2/2/2024 – The pairings of the knockout phase in all three divisions of the Chessable Masters were set up after an exciting day of online-chess action. Most notably, 17-year-old Denis Lazavik defeated Hikaru Nakamura and Anish Giri to reach Division I, while knocking his elite opponents down to Division II. Lazavik will face Maxime Vachier-Lagrave on Friday, while perennial favourite Magnus Carlsen will face the ever-dangerous Wesley So. | Photo: chess.com / Thomas Tischio

2/2/2024 – The history of the Candidates Tournaments and Candidates Matches dates back to 1950. In its anniversary year, FIDE is looking forward to the Candidates Tournaments in Toronto in April 2024 and provides an overview of the history of these competitions. | Photos: Via FIDE

2/2/2024 – In his new Game of the Week show, Merijn van Delft turns his attention to the winner of Wijk: Chinese Grandmaster Wei Yi. Merijn takes a look how Wei Yi used the hidden potential of the seemingly harmless Colle System to win a crucial game against Vidit. | Merijn’s show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

2/1/2024 – In the second instalment, we see some more compositions submitted to the Christmas Contest that are worthy of a mention but missed out on the prizes by a whisker! Though some are by beginners, others are by well-seasoned experts. But all problems were evaluated through economy, harmony and aesthetics. Hope you have fun reading these!

2/1/2024 – The 2024 Chess Olympiad will be held in Budapest from 10 to 23 September. By their very nature, Chess Olympiads are chess festivals that bring together nations, amateurs, professionals, men and women. Hungary is a country with a long and rich chess tradition and the Chess Olympiad 2024 promises to be a chess highlight of 2024.

2/1/2024 – It is 1 February and FIDE has published their new World Ranking List. There have been some changes in the rankings, mainly due to the results of the tournaments in Wijk aan Zee, but Carlsen, Caruana and Nakamura continue to lead the world rankings despite not having played a FIDE rated game in January. Ju Wenjun has moved back into second place behind Hou Yifan in the women's rankings.

1/30/2024 – The 2024 Chessable Masters is the first of four Champions Chess Tour events and determines one of the players who’ll make it to the in-person CCT Finals. The event starts on January 31 at 11:00 ET/17:00 CET. Magnus Carlsen, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Vladimir Fedoseev already earned spots in the Chessable Masters Division I based on their performance in last year’s AI Cup.

1/29/2024 – Leon Luke Mendonca was the surprise winner of the Tata Steel Challenger tournament in Wijk aan Zee. He started with 3 out of 6 points, and was lost in the lower part of the table, until he recovered with 6.5 points out of his last 7 games, to reach first place! The Indian Grandmaster and ChessBase Host, Arne Kaehler, started a video series in 2023, on how a typical day in a life of a professional chess player looks like. The insights of young Leon (turning 18 in March) are tremendous, and you can learn a lot in this first video. | Photo: Lennart Ootes/Tata Steel Chess Tournament 2024

1/29/2024 – Hans-Joachim Hecht, a Grandmaster since 1973, was a member of the successful German national team in the 1960s and 1970s, became German team champion eight times with his clubs SG Solingen and Bayern Munich and won the European Cup once. Today he celebrates his 85th birthday. Congratulations to him! | Photos: German Chess Federation, Münchener Schachakademie

1/29/2024 – Wouldn’t it be great to convert all your chess pieces into better pieces on every move? Markus Reinhardt’s Variaschach is actually based on this principle. But, of course, it’s not really that simple. Reinhardt himself presents his variation and plays a blitz game against GM Elisabeth Paehtz.

1/29/2024 – What role do traps play in chess? And what is important for successful trapping? In the current ChessBase Magazine #217, Jan Markos deals with the topic of "traps" in his series "Practical Tips for the Tournament Player" and works out four rules that you should definitely observe in your own games. We invite you: this week you can download Jan Markos' article - consisting of a video and a small collection of exercises - as a free sample. Directly via your web browser in the new ChessBase Books format. This is because CBM #217 is the first issue to also include full mobile access. So you can read it directly via your web browser on your iPad, tablet or Mac. Have fun!

1/29/2024 – It was a thrilling event from start to finish. The final round of the Tata Steel Masters saw four co-leaders grabbing wins to set up a four-way blitz playoff. Wei Yi, Gukesh D., Anish Giri and Nodirbek Abdusattorov played the knockout tiebreaker, which saw 24-year-old Wei claiming overall victory after showcasing his well-known tactical sharpness in the deciding stage. Meanwhile, Leon Luke Mendonca took clear first place in the Challengers after beating Divya Deshmukh with the white pieces. | Photo: Tata Steel Chess Tournament / Lennart Ootes