The 2013 Candidates Tournament is well underway, and so far, it has resulted in a race between the two most dominant players of the past few years. Levon Aronian and Magnus Carlsen each have 5.5 points after eight rounds, placing them clearly above the pack with six rounds left to play. What's more, the two leaders have already played each other twice, with both games resulting in draws -- meaning the challenger for Viswanathan Anand's title will be determined based on how they do against the rest of the field.

That is, unless another player can make a run at them and threaten to take the spot for themselves. The most likely candidate to do so is Vladimir Kramnik, who sits just a point back of the leaders. Kramnik might have to make his move today and tomorrow, as the next two rounds represent his last shots at playing Carlsen and Aronian, respectively. A win in either game could put him right in the thick of the tournament, while a loss could end his hopes once and for all.  Alexander Grischuk is in 4th place with four points, while Peter Svidler, Boris Gelfand, Teimour Radjabov and Vassily Ivanchuk round out the table.

If you want to catch the rest of the Candidates Tournament live, game analysis and video coverage are available from the official site. It looks like the next week could have some high drama if the race between Aronian and Carlsen remains close -- and even more so if Kramnik can pull himself back into contention.

February may be the shortest month of the year, but that doesn't mean I wasn't able to add plenty of new content to the site this month. Here's a rundown of what you might have missed in the past few weeks:

• New player profiles of Vladimir Kramnik and Peter Svidler.
• A new tip for new players on the battle between knights and bishops.
• A look at the famous Knight's Tour pattern.
• A discussion of sandbagging in chess tournaments.
• A stub page with current information on the 2014 World Chess Championship, which will become larger as details emerge.

As always, let me know if there is anything you'd like to see on the site in March!

One of the areas in which I've been looking to improve this site is in the quality of the player profiles. I've been adding longer profiles for many historic chess greats over the past year, but current top players still had just short stubs describing their most notable achievements. In January, this began to change! There are three brand new, full length profiles on the site now, covering three of the more important active players in chess:

• Viswanathan Anand
• Magnus Carlsen
• Levon Aronian

In addition, since these players will all have a place in the upcoming World Championship Cycle, I've added an up-to-date reference point for information on the 2013 World Chess Championship.

Finally, I've also added a few more quick tips to the site, including explanations about why "automatic moves" might be anything but, how you can use the process of elimination to save a little time during time scrambles, and a look at the important Principle of Two Weaknesses. As always, if there's anything in particular you'd like to see in February, please feel free to leave a comment!

The final round of the 2013 Tata Steel Chess Tournament in Wijk aan Zee was played today, with Magnus Carlsen scoring a draw with the black pieces against Anish Giri to finish with a 10/13 score and his third Wijk aan Zee title. Of course, if you were paying attention to the tournament, you already knew this on Saturday; Carlsen had clinched the victory with a round to spare, and ended up winning the tournament by 1.5 points over Levon Aronian. The result matched the 1999 score put up by Garry Kasparov as the best result in the history of the tournament; Carlsen won seven games without a loss, putting up a performance rating of 2930 -- enough to push his rating (unofficially) above 2870 for the first time.

It's another impressive performance from the young Norwegian, who has already had a career that would likely put him among the top players in history who didn't win a World Chess Championship -- nothing to scoff at, especially at the age of 22. But in order to make the leap into the list of chess immortals, Carlsen will, of course, have to win a championship eventually (and preferably in a match format for much of the chess world to consider it meaningful). That quest will begin in a couple months, when the Candidates Tournament is held for the 2013 World Chess Championship. Given his recent results, Carlsen will likely enter this tournament as the odds-on favorite to win the event and challenge Viswanathan Anand.

Speaking of Anand, the Tata Steel Tournament was also a good event for the reigning World Chess Champion. After a year of poor results in 2012, Anand bounced back with some very impressive games in the Netherlands. While his 8/13 score was only good enough for third place, it was still a bounce back tournament that showed Anand should be a force to be reckoned with not only in his upcoming title defense, but also in super-tournaments for years to come.