9/1/2019 – The eleven rounds of the Sinquefield Cup have already been incorporated into the latest FIDE rating list, published today. World Champion Magnus Carlsen continues to reign supreme at number one in the world rankings with 2876 Elo points, and Fabiano Caruana (2812) and Ding Liren (2811) remain in second and third places respectively. The gaps have narrowed, however: Carlsen and Caruana each lost 6 Elo points in the Sinquefield Cup, while Ding Liren ticked up the same amount. | Pictured: Garry Kasparov gives remarks at the Sinquefield Cup prize giving, one of five players in this frame who are or have been over 2800. | Photo: Austin Fuller / Grand Chess Tour

8/1/2019 – World Champion Magnus Carlsen hit an Elo rating of 2882 in May 2014. Five years later, he's back at that exact same number on the official August list, and arguably stronger than ever, following a string of successes in the first seven months of 2019. Alireza Firouzja and Jeffrey Xiong are two top Juniors now over 2700, and Ju Wenjun has narrowed the gap between herself and Hou Yifan to 59 points. | Photo: Justin Kellar / Grand Chess Tour

7/26/2019 – Really? Game of the year? You heard it right! After an opening mistake from Vidit Gujrathi, Nico Georgiadis turned on beast mode and made it to an endgame a pawn up. However, instead of a routine piece capture, he had a chance to end the game with a spectacular piece sacrifice! Vidit survived by the scruff of his neck, and is now joined at the top by Sam Shankland, who produced a Sicilian miniature consisting of temporary piece and exchange sacrifices to down Maghsoodloo in only 26 moves. Friday is the tournament's rest day, so play resumes on Saturday with blitz!

7/8/2019 – This is one of the most elegant chess problems we have ever seen. It was composed by the master, Pal Benko when he was just fifteen. Five pieces, four on their original squares, and the task is to force mate in three moves. That is quite difficult: Bobby Fischer failed to find the solution in half an hour. Can you do better – and can you find a correction for the minor dual that was found in the problem? You can win a nice prize if you do.

7/1/2019 – Our monthly look at the FIDE ratings for July2019 with a focus on the outcome of the Women's Candidates tournament won by 20-year old Russian phenom Aleksandra Goryachkina (pictured). In blitz, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave has taken the #1 spot away from World Champion Magnus Carlsen thanks to his Norway Chess blitz win. And 58-year old GM Igors Rausis continues his improbable climb up the raking list by bashing much weaker players. | Photo: Eteri Kublashvili

6/12/2019 – Round ten of the Women's Candidates Tournaments in Kazan finished with three draws and a single decisive game — Alexandra Kosteniuk took down Valentina Gunina with the white pieces. Meanwhile, in the crucial duel of the day, Kateryna Lagno could not overcome clear leader Aleksandra Goryachkina, which means the youngster kept her 2½-point lead over her compatriot with only four rounds to go. | Photo: Anastasiya Karlovich

6/3/2019 – Our monthly look at the FIDE ratings for June 2019 starts with World Champion Magnus Carlsen, who has a chance to break his own all-time rating record this month. That would go a long way towards cementing a claim on the greatest-of-all-time honours. Pictured, however, is Cuban-born Leinier Dominguez, who now plays for the USA, and after a long hiatus is now knocking on the door of the Top 10 at 2760, just 8 points shy of his personal peak rating. That was set back in May 2014, when he briefly hit 2768. Do you know who else was at his peak that month five years ago? Magnus Carlsen! | Photo: Justin Kellar / Saint Louis Chess Club

6/1/2019 – The 2019 Women's Candidates Tournament started on Friday in Kazan. All four games of round one were drawn, but a couple of them could have easily finished decisively. Valentina Gunina faltered in time trouble against Kateryna Lagno, but later showed great resourcefulness to save the half point, while Aleksandra Goryachkina missed a couple of chances against Alexandra Kosteniuk. | Photo: Anastasya Karlovich

5/15/2019 – More than 15,000 videos, from training and analyses by top players to interviews, reports and shows featuring Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, Wesley So and many other top players - the ChessBase video store has it all. Come and get it! | Drawing: ChessBase

5/13/2019 – Last week saw the finale of the 2018/19 season of the 4NCL in Great Britain. Guildford 1 was dominant and won all bouts during the season. Second was the new team from the Isle of Man: chess.com Manx Liberty, a team that two years ago left the German Bundesliga ("Buexit"?). | Photos: 4NCL

5/4/2019 – Australian Grandmaster and Ph.D. in Economics DAVID SMERDON recently published a thorough analysis regarding how female participation rates differ across the world. The results are surprising: countries that rank higher in gender equality do not have a higher rate of female participation — quite the opposite, actually! The author suggests some hypotheses to explain this phenomenon. A must read. | Pictured: Judit and Sofia Polgar in 2017. | Photo: Alina l'Ami

5/3/2019 – The month of May is only slightly quieter than April with wide-range of events from the Grand Chess Tour's first African foray to the new FIDE Grand Prix, and the Candidates tournament for the Women's World Championship. You'll find all of these events and more covered in our live games broadcast area Live.ChessBase.com and we'll also be providing News coverage as well. First up is the Russian Team Championship, which is already underway in Sochi

5/1/2019 – World Champion Magnus Carlsen has gained 40 Elo points in the 27 games of his last three tournaments. But the Grenke Chess Classic unfortunately did not make the cut-off for FIDE's May ratings. Still, at 2861 he's put considerable distance between himself and #2 Fabiano Caruana. Hou Yifan and Women's World Champion Ju Wenjun retain a huge lead in the Women's World rankings as the upcoming Candidates tournament for the next challenger is set to start at the end of May. | Photo: Georgios Souleidis

4/26/2019 – As in the previous year we decided to abandon our decades-long tradition of tricking our readers with false stories on April 1st. For those who are disappointed by this decision we brought you a really fun (and fully genuine) task proposed by Pal Benko for this auspicious day. Initially there was an error in the task, but after we corrected that we received valid solutions. The best came from Mihály Berkics from Hungary, who receives a special prize.

4/3/2019 – April ratings came out like clockwork on Sunday night. Our own internal PlayerBase update — not so much. Apologies for the delay in our monthly tour through the Elo lists. Of special interest on the April list: 28 players from the Top 100 exhibited rating swings of +/- 10 Elo points or more — a rare occurrence. Pictured: Ju Wenjun, David Anton Guijarro, Jan Krejci, winners at the Prague Challengers. | Photo: Macauley Peterson

3/28/2019 – FIDE has announced in a press release the exact dates and the final field for the Women's Candidates Tournament in Kazan. Yifan Hou is not playing and Aleksandra Goryachkina will take her place. The tournament starts on May 29th. A brief history of the Women's World Championship.

3/10/2019 – Two devastating attacks gave the Chinese women a crucial victory over the defending champions from Russia, who now need other teams to cooperate — by beating China — in order for them to take gold. Meanwhile, in the open section, Russia took down Kazakhstan despite Sergei Karjakin's loss on board one and are still the sole leaders. England and India tied their direct encounter and are the only chasers, two match points behind. | Pictured: Lei Tingjie | Photo: David Llada / Official site

3/8/2019 – Courtesy our friends at New in Chess: GM MATTHEW SADLER gives his assessment of ChessBase's tenth volume in the Master Class series on the sixth World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik. Sadler annotates Botvinnik's win in an English Opening over Bent Larsen and concludes this Master Class makes for "a very interesting and entertaining DVD!"