1/8/2024 – Each year we try to have something unusual for the final article of the year. While the endgame studies this time may not fulfill this criterion, your author wanted to provide some deeper, partially philosophical, thoughts. | Photo: Midjourney

1/8/2024 – ChessBase Magazine is breaking new ground. For almost 30 years, a Windows operating system and a ChessBase program were a must for reading the CBM. The new issue #217 (January 2024) is the first one to include full mobile access, so you can load it directly via the web browser on your iPad, tablet, Mac, etc. Thanks to the new ChessBase Books system, all content is available: Analyses, videos, repertoire articles, training exercises and the interactive training videos from the tactics, strategy and endgame columns! We invite you to join us: In this and the coming weeks, we will be offering you a complete CBM article from the current issue for free! The best first: Oliver Reeh's article "Invasion on the back rank" with lots of tactical exercises and four interactive training videos!

1/8/2024 – In general, a queen and one pawn equal two rooks – this leads us to nearly always prefer the two rooks. Is this always the case, and when it is, how can we take advantage of it. If you want to learn more about the tactics and strategy involved, it will be well to carefully follow the instructions of a world leading chess trainer and analyst, who uses high-class games to illustrate his points.

1/8/2024 – The Caplin Masters, part of the Hastings International Chess Congress, came to an end on Friday with a triumph for Abhijeet Gupta. The 34-year-old Indian grandmaster was the only one of 100+ participants in the event to achieve a score of 7½/9, thus getting outright victory. Pengxiang Zhang from China (7/9) came second. Behind Zhang, a group of nine players finished with 6½/9 points each. | Photo: Official website

1/7/2024 – As the new year gets underway, it's traditional to look both forwards and backwards. 2023 saw Magnus Carlsen abdicate his world title, Ding Liren capture the vacant crown after a nail-biting match against Ian Nepomniachtchi and Ju Wenjun retain her world title also by a narrow margin after defeating her countrywoman Lei Tingjie. Jon Speelman looks back to 2023 and forward to 2024. | Photo: Fabiano Caruana | Photo: Lennart Ootes

1/7/2024 – In the first Fast & Furious episode of 2024, Robert Ris presents a dangerous line against a popular variation of the Caro-Kann. | Fast & Furious is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

1/7/2024 – Herman Grooten is an International Master, a renowned trainer and the author of several highly acclaimed books on chess training and strategy. In the 159th episode of his ChessBase show "Understanding before moving" Herman continues his series "Chess history in a nutshell" and talks about the "Sorcerer's Apprentice", David Bronstein. | Photo: Pascal Simon

1/7/2024 – During his long career Viktor Kortschnoi (23 March 1931 - 6 June 2016) won against Botvinnik, Smyslov, Tal, Petrosian, Spassky, Fischer, Karpov, Kasparov and Carlsen. He never became World Champion himself, but you might think that "he could beat anyone". But this is just a cliché. For although Kortschnoi played a total of 17 games with classical time control against Anand and Kramnik in the course of his life, he never scored a full point against either of them. | Photo: Kortschnoi at the 1960 Leipzig Chess Olympiad | Photo: Tournament book

1/7/2024 – On the final day of the (really quite traumatic) year 2023 we gave you two unusual chess puzzles: one where you had to add a king and bishop to construct a mate in two, and one where you had to reconstruct the entire position. We got them from Frank Scarpa, who today provides full explanations in two very fine videos. You're 'gonna hafta' watch them to get the solutions.

1/6/2024 – Some topics in chess strategy are more fashionable than others. This can happen for various reasons. For example, some topics may be easy to explain and understand. This is the case with the "good and bad bishop" theory. Or it might happen that some strategic phenomenon becomes a favourite topic of a famous chess writer. This happened, for example, with Nimzowitsch and the art of blocking passed pawns. In the following article we will look at a very striking example of this phenomenon. | Photo: Tigran Petrosian 1973, Dutch National Archives, The Hague, Algemeen Nederlandsch Fotobureau (Anefo)

1/6/2024 – You might see how White could have won outright in the diagram position in the blink of an eye. Black's path to a draw a few moves later, on the other hand, might be a real challenge. Either way - have fun!

1/5/2024 – This week GM Daniel King presents archetypal attacks from the World Rapid Championship. A test of judgment and calculation. | Power Play is on air most Fridays. Watch it on-demand with a ChessBase Premium account. All the usual puzzles, games and instruction will be on offer.