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 – It is not very common to have an article focused solely on one specific square. Today, we will make an exception. We will speak about the d5-square, or rather about the weakness that often forms on this square in various lines of the Sicilian defence.

4/21/2024 – Gukesh D, at 17, is a win away from becoming the next World Chess Championship challenger. The Indian prodigy beat Alireza Firouzja on Saturday to go into the final round of the Candidates Tournament as the sole leader. Three experienced contenders, who are also the top seeds in Toronto, stand a half point behind: Ian Nepomniachtchi, Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana. Caruana joined the chasing pack by beating Praggnanandhaa R with the black pieces. | Photo: FIDE / Michal Walusza

4/18/2024 – An exciting round of chess saw Ian Nepomniachtchi winning a rollercoaster game against Vidit Gujrathi to regain the sole lead at the Candidates Tournament in Toronto. Nepo stands a half point ahead of Gukesh D, the former co-leader, and Hikaru Nakamura, who obtained a remarkable victory over direct contender Praggnanandhaa R. With three rounds to go, we can expect more thrilling games in the fierce fight to become the challenger in the next match for the World Championship. | Photo: FIDE / Michal Walusza

4/16/2024 – We have seen them, haven’t we? The howlers? Amateurs and professionals alike in the aftermath of a game, trying to explain their blunder, shaking their heads in disbelief, scratching their brows, sighing while trying to come up with a rational explanation. Blunders happen because humans are fallible and ill-founded impulses prove stronger than the ability to abort them – as is explained in this scientific paper.

4/16/2024 – U.S. grandmasters Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura collected vital wins in round 10 of the Candidates Tournament, as they now stand a half point behind co-leaders Ian Nepomniachtchi and Gukesh D. Nakamura got the better of a struggling Nijat Abasov, while Caruana defeated Alireza Firouzja out of a double-edged Sicilian Najdorf. The participants will get rest days on Tuesday and Friday, as there are only four rounds to go in Toronto. | Photo: FIDE / Michal Walusza

4/10/2024 – Switzerland is a country with a long and rich chess tradition. Living up to its chess heritage and role as a home of the International Chess Federation, the Swiss threw a big party for chess on Sunday, April 7 and celebrated the 100th birthday of FIDE. | Photos: Stev Bonhage

4/4/2024 – Alpha Zero has revolutionised chess programming. The programme taught itself chess by playing against itself and storing its training knowledge in a neural network. All programmes have followed suit with this technique. Roger Lorenz uses a simple example to show how neural networks work and how they can be trained.

3/27/2024 – The conference “Chess in Education - Methodology and perspectives” will take place on May 18, 2024 via online. This activity is organised by the Armenian State Pedagogical University (ASPU), the Chess Scientific Research Institute and the Kasparov Chess Foundation, and led by GM Smbat Lputian. These conferences are significant because they provide a platform to explore the relationship between chess, cognitive science and education.

3/26/2024 – Yochanan Afek, International Grandmaster of chess composition, has been providing us with articles for decades. He lives in Amsterdam, where Sagar Shah caught up with him and conducted a 90-minute interview, discussing some of the great problem compositions that we have from him. We have the puzzles in a replay board, where you can follow the discussion, using the built-in engine to answer residual questions you might have. Very entertaining and instructive.

3/25/2024 – Dutch IM Robert Ris is a much sought-after coach in his home country and is also a very prolific author. Mario Ziegler took a look at his latest FritzTrainer — one focused on tactics — for Glarean Magazine. “Calculation Training - Sharpen your Game” is a nice collection of new tactics exercises. The reviewer concluded: “Robert Ris has a pleasant style of presentation and responds to the reader’s probable solution suggestions”.

3/18/2024 – Chess is a really fun game to play, but equally enjoyable is solving artificial positions – problems and studies – many that defy the imagination. In this ChessBase Challenge instalment, we have a set of puzzles that can challenge your brain. Can you solve the position? Can you find the mind-boggling strategy that is required to reach the goal? You have a week to do so. Then we will provide the full solution.

