ChessBase

• Sinquefield Cup - Live!

  The Sinquefield Cup is taking place on 10-20 August at the Saint Louis Chess Club. It is a 10-player single round-robin with a classical time control. Besides battling for a share of the $475,000 prize fund, players battle to get one of the four spots in the upcoming Grand Chess Tour Finals. Follow the games live starting at 19.00 CEST (13.00 ET, 22.30 IST) | Photo: Austin Fuller

• Esports World Cup live - With Carlsen, Nakamura and Firouzja

  Magnus Carlsen will be looking to defend his title at the $1.5 million Esports World Cup. Chess is part of the event for the second time, with this year's competition taking place in Paris from 11 to 15 August. The tournament will be played at a rapid time control of 10 minutes per game with no increment. The field is strong: besides Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura, Alireza Firouzja, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Arjun Erigaisi, Jan-Krzysztof Duda and Nodirbek Abdusattorov will also compete. | Photos: Esports World Cup 2025 | Live from approximately 11:40 CEST

• Sinquefield Cup: Pragg, So, Aronian and MVL all score with white

  Four decisive games in round two of the Sinquefield Cup produced a five-way tie for the lead, with all four wins coming with the white pieces. Levon Aronian, Wesley So, Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (pictured) joined Fabiano Caruana on 1½/2 points. Aronian's 91-move win over Vincent Keymer came after he survived a lost position. | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour

• Road to Weissenhaus 2027: Final qualification path confirmed

  Freestyle Chess and FIDE have confirmed the remaining qualification path for the 2027 FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship, with three places still available in both the open and women's fields. Spots will be decided through the second part of the Freestyle Friday Championship and online qualifiers in November 2026 and January 2027. Five players have already qualified for each section, with the final lineups to be completed by 7 January.

• Sinquefield Cup: Caruana beats Van Foreest to take early lead

  Fabiano Caruana was the only winner in the opening round of the Sinquefield Cup, defeating Jorden van Foreest to take the early sole lead in Saint Louis. The remaining four games were drawn, though Javokhir Sindarov missed chances to convert a favourable endgame against Levon Aronian. | Photo: Austin Fuller / Grand Chess Tour

• Veselin Topalov headlines the inaugural Apogee Chess Festival

  The inaugural Apogee Chess Festival will take place in Caissargues, near Nîmes, from 22 to 30 August 2026, combining competitive chess with the cultural heritage of southern France. Organised by IM Silvia Alexieva, the event will feature two FIDE-rated open sections, a €26,000 prize fund and a special appearance by former FIDE world champion Veselin Topalov, who will give a simultaneous exhibition near the historic Maison Carrée.

• Carlsen returns to defend Esports World Cup title in Paris

  Magnus Carlsen will return to defend his Esports World Cup title as chess makes its second appearance at the event, this time in Paris. The competition runs from 11 to 15 August and features a rapid 10-minute time control without increment. Fourteen players have already qualified directly for the group stage, while eight others will contest Tuesday's Play-In for the final two places in the 16-player field. | Photos: Esports World Cup 2025

• Help us build the next ChessBase

  We're planning the next chapters of ChessBase and we want input from the people who actually use it, before we decide what to build first. Help us by taking part in a survey that asks how you work day to day: your setup and hardware, how you use engines and databases, and which parts of the interface help or get in your way. Filling out the survey takes around three minutes. If you fill it out we will send you a thank-you voucher gift.

• Shifts and mirrors in a chess problem

  A year ago problem composer Werner Keym issued a challenge: compose a study in which White is winning – but one that can be shifted and mirrored vertically and horizontally, with all vertically shifted and mirrored positions drawing, and all horizontally shifted and mirrored positions losing. Here is the elegant solution, which reminds us of the famous Babson task.

• How much faster are computers today?

  In the early 1980s, as a fledgling TV journalist, I did a report on the fastest computer in the world. The Cray-1 cost eight million dollars and could do 130 million floating point operations per second. That was enough to calculate the weather, but also to win two consecutive world computer chess championships. How much faster are today's supercomputers? Take a guess – you are definitely not going to get it right.