10/28/2021 – When talking about ancient games you might have an image of a couple of dozen at most, ranging from chess and its precursors, to backgammon, Go, and a few more, but humanity has long had a passion for a good game. This passion has spanned across the globe with thousands of games uncovered, but no way to learn how to play them...until now. (image: papyrus dated c.1200 BC)

10/27/2021 – Top German player, IM Elisabeth Pähtz, was recently invited to speak at the Digital Demo Day in Germany, in English, where she was asked to discuss the application of quantum computing on chess. She was later interviewed about her life as a chess player with questions on how it compares to Queen's Gambit, but the key question she was asked was: can quantum computing solve chess?

9/7/2021 – The pioneering ‘NC World Masters 2021’ saw Vladimir Kramnik and Vishy Anand playing No-Castling chess — an interesting experiment. Kramnik analysed the games together with Deep Mind experts Ulrich Paquet and Nedad Tomasev. The Russian explains motifs and ideas in three instructive videos.

12/21/2020 – For long-time chess fans this might already sound like a tiring question. But for newcomers and those still invested in finding out how far computers can go in terms of solving the game, this remains to be a fascinating subject. British daily newspaper The Guardian recently published a 6-minute video — featuring Garry Kasparov, Maurice Ashley, Daniel Gormally and Alexandra Botez — exploring the issue.

10/9/2020 – Modifying the existing rules for chess to make it more dynamic or decisive, needs years of experience and a large numbers of games if we are to assess the quality and appeal of any new variant. The company DeepMind has used their AI technology to evaluate nine variants proposed by former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik in a much shorter period of time. Here are their findings for "Torpedo Chess", where pawns can move two squares forward from anywhere.

9/30/2020 – Modifying the existing rules for chess to make it more dynamic or decisive, is a non-trivial task: you need years of experience and large numbers of people playing new versions in order to assess the quality and appeal of any new variant. Former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik has proposed new variants, and DeepMind has used their AI technology to evaluate them in a much shorter period of time. Here are their findings for No-castling, Pawn one square and Stalemate=win chess.

4/9/2020 – Chess is the sport least affected by the current crisis and this week two fascinating computer games, featuring the Sicilian Keres Attack, will be discussed in the Fast & Furious show. Live from 17:00 UTC (19:00 CEST / 15:00 EDT) and free to watch on-demand for a limited time (or forever for ChessBase Premium account holders. To chat when Robert is live, please visit videos.chessbase.com/live or login via Playchess for Windows. In the diagram, it's Black to play!

2/23/2020 – Just under twenty-three years ago Garry Kasparov made history by losing a match against a computer named Deep Blue. Today smartphones are capable of running chess engines as powerful as IBM's giant mainframe in 1997. More significantly, thanks to recent progress in artificial intelligence, machines are learning and exploring the game for themselves. So what does the legendary World Champion think about the progress of AI in chess, and its effect on humanity in general? He told Wired Magazine that he has made his peace with AI.

12/12/2019 – Just imagine you had a chess computer — the auto-sensor kind. Would someone who had no knowledge of the game be able to work it out, just by moving pieces. Or imagine you are a very powerful computer. By looking at millions of images of chess games would you be able to figure out the rules and learn to play the game proficiently? The answer is yes — because that has just been done by Google's Deep Mind team. For chess and 76 other games. It is interesting, and slightly disturbing. | Graphic: DeepMind

9/18/2019 – The expression is used to convey the idea that someone’s work and achievements were only possible thanks to the predecessors they build upon, and this is unquestionably true of Fat Fritz. You may think you know when or where the tale starts, but what if we told you that it all really started with a visionary computer scientist 60 years ago in 1959? | Photo: IBM

6/16/2019 – AlphaZero changed the chess world and the way chess players think. But how does the program think and what makes its chess so special? In their book "Game Changer" Matthew Sadler and Natasha Regan give answers and present a lot of games by AlphaZero. Carl Portman liked the book so much that he invited Sadler and Regan for a simul and a lecture about AlphaZero. Which was instructive and fun. | Carl Portman

5/20/2019 – This program thinks like no other chess engine in the world. Inspired by the ideas of AlphaZero and Leela, the authors set out to implement a "Monte Carlo Tree Search". The result: Komodo 13 MCTS – an engine which looks for candidate moves in an incredible new way, and finds moves no other engine can. It enhances the traditional brute force engine that has reached well over 3400 points on the Elo scale.

