Shogdzhiev, 11, Beats Three 2600s in Serbia for a Second GM Norm
Eleven-year-old Roman Shogdzhiev has earned his second grandmaster norm at the 2026 Serbian Super Liga, playing top board for Partizan Belgrade. He scored 6/9…
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A Fourth-Tier Hamburg Team Goes to the European Club Cup
At the 2026 European Club Cup, most attention goes to the professional squads at the top. René Mandelbaum, who played for SK Weisse Dame Hamburg, wrote a…
Bayegan Pendik Win Club Cup as Giri Crushes Abdusattorov
Top seed Bayegan Pendik Chess Sports Club won the 2026 European Chess Club Cup by beating defending champion SuperChess Romania 3.5-2.5 in the final round. GM…
Bodhana Sivanandan, 11, Beats Polgar's 1988 Age Record for Female IM
At the 41st European Chess Club Cup in Budva, Montenegro, FM Bodhana Sivanandan completed the requirements for the International Master title on Friday. She…
Carlsen Headlines MOVE Cup: €300,000 Prize Fund, Betting Backer
The inaugural MOVE Cup, an eight-player rapid event in Barcelona on January 19-20, 2027, will be headlined by Magnus Carlsen. The prize fund is €300,000, and…
Three Teams Tied on 11 Points in the Open Before the Final Round
After round six of the European Club Cup in Budva, three teams share the lead in both sections going into Friday's final round. In the open, defending…
Novy Bor and SuperChess Meet in Round 6 With 10/10 Each
Two teams are left on a perfect 10/10 match points in the open section of the European Club Cup in Budva, and they now play each other. After five rounds, Novy…
Abdusattorov, Giri and Erdogmus All Lose in Club Cup Round 4
Round four of the 2026 European Chess Club Cup was hard on the big names. GMs Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Anish Giri and Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus all lost, to GMs Aydin…
Arturs Neiksans on Quitting Chess, Coaching Levy and Moving On
Few grandmasters have a path as crooked as Arturs Neiksans'. In a long ChessBase interview recorded during his first visit to the company's studio, the Latvian…
Eleven Teams Perfect After Round 3, Beer Sheva Slip Against Dunajska Streda
After three rounds of the European Club Cup, eleven teams share first place in the open section on 6/6 match points. Every team seeded first through twelfth is…
Murzin's Swindle Keeps Bayegan Pendik Clear After a Top-Board Loss
The favorites kept cruising in round two of the European Chess Club Cup, with GMs Wei Yi, Arjun Erigaisi and Richard Rapport among the stars to reach 2/2. The…
Favourites Sweep as Grandelius Falls on Day One of the European Club Cup
The 41st European Chess Club Cup began in Budva, Montenegro, on Saturday, and round one went much as the seedings said. The top three teams all won 6-0, even…
Sameh Meets Top Seed Kuandykuly After a 6/6 Start at the World U13
Egypt's IM Abdalrahman Sameh Mohamed has won all six of his games in the Under-13 Open at the 2026 World U7-U17 Championships in Roquetas de Mar, Spain. After…
Rafael Vaganian at 75: The Armenian Who Reached No. 4
Rafael Vaganian was born on 15 October 1951 in Yerevan, and turns 75 this week. His career spans the Soviet school, the post-Soviet scramble and a long second…
Fast Classical Debuts at a 721-Player Youth Worlds in Spain
The 2026 FIDE World Championships U7–U17 opened on October 13 in Roquetas de Mar, in Spain's Almería province, with 721 players from 82 countries. The event…
Roman Shogdzhiev, 11, Is One GM Norm From Mishra's Record
IM Roman Shogdzhiev, 11, scored his second GM norm on Monday in the Serbian Super League. He now needs one more norm and 29 rating points to pass GM Abhimanyu…
Europe in November: 199 Seniors Head to Usedom for Nine Days
European organizers have 330 tournaments on the November 2026 calendar, 145 of them classical and 185 rapid. The classical events below are the ones most worth…
Jumabayev Wins Fagernes as Gloeckler Secures a Second GM Norm
Kazakh grandmaster Rinat Jumabayev won the Fagernes International Autumn on tiebreak, finishing on 7½/10 as the only unbeaten player in the 62-player GM…
Munich 1936: The Chess Olympiad FIDE Never Recognised
Munich 1936 was staged by a federation that FIDE had shut out. ChessBase's retrospective revisits an event the Greater German Chess Federation called a Chess…
Viernheim Lead Baden-Baden on Board Points After Three Bundesliga Rounds
Two clubs won everything on the opening weekend of the German Bundesliga. SC Viernheim and OSG Baden-Baden each took 6 match points from three rounds, played…
Gloeckler, 14, Leads Fagernes on 6/7 With Three Rounds Left
Fourteen-year-old German IM Christian Gloeckler beat Austrian IM Lukas Dotzer in round seven of the Fagernes Autumn Tournament and moved to 6/7, keeping sole…
Svane's Second Olympiad Gold and Germany's Board-Prize History
Frederik Svane's second Olympiad gold puts him alongside a single predecessor: before him, only Dr Robert Hübner had won two individual golds for Germany. His…
Artemiev Beats Nakamura in the Final Round of Titled Tuesday
