1/15/2019 – 12 years, 7 months and 17 days — that's the age of the new second youngest ever, GM-elect D. Gukesh. He's also the 60th grandmaster from India! How did this youngster achieve it? On the surface, it looks like an extremely smooth journey where Gukesh achieved one milestone after another. "But when you delve deeper", writes SAGAR SHAH, "you see tremendous amount of sacrifices, grit, determination and much more from not just the youngster and his entire family". | Photo: David Llada

12/23/2018 – Two Indians pre-teeners came very close to breaking Sergey Karjakin's record of the youngest GM in history. Sergey made his final norm back in 2002 at the age of 12 years and 7 months. Praggnanandhaa and Gukesh were the boys that were within a hair of bettering that. Pragg missed the target by three months, and yesterday Gukesh, who had a realistic chance to complete his third GM norm at the Sunway Sitges International 2018, narrowly missed it. In the meantime 11-year-old Bharath Subramaniyam made his first IM norm. | All photos: Rupali Mullick

12/16/2018 – Fan favourite super-GM Vassily Ivanchuk lost to 12-year-old Sreeshwan Maralakshikari from India. The powerful youth are likely to remain one of the chief storylines in Sitges, a town just down the Mediterranean coast from Barcelona. In attendance are the top players in the world ages 11-14 — all from India — plus the European number one under-15 IM Vincent Keymer from Germany. | Pictured: The playing hall on the eve of battle | Photo: Sunway Sitges International Chess Festival

12/11/2018 – YAICP — Yet Another Indian Chess Prodigy! His name is D. Gukesh and he stems from — where else — Tamil Nadu, the home state of Vishy Anand. Gukesh was born on May 29, 2006, which means he is currently twelve and a half years old. On Saturday the lad scored his second GM norm in a closed round-robin in Paraćin, Serbia. Gukesh has a live rating of 2490 and from Thursday onwards will be playing in the next GM Open. Will he be able to break Sergey Karjakin's record? This will be his last chance. | Photo: Nebojsa Radosavljevic

9/29/2018 – A new round of Fischer and Capablanca Memorial tournaments took place in Anogia, Crete from September 11th to 19th. Grandmaster DANIEL FERNANDEZ was there and has annotated nine games for your enjoyment. | Photo: Tango7174 (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Wikimedia Commons

5/17/2018 – Nigel Short once said, "Modern chess is too much concerned with things like pawn structure. Forget it, checkmate ends the game!" The art of checkmating our opponent is something that we learn when we are young. But once we know what checkmate is all about, we hardly go back to that subject. In order to ensure that you polish your art of pattern recognition related to mating attacks, Daniel King has come out with his latest Powerplay DVD — Powerplay 26. It's named as checkmate challenge — essential knowledge. In order to tell you what this DVD is all about, IM Sagar Shah takes you on a journey of three tales. Three tales of mating attacks by players of three different generations!