2/18/2019 – In the first two sections of this series, originally published in Der Spiegel, Europe's largest (and most influential) news portal, Frederic Friedel described his decades-long involvement in computer chess. He was commissioned to make the story personal, and in part three he describes his encounter with the latest twist in this area of research: artificial intelligence and self-learning machines that are playing at the very highest levels of the game. Where are we headed and what will the future bring?

2/8/2019 – Friday at 17:00 UTC (18:00 CET, Noon EST) Daniel King will go on air on playchess.com. You can watch the episode live for free! All the usual puzzles, games and instruction will be on offer. Puzzle and the live video...

2/5/2019 – The recent World Championship in London was closely followed by Europe's largest (and most influential) news portal. Der Spiegel had live coverage and game commentary. They also posted a three-part series on the history of chess programming, authored by Frederic Friedel, emeritus editor of this news page. In the early 1980s Frederic was instrumental to bringing computer chess to the attention of the German public, and in 1987 he co-founded ChessBase. Here is part one of his series.

1/31/2019 – AlphaZero became a worldwide sensation when it defeated the world's strongest chess engine in a long match just hours after being fed the rules of the game. At the time, Garry Kasparov said that it had shaken chess to its roots. In the opinion of Matthew Sadler and Natasha Regan, the authors of the book 'Game Changer: AlphaZero's Groundbreaking Chess Strategies and the Promise of AI' this all-new silicon monster developed by DeepMind has helped us discover that there is lots of fresh potential in chess. ADITYA PAI spoke with the authors about their book, the impact AlphaZero has (and will have) on our royal game and whether chess will be solved one day in the light of such technological advancements.

1/30/2019 – Until now, chess programs mostly worked according to the so-called alpha-beta pruning search algorithm. The spectacular Deep Mind project Alpha Zero is based on the Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS). The Komodo developers, too, are now increasingly relying on this method — with success. STEPHEN OLIVER PLATZ explains the difference and shows the progress. | Photo: (Komodo Dragon) Ryan Vaarsi, CC BY 2.0

1/15/2019 – Courtesy our friends At New in Chess: GM MATTHEW SADLER on books looks at two of Simon Williams' recent video series. Plus, what would AlphaZero think about the World Championship match that was held at a stone’s throw from DeepMind’s headquarters in London? Sadler and NATASHA REGAN, authors of Game Changer: AlphaZero’s Groundbreaking Chess Strategies and the Promise of AI, provide a glimpse.

1/11/2019 – Friday at 18:00 CET (17:00 UT) Daniel King will go on air on playchess.com. You can watch the episode live for free! All the usual puzzles, games and instruction will be on offer. Puzzle and the live video...

12/14/2018 – Friday at 18:00 CET (17:00 UT) Daniel King will go on air on playchess.com. You can watch the episode live for free. All the usual puzzles, games and instruction will be on offer, plus Daniel will be looking at the AlphaZero games vs Stockfish. Puzzle and the live video...

12/13/2018 – The Kasparov Chess Foundation (KCF) and The Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis (CCSCSL) have run the very successful Young Stars program for 'Team USA' for the past six years. Meet the latest crop of talented kids from the recent New York training session. Plus, In a new article, Garry Kasparov reminds us that the recent World Championship match did not represent "a contest between the two strongest chess players on the planet, only the strongest humans." Brute force programs have long exceeded human playing strength. But that does not end the historical role of chess as a laboratory of cognition. A new pure AI system has superseded even those programs. Kasparov evaluates AlphaZero's play in Science Magazine and gives a political interview in the prestigious magazine The New Yorker. | Photo DeepMind Technologies, Igor Khodzinskiy

12/7/2018 – Friday at 18:00 CET (17:00 UT) Daniel King will go on air on playchess.com. You can watch the episode live for free. All the usual puzzles, games and instruction will be on offer, plus Daniel will be looking at the AlphaZero games vs Stockfish. Puzzle and the live video...

12/7/2018 – It was a long time coming, but the wait is over. After nearly a full year, being ping-ponged from one peer reviewer to the next, the final paper on AlphaZero is out, shedding light on a number of hitherto unknown or misunderstood elements in its construction, not to mention some clarifications and corrections. These include sample code to help implement their work and all the games of the match against Stockfish, of which 20 were specially chosen by GM Matthew Sadler. | Graphic: Deep Mind

10/15/2018 – We are only weeks away from the start of the World Championship in London, where Magnus Carlsen meets his latest challenger, the American Fabiano Caruana, and the fans wait impatiently for this impending train collision. It's a match which a priori promises great emotions and high-quality games because we will witness the indisputable numbers 1 and 2 of the world ranking. Grandmaster Miguel Illescas reflects on AlphaZero and wonders if secret preparation tools could make the difference. | Photo: Peón de Rey