Hikaru Nakamura came to Titled Tuesday on October 6 as the first player to reach 3500 in Chess.com blitz, and he left it with a record of 3503 but without the…
Germany's Bronze Traces Back to Bernd Vökler's Chess Princes
Germany's bronze medal at the Samarkand Olympiad is its first for a men's team in 26 years. A feature in the Thüringer Allgemeine, republished by ChessBase,…
Larsen's Monte Carlo 1968 Win Over Gheorghiu, Move by Move
Bent Larsen is remembered for 1.b3 and for opening ideas his contemporaries thought odd. A ChessBase Master Class lesson on his strategy argues that this is…
Six Players Share the Lead After Two Rounds in Fagernes
Two rounds into the Fagernes International Autumn Tournament, six players share first place with perfect scores. The GM Swiss is running from 3 to 11 October…
Evren Ucok's $5 Million Bet on Young Chess Prodigies
Chess patrons usually fund a tournament or a federation. Turkish entrepreneur Evren Ucok has taken a different route. According to a ChessBase feature by FM…
Jon Speelman at 70: The Candidates Run Behind a Quiet Career
Grandmaster Jonathan Speelman turns 70 on 2 October 2026. ChessBase marks the birthday with a career review of a player who reached the Candidates semifinals,…
Craiova's 303-Player Rapid Tops Europe's September Fields
Of the 770 tournaments tracked across Europe in September, the largest was the Craiova Grand Prix Rapid 2026, with 303 players registered. It ran September 12…
Judit Polgar Drops a Game to Pietro's Community in Budapest
Judit Polgar's annual festival in Budapest has a habit of being comfortable for the host, so this year's result stands out. At the 12th Global Chess Festival,…
Bodhana Sivanandan, 11, Becomes Youngest WGM in History
England put its youngest player on top board at the Women's Olympiad in Samarkand, and Bodhana Sivanandan, aged 11, finished with 8/11 and the third norm she…
Total Chess Fills Its 24-Player Field With Six More Signings
The Total Chess World Championship Tour has completed its 24-player field for its Budapest pilot event, adding Levon Aronian, Liem Le, Jorden van Foreest,…
Freedom Holding Signs On as FIDE's Newest World Title Backer
Freedom Holding Corp. has signed on as General Partner of the 2026 FIDE World Championship Match, putting a NASDAQ-listed financial and technology group's name…
Bavaria's 340-Player Open Headlines a Packed October in Europe
The Chess Tournament Calendar is tracking 332 events across Europe in October 2026, spanning the usual mix of weekend rapids, club opens, and longer classical…
Geneva's Return to World Title Chess, 22 Years On
FIDE has locked in the details for the next World Championship match, and the venue choice does more work than a press release usually allows. The Salesforce…
Topalov's Clutch Chess Lead Echoes His Old Kasparov Duels
Garry Kasparov has spent much of his post-retirement career being the one who makes other legends sweat. On the first day of the 2026 Clutch Chess: The…
Who Actually Profits From .chess? Unpacking the FIDE–World Chess Domain Deal
Buried in the celebratory language about chess finally getting "its own place on the internet" is a straightforward commercial arrangement worth examining:…
Why Carlsen and Caruana Signing On Matters More Than the Format
The headline from Budapest is the format: a pilot event blending fast classical, rapid, and blitz into something called "Total Chess." But the more telling…
Why Kramnik's Legal Defeat Over the Naroditsky Article Matters More Than It Looks
An Amsterdam court has thrown out Vladimir Kramnik's lawsuit against New In Chess, ruling that the Dutch magazine's article accusing the former world champion…
Barcelona's Sants Open and a Romanian Rapid Lead Europe's August Field
August's tournament calendar in Europe was topped, by registration numbers at least, by a rapid event in Transylvania rather than one of the continent's…
How Anna Muzychuk Went From Boycotting Saudi Arabia to Booking a Spot in Saint-Tropez
Bibisara Assaubayeva and Anna Muzychuk have punched their tickets to the 2026 WR Women's Chess Tour Grand Final by winning the tour's European leg in…
Vereslav Eingorn and the Odesa Chess Lineage He Leaves Behind
FIDE announced this week that Vereslav Eingorn, the Ukrainian grandmaster, coach and author, has died at 69. He was born on 23 November 1956 in Odesa, then…
FIDE's Youth Championships Get New Numbers: What the U7-U17 Shift Really Means
FIDE and the Spanish Chess Federation have opened registration for the FIDE World Youth Chess Championships, inviting national federations to send players in…
September 2026 in European Chess: Craiova Leads a Crowded Continental Calendar
Europe's tournament calendar keeps rolling into autumn, with 392 events tracked across the continent for September 2026. The list spans everything from…
Carlsen's Perfect Paris Run Shows Where Chess Money Is Actually Growing
Magnus Carlsen didn't just win the Chess Esports World Cup in Paris again, he did it without dropping a single game across the entire event. In the final, he…