11/21/2022 – The World Team Chess Championship kicked off in Jerusalem on Sunday. With a new ‘slow rapid’ format, the event saw the teams from each of the two pools playing two matches on the first day of action. Pool A saw China and Ukraine winning both their matches, while only Azerbaijan managed the same feat in Pool B. Four out of six squads in each group will move on to the quarterfinals. | Pictured: France’s Laurent Fressinet (currently on 2 out of 2) | Photo: Mark Livshitz

1/6/2021 – The Pacific Northwest Chess Center (PNWCC) wants to make chess more popular and wants to give chess players opportunities to play and to improve. Before corona the PNWCC was organising a lot of live events, during the pandemic the Chess Center organises attractive and strong online tournaments. At the end of last year, the Winter of Washington tournament was played, a nine-round online tournament. Igor Kovalenko, Levan Pantsulaia and Haik Martirosyan shared first with 7.0/9 each.

12/28/2019 – Another eventful chess year is behind us, with great events and tournaments, impressive personalities and fantastic chess games. Help us choose the player of the year, the female player of the year, the game of the year, the combination of the year and the endgame of the year in our annual ChessBase reader poll. Next up: the Combination of the Year...

8/1/2019 – In honour of the Soviet-Latvian World Champion Mikhail Tal, a blitz tournament and a rapid tournament were held in Riga. Vladimir Fedoseev won the rapid with a score of 9½/11. David Navara was second and Rasmus Svane finished third. Igor Kovalenko won the blitz tournament. Both featured a live commentary webcast courtesy European ChessTV. | Photos: TalChessMemorial.com

4/9/2019 – The last weekend of Germany's Premier League, (a.k.a. the Bundesliga), brought the perennial champions OSG Baden-Baden another success. With a 7-1 victory against Düsseldorf, Baden-Baden (pictured) once again became German Team Champion, securing their 13th title in 14 years. 14-year old German talent Vincent Keymer narrowly missed his third and final GM norm. | Photo: Georgios Souleidis

3/4/2019 – It was an eventful weekend in the Bundesliga, as leaders and clear favourites OSG Baden-Baden lined up their best squad but ended up giving up two crucial match points, allowing SG Solingen to catch up with them in the standings. It was giant-killing season in Berlin for Peter Leko, Gata Kamsky and Anton Korobov, who took down top-ten stars Fabiano Caruana, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Vishy Anand. Games, standings and great video content from the organisers below. | Photo: Georgios Souleidis

8/18/2018 – The Riga Tech University Open from August 6th to 12th was won by a pair of Armenian grandmasters: Robert Hovhannisyan and Manuel Petrosyan, each scoring 7½ / 9. Hovhannisyan was undefeated with six wins; Petrosyan scored a whopping seven wins, one loss and a draw. Among the trailing pack on 7 / 9 were the young and talented Russian GM Andrey Esipenko, and the German GM Rasmus Svane. | Photos: Tournament page

6/20/2017 – While a strong start is always desirable, it is how you finish that matters in a tournament. Ask Georgian GM Baadur Jobava who started with 2 losses, but finished second after seven straight wins, or Russian talent Vladimir Fedoseev who stumbled midway but came in third. Still, it was the class act by Maxim Matlakov, who was steady as she goes all the way, and ended a deserved 2017 European Individual Champion. Final report with GM analyses.

1/10/2016 – With a strong finish Igor Kovalenko became sole winner of the Keres Memorial - ACP Open in Tallinn. He started the last day with 6.5/8, sharing second place with four other players. But after winning against Jan-Krzysztof Duda and Peter Svidler he only needed a draw against Boris Gelfand in the final round to take sole first place with 9.0/11.

7/23/2015 – Grandmaster Igor Kovalenko, who was born in 1988 in Ukraine, but now plays for Latvia - he was Latvian Champion in 2013 and 2014 - has been in good shape recently: in May 2015 he had a rating of 2650, now he has a virtual rating of 2702. At the MetLife Najdorf Memorial in Warsaw he gained 20 points by winning with 8.0/9 and showing a superb performance.