1. US Chess membership stood at 118,303 on October 31, which the federation calls a new all-time high: an increase of 2,184 over September that passes the March 2024 record of 117,716.

The release carries only the headline figures and a note of thanks to members; no breakdown by membership type or state accompanies it. It lands as US Chess newly rated 41 events across 17 states, median size 11, led by the 45-player Tuesday Night Quick in Jacksonville, Florida, where Kostiantyn Retiunin won the Open on 3, and the SABH October-November Games in Brooklyn, 40 players, with Kamran Obidov and Muhammadaminkhuja Jabborov sharing the Open on 2.5.

In Charlotte, Celine Atassi, No. 41 on the US Chess Girls Under 16 list, won Quad A of the 39-player CCC Wednesday Action Quads 206 on 2.5. The Saint Louis Chess Club's Friday Night Quads rated 32 players in eight quads, and Saturday Play N' Go at PS 267 in New York rated 23, Judah Lee winning Section 1 on 2.5. Wednesday Workout continues the World U7-U17 exercise series.

Sources: US Chess, Tuesday Night Quick, SABH, CCC Quads, STLCC Quads, PS 267, US Chess, Top-100 Watch section

2. Ding Liren is out of the Chinese Rapid Championship in Shaoxing, eliminated in the quarterfinals by Xiao Tong (2476) in a blitz tiebreak after four drawn rapid games, and defending champion Yu Yangyi (2679), whom ChessBase calls the only rating favorite to survive the round, won the first three games of his semifinal against Xu Xiangyu (2594) on the relay.

Ding had a clear advantage with Black in the second blitz game but did not convert it, and with both clocks running down Xiao turned the position around, ChessBase reports. Xiao had reached the quarterfinals through a tiebreak match of his own against Zeng Chongsheng the day before. Wang Hao lost 2½–1½ to Xu Xiangyu after a win apiece in games one and three, and Lu Shanglei (2586) beat fourth seed Bu Xiangzhi (2593) by the same margin, so three of the four highest-rated players left at the same stage.

Yu beat Bai Jinshi 2½–1½, winning the opening game with White and drawing three, the last from a position ChessBase describes as queen and bishop against rook, bishop and knight. The 24-player knockout runs November 2 to 6 with four rapid games at 15 minutes plus 10 seconds per match, two 3+2 blitz games if level, then Armageddon. Xiao faces Lu Shanglei in the other semifinal.

Sources: game, game, game, game, ChessBase

3. GM Liam Putnam (FIDE 2495), No. 7 on the US Chess Under 21 list, beat Canadian CM Karson Lu (2049) as the 20th SPICE Cup Open opened with 20 Americans on its relay, and IM Evan Park (FIDE 2452), No. 13 on the Under 21 list, drew reigning German champion GM Leonardo Costa (2557) in round five of the Open Bavarian Championship at Tegernsee.

On the SPICE Cup boards, WIM Laurie Qiu (FIDE 2145), No. 3 on the Girls Under 16 list, beat Nikhil Ramkumar (1872); CM Vidip Kona (2150), No. 41 on the Under 16 list, beat Darsh Verma (1862); FM Nikash Vemparala (2280) beat Rohit Bhatta (1966); and Neevan Reddy Saddi (1936) beat FM Stephen Willy (2183). A name-based identification has Vladimir Belous (USCF 2490) beating Rafael Palathingal (2014).

At Tegernsee, ChessBase counts Costa among 31 players half a point behind six co-leaders on 4½ with four rounds left; Kai Pisan and the two other Americans on the lower boards' relay all won after all three lost Tuesday. IM Aaron Jacobson (FIDE 2374) drew GM Deep Sengupta (2479) in round five of the Korea International Chess Festival, IM Joel Banawa (2392) drew IM Jan Emmanuel Garcia (2455) in round four of the 7th Asenso ASEAN+ Individual Championship, and FM Dmitriy Volkov (2180) drew in the World Senior 50+ Open.

Sources: ChessBase, Americans in Action section, American Presence section

4. Khumoyun Begmuratov of Uzbekistan won the World Junior Rapid Championship in Al Ain on 7.5/9, ahead of V. Pranav, who had opened with six wins from six, and Azerbaijan's Read Samadov, while Eline Roebers of the Netherlands took the girls' title; the two reports of her final score differ.

The Russian federation's wrap puts several players half a point behind Begmuratov, with Pranav taking silver and Samadov bronze, and Erdem Khubukshanov and Alexander Khripachenko on 6.5 in seventh and ninth. Azerbaijani outlets have Samadov on 7 points, half a point behind the winner, and Shiroglan Talibov eighth on 6.5 in a 91-player field. Pranav, the classical World Junior champion, had Black against Samadov on board one entering round seven, ChessBase India wrote before the final day; his round-five win over second seed Artem Uskov turned on a bishop capture on g3 that exploited a pinned h-pawn.

On the girls' side, schaaksite gives Roebers 7/9, half a point clear of five players, while the Russian federation gives 7.5 and a one-point margin over Umida Omonova in second and Marina Kuznetsova in third. An r/chess results post reports she trailed by a point with three rounds left and beat both leaders in consecutive rounds. schaaksite calls it a rapid title she had lacked, and notes she defends the blitz title Thursday and Friday. The one US entrant, Moafaq Algaddah, is unrated and has one game on the relay.

