theweekinchess.com

What It Is

The Week in Chess（TWIC）is a long-running chess news and game-score weekly website maintained by Mark Crowther, with its first issue dating back to September 17, 1994. Unlike modern chess platforms that focus on online play, it is more of a “tournament news + game database + weekly download site,” making it highly practical for professional players, coaches, and game-score researchers.

Core Features

The site provides daily chess news, major tournament coverage, standings, round-by-round game lists, event calendars, live broadcast links, RSS subscriptions, and—most importantly—PGN/ChessBase-format game downloads. Each TWIC issue compiles a large number of recent tournament games; for example, the captured content shows that TWIC 1648 includes 26 reports and 7,839 games. For users who need to build a personal database, study opening trends, or review top-level events, TWIC’s PGN packages are highly efficient.

Pricing

The main content and weekly downloads are available for free. The site also accepts donations: a £30 donation via PayPal gives access to Mark Crowther’s personally compiled historical CBV game database, said to contain over 4 million games in total; users can also support the site with a £4 monthly subscription-style donation. Overall, it feels more like an independent site sponsorship model than a mandatory paid subscription.

Pros and Cons

Its strengths are strong historical continuity, reliable material, broad tournament coverage, download formats suited to professional chess database software, and lightweight pages without intrusive advertising. The drawbacks are also clear: the interface is very traditional, with limited search and filtering capabilities; game analysis, engine annotations, and visual presentation are not as strong as Chess.com, Lichess, or ChessBase; the process for obtaining the full database after payment is somewhat manual and requires email contact; and the English-only content may create a higher barrier for Chinese users.

Who It’s For

It is best suited for chess coaches, professional or semi-professional players, game database maintainers, tournament journalists, and opening study enthusiasts. Casual chess fans can also use it just to read news, but those looking to play online, do interactive training, or watch Chinese-language explanations may find other platforms more suitable.

Access in China

Judging from the nature of the site and the captured content, TWIC is a standard English-language information resource site and can usually be accessed directly. Downloading PGN files generally does not rely on major restricted services; however, PayPal payments, some external live broadcast links, or official tournament websites may vary in availability within China depending on the network environment.