Jonathan Rowson on "The Queen’s Gambit"

11/25/2020 – In November 2019, three-time British champion Jonathan Rowson published The Moves that Matter: A Chess Grandmaster on the Game of Life (Bloomsbury Publishing), a wonderful book, abounding with thoughtful reflections about the game and its place in our world. A year later, after watching the Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit, Rowson posted a 35-minute YouTube video in which he highlighted how some of the major themes in his book connect with this successful Netflix series. In an interview with Olimpiu G. Urcan, he elaborates further. | Photo: Netflix
Live Tournaments
Round 15: finished
Skilling Open CCT 2021
Carlsen 2881, Vachier-Lagrave 2860, Ding 2836, Nakamura 2829, Aronian 2778, Nepomniachtchi 2778, Duda 2774, Radjabov 2758, Le 2744, Svidler 2742, So 2741, Giri 2731, Karjakin 2709, Firouzja 2703
Round 1: finished
Skilling Open CCT KO 2021
Round 6: finished
XXVII RUS-chT Premier 2020
Live Training
November 25 19:00 The Game of the Week
The game of the week presented by IM Merijn van Delft. View the new video!
November 27 17:00 Power Play Show
Learn chess insights with GM Daniel King. View the new video!
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Skilling Open Quarterfinals: Live!

11/25/2020 – The Skilling Open is the first stop of the 2020-21 Champions Chess Tour. With 16 participants, the event will be played on November 22-30. A single round robin tournament to be played from Sunday to Tuesday will decide who moves on to the knockout stage.The top eight will advance to a 6-day knockout. The action each day begins at 17:00 GMT (18:00 CET, 12:00 ET). Read the full report on Day 3 | Pictured: Maxime Vachier-Lagrave | Photo: Niki Riga

Game of the Week: Nepomniachtchi vs Anton

11/25/2020 – In his "Game of the Week" show, Merijn van Delft takes a look at a game from the Skilling Open: David Anton's fine win with Black against Ian Nepomniachtchi, a model game against 1.b3. | Merijn's show is available at 16.00 UTC (17:00 CET, 12:00 EDT) and on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

Autumn Series on Playchess - play and win attractive prizes

11/25/2020 – 90 minutes online training with Grandmaster Nicholas Pert, ChessBase author and renowned coach. This is the first prize in the 5th tournament of the Autumn Series on Playchess, a nine round Swiss blitz tournament that will start on Wednesday, November 25, 20.00 CET (19:00 UTC, 14:00 ET). As in all tournaments of the Autumn Series, the games will be played under real names.

John D. Rockefeller V Donates $3 Million to US Chess Federation

11/25/2020 – The US Chess Federation can look forward to a real windfall. The Rockefeller Foundation donates the sum of 3 million US dollars to the Federation and to US chess. This is the largest single donation the US Federation has ever received.

Skilling Open: A thrilling qualifier

11/25/2020 – The knockout stage of the Skilling Open is about to begin after eight participants qualified from a 16-player single round robin preliminary stage. Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura topped the standings on 9 out of 15; Wesley So, Ian Nepomniachtchi and Levon Aronian finished a half point behind; while five players tied on 8 points, with Teimour Radjabov, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Anish Giri advancing to the quarterfinals. | Photo: Levon Aronian

"Glory to the Queen": A Tribute to the Georgian Queens of Chess

11/25/2020 – The movie "Glory to the Queen" is a tribute to the four Georgian Grandmasters who once dominated womens' chess. At the Slobodna Zone movie festival in Belgrade, the Austrian-Georgian-Serbian co-production has now been awarded the audience prize. Over the course of the project, Stefan Löffler remained in touch with documentary filmmaker Tatia Shkirtladze. | Images: Berghammer Film

The Weekly Show: Highlights from the Skilling Open

11/24/2020 – In his "Weekly Show" IM Lawrence Trent presents highlights from the Skilling Open and takes a close look how Maxime Vachier-Lagrave won against Le Quang Liem in round 7. | Lawrence's show is available at 18:00 UTC (19:00 CET, 14:00 ET) on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here. | Photo: Ray Morris-Hill

Let's talk about chess ... with Allan Scott

11/24/2020 – In the latest episode of his "Let's talk about chess" podcast Eric Reem talked with Allan Scott, one of the creators of the Netflix series "The Queen's Gambit". Allan Scott is co-producer of the show and wrote the script together with Scott Frank. In the podcast he talks about the series and gives a lot of interesting insights. | Photo: Netflix

Outdoor Chess: Uruguay

11/24/2020 – In Montevideo, Uruguay, chess is part of the city’s cultural heritage. 18 de Julio Avenue, the city’s most significant street, was the site of its most famous outdoor chess game. Gonzalo Muniz, a FIDE-rated chess player from Uruguay, and WIM Alexey Root tell about chess in Uruguay’s capital. | Photo: Gonzalo Taborda

When a retreat is the best way to advance

11/24/2020 – Some endings are simple: you have a passed pawn that wants to push ahead and therefore your king also pushes ahead to support the pawn or enter the enemy's camp. But things are rarely that easy. In the diagram position White's pawn wants to push ahead and White's king can also push ahead to support his own pawn or to attack the black pawns on the queenside. But is that really the way to save the draw?

Skilling Open: Giri still on top

11/24/2020 – Day 2 of the preliminaries at the Skilling Open saw Anish Giri keeping the sole lead by scoring five draws in a row. Three players stand close behind, while the race to reach the knockout is fierce, with some big names — e.g. Levon Aronian and Sergey Karjakin — currently not in the top half of the standings table. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

Kasparov and the start of ChessBase

11/23/2020 – How did ChessBase begin? It's been nearly 35 years now! When co-founder of ChessBase Frederic Friedel was in India, IM Sagar Shah decided to record the story of how it all began. In this article Frederic speaks about the humble beginnings of the big chess technology company and how the 13th World Champion Garry Kasparov played a big role in its success!