelve World Chess Champions whom Frederic met in the late before and during his involvement with ChessBase. In our new weekly series he tells us how he met and befriended the top players, and the adventures they experienced together. Frederic has written a new book, together with Professor Christian Hesse, with fascinating chess stories from the last 50 years. It will appear (first in German) in October.

7/19/2022 – Fifty years ago, after the disaster he suffered in game one, Bobby Fischer was on the verge of abandoning the entire event and returning home. The challenger continued his vigorous protest, and when his demands were not met, Fischer did not turn up for game two. He was forfeited and the score was 0-2. Bobby booked a flight back to New York, but practically at the very last moment decided to play game three – in an isolated ping-pong room!

5/2/2022 – Can you imagine a chess book, written by a master, which contains exactly one chess diagram, and the notation of a single 17-move game? And that you would not be able to put it down? That is what happens with this unique work, written by chess master Asa Hoffmann, with his wife Ginny. Asa has spent a lifetime hustling game in the clubs, parks and streets of New York, and his account of his days there is absolutely compelling.

6/17/2021 – How many different games of chess are possible? Everyone knows it's a very, very large number. It can be written down in seconds, using just a few digits, is unimaginably huge. Unimaginable? The great scientist Enrico Fermi recommended that we at least try to understand very large numbers, to estimate what they entail. Mathematics professor Christian Hesse attempts to do this for the number of chess games. You will be stunned!

5/21/2021 – It was a two-part task: from the reactions of students to a Zen master's whispered hints, they try to deduce which piece he is thinking of. In the second part you have to solve a chess study with a uniquely different drawing strategy. Very strong players all over the world joined in our experiment – most failed to solve the Logical. Here at last are the solutions – both of them.

5/5/2021 – Two students are studying a chess position. A Zen master watches and tells them that one of the pieces will play a very deep move. "Which one?" the students want to know. The Zen master whispers the piece type to one student and the colour to the other. From their reactions they are able to deduce which piece it is. You can help us in a book project by solving the problem. And hopefully have some fun in the process.

11/28/2020 – Emanuel Lasker, the second official World Chess Champion, used to play Bridge with his brother Berthold in coffee houses in Berlin at the end of the 19th century. He was also interested in Lasca, Go, Pokerette and Whistette — but, luckily for chess enthusiasts, he ended up dedicating his life to the royal game. Columnist Siegfried Hornecker presents the German’s endgame studies, plus a controversy surrounding an adjourned game which could have led to Lasker giving up on chess.