04.02.2010– Once a month a world-renowned tournament is conducted in Budapest. It provides budding players with an opportunity to test their skills and achieve title norms. Carlsen, Sutovsky, Milov, Radjabov, Sofia Polgar, Nakamura have passed through the grinding mill of the tournament that has been running for 17 years now, organised by a former chemist in the Hungarian army. Big pictorial report.
04.02.2010– ... has become Alexei Shirov's trademark. In the tournament in Wijk aan
Zee, which Shirov started with five wins in a row, the 37-year-old chess
magician from Riga once more justified this reputation.
In many middlegame positions he managed to put his opponents under
pressure with inventive attacking play. And even in the endgame, one
always has to take into account that Shirov might set the board on fire.
This happened in the eleventh round in his game against Vladimir Kramnik, where he played 35.c5! in the diagram position. GM Karsten Müller has analysed the endgame for ChessBase Magazine Online.
03.02.2010– The leaders, with 7.0/9 points, are Sergei Movsesian, Francisco Vallejo Pons, Michael Adams and Jan Gustafsson. The Gibtelecom Chess Festival is being held in Gibraltar, which is basically a giant rock on the Spanish Mediterranean coast (but a British overseas territory). In winter it is populated by chess players, who on a free day's outing got to know some of the native residents.
03.02.2010– Due to a problem with the server, or at least his connection to it, last Wednesday night's ChessBase presentation by Dennis Monokroussos was cut off practically from the very beginning. So we'll try it again this week at the usual hour: Wednesday night at 9 p.m. ET/Thursday morning at 3 a.m. CET. The hero of our narrative: Frederick Dewhurst Yates.
02.02.2010– From Christmas 2009 to New Year's day 2010 we published our yearly suite of chess puzzles. This time the theme was Revenge of the Humans
we presented problems that were designed to stump computers, but which at the
same time human beings were able to comprehend. Today we bring you the solutions
to the first five installments, with the rest to follow soon. Enjoy.