3/13/2024 – The third edition of the American Cup kicked off at the World Chess Hall of Fame in Saint Louis. Each match saw the contenders playing a classical game and a rapid game on opening day. In the open, only Fabiano Caruana scored back-to-back wins (over Grigoriy Oparin), which means he only needs a draw on Wednesday to advance to the next stage in the Champions Bracket. Meanwhile, three out of four matches finished with 2–0 scores in the women’s section, with Nazi Paikidze, Alice Lee and Gulrukhbegim Tokhirjonova obtaining consecutive wins on the first day of action. | Photo: Austin Fuller

3/11/2024 – Chess is a fun game – ask the countless millions who play it. But apart from the contest at the board, there are additional forms for you to enjoy, like chess puzzles and studies. Many of them defy the imagination. Today we start a new column, and have three deceptively simple – but enchanting – examples for you to solve. The sources and solutions will be provided in a week. Until then, have fun working things out all by yourself.

3/10/2024 – The ChessBase opening tutorials are a compact, quick introduction to opening theory. They will soon be available in full in the new ChessBase book format. Volume one on the open games (1.e4 e5) has already been published. In an interview with Stefan Liebig, chess trainer and grandmaster Dorian Rogozenco explains the concept: "Memorising variations is a thing of the past". | Photos: German Chess Federation

3/9/2024 – Jaroslav Svoboda, the owner of Czech Inn Hotels and operator of the Hotel Don Giovanni, the venue of the Prague Chess Festival, is a passionate chess fan. In a short interview he reveals that he learnt to play chess rather late in life, talks about his friendship to Vlastimil Hort and explains why Bobby Fischer is not an ideal role model. | Photo: The Hotel Don Giovanni

3/2/2024 – Two games ended decisively in round 3 of the strong Shenzhen Masters. Yu Yangyi became the sole leader by beating Vladislav Artemiev with the white pieces. Arjun Erigaisi (pictured), meanwhile, bounced back from his loss against Bu Xiangzhi with a fine victory over Anish Giri. | Photo: Liang Ziming

3/1/2024 – Did you know that your brain makes up just 2% of your body’s weight, but accounts for 20% of its energy use. During a chess game you can burn a lot of calories by just thinking. Intel project manager (and avid chess researcher) Ashwin Subramanian uses the latest monitoring data to analyse the process. He says it is critical for all players to “eat right”. And to also do specific breathing exercises, which have measurably improved his play.

2/25/2024 – MegaBase 2024 is Chess History in action. Regularly updated every month, the Main Database currently offers 10.6 million games, many of them annotated. In the first part of his review he dealt with the treatment of chess in the 21st Century in the MegaBase. Here he offers a rare discovery from a world championship match that fell into oblivion.

2/25/2024 – Vasily Smyslov had this to say about beauty in chess: “Perhaps chess and music are drawn together by laws of harmony and beauty that are difficult to formulate and difficult to grasp”. This quote and a fascinating endgame from the Candidates Tournament in Yekaterinburg prompted GM Sundararajan Kidambi to consider new ways to approach a chess position. The endgame was played in the game between Wang Hao (pictured) and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. | Photo: FIDE / Lennart Ootes

2/23/2024 – Around the turn of the century, there was worldwide interest regarding chess confrontations between humans and computers. One of the last top-notch events featuring such a battle was seen in 2005, when three strong grandmasters played a match against three of the best engines in the world. In the end, Hydra, Junior and Fritz defeated Alexander Khalifman, Ruslan Ponomariov and Rustam Kasimdzhanov by an 8-4 score. The match took place in Bilbao, and saw Ponomariov beating Fritz in a memorable encounter.

2/8/2024 – Chess960 or Freestyle chess will soon be the centre of attention. The 1st German Chess960 Championship will take place in Berlin, Germany, on 9 February and in the German spa Weissenhaus at the Baltic see the world's best chess players will compete in the Freestyle Chess G.O.A.T. Challenge. But who invented this form of chess? Chess historian Hans D. Post has been searching the archives. | Picture: Philip Julius van Zuylen van Nijevelt, who probably was the first to come up with the idea of Chess960 or Freestyle chess.

2/7/2024 – In his World Chess Championship match against Ian Nepomniachtchi, which made him the 17th World Champion in the history of chess, Chinese Grandmaster Ding Liren won the sixth game by threatening a checkmate with rook and knight. Let us see how that checkmate was utilized in endgame studies. | Photo: Midjourney

1/30/2024 – In the final instalment of the problem-solving experiment, we invited Prof. Dr Vera Spillner to solve the unorthodox chess puzzles, present in the Dec. 31 article! We have already seen a grandmaster, and a former world problem champion solving the problems, so how about a chess amateur and enthusiast? Read on more to find out!