Sources: Федерация шахмат России, Report.az, AzerNews, Azərtac, ChessBase India, schaaksite, r/chess, Broadcasts section

5. IM Hussain Besou, 15, beat Hungarian GM Peter Acs (2555), the 2001 World Junior champion and seventh seed, in round five of the Open Bavarian Championship to join five grandmasters on 4½/5, and in Chennai GM Pranesh M (2673) beat GM Leon Luke Mendonca (2617) to take the sole lead in the Chola Chess Open after six rounds.

ChessBase calls Besou the only German, the only junior and the only non-grandmaster among the co-leaders — G.N. Gopal, Krishnan Sasikiran, Rithvik R Raja, Kacper Piorun and Emre Can. The three Indians drew on the top boards, Gopal with Sasikiran in 31 moves and Raja with top seed Frederik Svane in 25, and Alexander Donchenko was held by Turkish IM Eray Kilic. ChessBase's German site recalls that Besou, born in Riyadh to Syrian parents and in Germany since 2016, won World U12 bronze in 2022 and became the federation's youngest international at 11; he plays for LSV Turm Lippstadt.

In Chennai, FM Aarit Kapil, 11, outplayed GM Surya Shekhar Ganguly into what ChessBase India calls a dead-lost position before Ganguly found a draw, Kapil's fifth against a grandmaster; FM Aadik Theophane Lenin beat GM Dimitris Alexakis, which the site calls his highest-rated classical win. The next round has Pranesh with Black against S.L. Narayanan, Ilamparthi A.R. against Karthikeyan Murali and Mendonca against Harshavardhan G.B., with three rounds to go.

Sources: game, ChessBase, ChessBase DE, game, ChessBase India

• German chess gets a marketing arm: the Schachbundesliga signs the Chess Media Group through 2032, coordinated with the federation

• CMG becomes the league's exclusive marketer for six seasons to the end of June 2032, selling the title partnership, the presenting rights to the central final, league-level partnerships, broadcast and digital inventory and hospitality; a league website is due in the first quarter of 2027 with an editorial team, and the title partnership is on offer now for the running 2026/27 season (ChessBase DE, DSB).
• The numbers behind the pitch: the DSB counts 100,088 members in 2,196 clubs as of August 31, 2026, which it calls its highest ever, more than 33,000 of them under 20, with chess offered at over 4,000 schools; CMG estimates 3.5 million weekly players in Germany and about 8.5 million German accounts on online platforms (ChessBase DE).
• The season runs five weekends of three rounds each, champion and relegation decided at one venue in early April 2027; the DSB has streamed the rounds on SchachdeutschlandTV with Katharina Reinecke and Sonja Bluhm. Rosters list Magnus Carlsen and Richard Rapport for FC St. Pauli, Fabiano Caruana and Vincent Keymer for OSG Baden-Baden, and Nodirbek Abdusattorov and Jan-Krzysztof Duda for champion SC Viernheim (DSB, ChessBase DE).
• On the grassroots side, Sarah Hund, 28, of SK Freiburg-Zähringen, hosts a women's chess meetup in Gaggenau-Ottenau on the evening of November 5 under a DSB–Deutsche Schachjugend project; women are ten percent of federation members, up from about six, and ChessBase's German site notes her mother Barbara was among the world's top ten women in the 1980s and now represents Switzerland (ChessBase DE).

• Total Chess, five days out: Madland explains the daily reset, RookReview reads what the pilot feeds

• Norway Chess founder Kjell Madland told Sportstar during a Chennai visit that knockout scores reset between the two match days so a large first-day lead cannot settle the contest early; each day runs four 3+2 blitz games, two 15+10 rapid games and one 45+30 fast-classic game, scored 1, 4 and 8 for wins with draws worth half, and a split goes to Armageddon with draw odds to Black (Sportstar).
• Four groups of six play each other twice over five days at 45+30 with three points for a win and one for a draw; only the group winners contest the title while the rest enter a placement bracket, and a nine-round blitz Swiss on the opening day sets the tiebreak order. "This is new for everyone," Madland said. He is still seeking a global media partner, confirmed Erling Haaland as a Norway Chess investor who joins discussions, and named a women's event as a longer-term aim; Vaishali and Bibisara Assaubayeva are the two women in Budapest (Sportstar).
• RookReview's format explainer adds, on its own authority, that the pilot's results count toward the 2026-27 tour standings and that the tour's top two qualify for the 2028 Candidates — claims absent from Sportstar's interview; it dates the pilot November 10 to 20 at the Anantara New York Palace Hotel (RookReview).

