Just 46 days to go before the start of the World Chess Championship in Bonn, Germany. The match between Vishy Anand and Vladimir Kramnik will be covered by a battery of online commentators, including GM Yasser Seirawan in English, GMs Artur Yussupov, Dr Helmut Pfleger, Klaus Bischoff in German, GM Miguel Illescas in Spanish. Here are pre-match interviews with the experts.

How do you get Fritz11 to play a game against itself? If you don't know, it's easy – and, best of all, you can start the game from a chess position of your choosing. Learn how in the latest ChessBase Workshop.

How does he do it? Chinese GM Wang Yue won all of his first six games, and drew in round seven to take a one-point overall lead with 6.5/7 and a 3034 performance. Second in line is Ivan Cheparinov with 5.5/7 and a 2818 performance. 77-year-old Viktor Korchnoi won a second game for Experienced, and almost won a third which he tragically lost on time. Report after round seven.

Ivanchuk-Shirov: 1.d4 d5 2.c4 dxc4 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.e3 c5 5.Bxc4 e6 6.0-0 a6 7.dxc5 Bxc5 8.Qxd8+ Kxd8 9.Ne5 Ke7 10.Be2 Bd7 11.Bf3 Nc6 12.Nxc6+ draw. That was it, Vassily Ivanchuk won the 2008 Tal Memorial a full point ahead of his nearest rivals. His performance of 2861 took him to number two in the live world rankings. Final report.

The ongoing Tal Memorial is a very fine tournament, but there's very little about the play that would remind us of the man being honored. In his Wednesday night Playchess lecture Dennis Monokroussos provides us with a special treat: a vintage Tal game which starts positionally but in which Tal suddenly switches modes and overwhelms his opponent with wave after wave of attacks. Enjoy.

The obital flight that took him to number one in the world is over, Alexander Morozevich came crashing down to earth with a second loss, this time with the white pieces against Gata Kamsky. Vladimir Kramnik chalked up a second win, this time against Evgeny Aleckseev, while Alexei Shirov imporve his dismal last-place score with a win against Shakhriyar Mamedyarov. Express report.

The German Grandmaster Karsten Müller has chosen three further games submitted by readers. They are all tough, if relatively brief, fights and include a loss by a 14-year-old Magnus Carlsen in a display in Norway (where his overall score was +28 –1 =1). Contributions to our Simul Hunt continue to arrive, and more articles will be appearing. In the meantime, enjoy the latest crop of battles.

The 23rd Acropolis 2008 International Open Chess Tournament was won by the Israeli GM Ilia Smirin, for the second consecutive year. He tied for first place with the Romanian GM Mircea Parligras but won on tiebreak points. WGM Anastasiya Karlovich provides us with impressions of the tournament location in Athens and portraits of the players in her big pictorial report.

What a round: four out of five games decided, the only draw a cliff-hanger. Ponomariov beat Shirov, Leko beat Kamsky (with black!), Alekseev beat Mamedyarov. A fine victory by Vassily Ivanchuk over on-fire Alexander Morozevich brought the latter crashing down from yesterday's number one in the world on the Live List to settle back at number two behind Anand. Sic transit gloria Caïssae.

If Arpad Elo were still living today he would have been a hundred and five years old today – three years past the age of 102 that he was supposed to survive to, as foretold by a Budapest gypsy when he visited Hungary in 1970. In reality he died in Wisconsin, USA at the age of 89. A close associate and family friend, Elmer Dmlao Sangalang, looks back at the man who revolutionised chess.

Remember how hard-fought these contests used to be? Well, in round five of the third NH Chess Tournament that pits Rising Stars against Experienced GMs it was 77-year-old Viktor Korchnoi who scored the first full point for the latter. Otherwise there were nine draws and 14 losses. Chinese GM Wang Yue leads the field with 5.0/5 points and a theoretical performance of 3400. Big pictorial report.

Two black wins: Boris Gelfand overwhelmed Shakhriyar Mamedyarov in a Semi-Slav (Anti-Meran); and Peter Leko was taken to the cleaners by Vassily Ivanchuk in a Closed Ruy Lopez (Chigorin). Ruslan Ponomariov was basically lost after eleven moves in a wildly tactcial Nimzo Indian against Alexander Morozevich, who moves to number one in the world on the Live Rating list. Round six report.

In a rare interview Vladimir Kramnik, who is playing in the Tal Memorial in Moscow, sat down to a cup of coffee and a video interview with Europa Eches reporter GM Robert Fontaine. The former world champion was very forthcoming about his performance in Moscow, his health problems (now solved!) and his chances and strategy for the match against Anand in October this year. Video and transcript.

A few days ago former FIDE world champion Veselin Topalov visited the International Alcubeirre Tournament in Spain, where he gave a simultaneous exhibition and spoke to a local newspaper about Kasparov, the Zaragoza Expo, Scarlett Johansson ("I like her more in some ways, but my thing is chess"), his chess career and chess playing computers. Heraldo interview.

She is seventeen, hails from Andhra Pradesh, India, and has just won the Under 20 Junior World Championship, ahead of the international – especially Eastern European – competition by a point and a half. Harika Dronavalli is is one of the nicest and brightest young ladies in the junior chess scene. Her goal: to be like Judit Polgar. Indepth interview by Özgür Akman.

Ruslan Ponomariov and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov both had drawn all their games so far. Peter Leko was on plus one, Gata Kamsky on 50%. Leko lost a Marshall Gamit to Ponomariov, Kamsky the white side of a Sicilian Scheveningen to Mamedyarov. Morozevich still leads. The round was particularly exciting since we had Levon Aronian commenting on Radio ChessBase. You can watch the rerun.

"Fully realizing all complexity of the present situation for the Georgian chess players," writes FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov to the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, "I am appealing to you for your kind assistance in providing the sportsmen with conditions for smooth participation in the World Championship." Letter from the President to the President.

Acclaimed as the "Fastest Brain in the World", Vishy Anand is the world number one and World Champion. Experts rate him as one of the biggest natural talents in the history of the game. Easy-going and humorous, he is also one of the best-loved players. Now he has recorded two ChessBase DVDs on his career, with a total of over eight hours of video comments and annotations. Order now.

After a shock defeat or bad spell in a tournament it is usually advisable to avoid the risks involved in a quick comeback attempt and instead steady your nerves with a rock-solid draw. Vladimir Kramnik did it against Ruslan Ponomariov, and Alexei Shirov used it to score his first half-point against Boris Gelfan. The table remains unchanged with Morozevich by half a point. Round four report.

Four years ago Nigel Short, while winning the Commonwealth Championship, ran into some problems: "In the second round I drew with some 15-year-old boy from some very obscure place, some village somewhere. I think his name was Abhijeet Gupta." Last week nineteen-year-old Abhijeet won the prestigious World Junior Championship in Gaziantep, Turkey. Interview.