• Torre at 75: ChessBase's career portrait, a week of tournaments in Iloilo, the man himself on 1974

• ChessBase, in English and German, marks Eugenio Torre's 75th birthday on November 4: the seventh of ten children in Iloilo City, taught by his lawyer father and otherwise self-taught from Chess Informant, an IM in 1972 and the first grandmaster from Asia after the Nice Olympiad of 1974. The site counts 23 Olympiad appearances, which it calls the record, with individual board bronzes at Nice, Valletta, Dubai and Baku (ChessBase, ChessBase DE).
• High points as ChessBase lists them, reordered: a shared first with Lajos Portisch at the 1982 Toluca Interzonal and a Candidates quarterfinal lost to Zoltan Ribli; a 1976 Manila win ahead of Karpov; service as Fischer's second in 1992; the 2017 Asian Senior title on 9/9; induction to the World Chess Hall of Fame in 2021; Philippine national coach since 2023, with Florencio Campomanes among his early backers (ChessBase).
• In Iloilo the GM Eugene Torre Chess Legend National Open opened Thursday — about 160 players and 60 teams expected, thechronicle reports, and 166 in the individual rapid per tournament director James Infiesto — with rapid play November 5-6, the three-player Tatluhan team event November 7-8 and a P50,000 first prize. Of becoming grandmaster in 1974, Torre said at the celebration it was "an honor for my family but an honor for the country," as thechronicle reports; Education Secretary Sonny Angara called chess an affordable school sport, and the mayor said the city offers free training in more than 20 sports (thechronicle.com.ph, Journal News Online).

• India's chess economy: Group e4's Rs 2.5 crore, a non-chess CEO for Chess Pathshala, ten para medals in Bishkek, a 15-year-old's year

• Satya Prabhakar told ChessBase India at the Chola event that Group e4, begun in 2022 after a phone call with Viswanathan Anand, has raised close to Rs 2.5 crore from more than 200 families and firms for 20-plus players, among them Gukesh, Praggnanandhaa and Vaishali; every rupee goes to players with no administrative fee, individual gifts stay undisclosed, the floor is Rs 5,000 and one family gave Rs 15 lakh. Anand, Aruna Anand, Prabhakar, R.B. Ramesh and Aarthie Ramaswamy choose the players (ChessBase India).
• At the 4th Asian Chess Championship for Players with Disabilities in Bishkek, India won ten rapid and blitz medals on November 1: Sharon Rachel Aby took the Girls Under-20 gold in both formats and Nishan Mondal the Boys Under-20 rapid, with Sarthak Singh, Ezhilarasi G and Durkasri M on the podium in both; the nine-round classical event closes this week (ChessBase India).
• Rediff profiles WIM Prishita Gupta, 15, of Delhi: three tournament wins in a row capped by the Western Asian Youth and Junior Championship in Ahmedabad, WIM norms completed in Serbia in January, and a rating that fell from 2,287 to around 2,100 early in the year and stands at 2,129; her coaches include Shyam Sundar, R B Ramesh and Aarthie Ramaswamy (Rediff).

• Voices: Caruana on So's defense, Anand at a business jury, the KazChess norm count splits

• Caruana, on the C-Squared Podcast with Cristian Chirila as RookReview reports, said of Wesley So, "He's certainly a very good defender. Among the best," pairing that with tactical vision and allowing that creating winning chances can be a struggle; he described Sam Sevian's last-round win over So in Saint Louis as pressure applied, released and then rewarded (RookReview).
• Anand, interviewed by a CNBC-TV18 reporter at the India Business Leader Awards jury meeting in New Delhi on November 4, said "We have a strategy, and then it fails, and then we improvise," predicting business would prove similar, as RookReview and CNBC-TV18's own post report (RookReview, LinkedIn).
• chess.com's and Europe Echecs's KazChess wraps, following the result carried Wednesday, both call Mark Smirnov's norm his second grandmaster norm — Europe Echecs quoting the Kazakh federation — where ChessBase, carried Wednesday, called it his first; chess.com puts him at 2464.9 live, ChessBase's German site at 2477. chess.com adds the prizes, 7 million KZT for Denis Lazavik, 5 million for Daniil Dubov and 3.5 million for Shamsiddin Vokhidov, and Smirnov's own account that he beat all four Kazakh opponents and scored 1.5/5 against the foreign grandmasters (chess.com, Europe Echecs).

• Products and dates: ChessBase 27 on November 17, Carlsen's Esports World Cup earnings, the Max Euwe Centrum at 40, a Redlands school event

• ChessBase has announced version 27 of its database program for release on November 17, promising AI-based opening training and a redesigned interface, RookReview reports from the booklet accompanying ChessBase Magazine 234 (RookReview).
• Chase Your Sport, reading the Esports World Cup's published earnings graphic, places Magnus Carlsen third among all EWC earners at $500,000, behind fighting-game player Xiao Hai ($775,000) and Tekken's Ulsan ($637,500) (Chase Your Sport).
• Amsterdam's Max Euwe Centrum turns 40 on November 8, with a book and painting sale on November 7 from noon to 4 p.m. and a fundraising simul on November 23 (schaaksite).
• In California, the Redlands High School Chess Club ran an October 2 tournament for 51 students from seven district schools, organized by club president Anish Narang; Jason Jialong Ju of Citrus Valley won the high school division and Charvi Bora of Clement Middle School the middle school division (Redlands Daily Facts).