4/15/2024 – In this New In Chess podcast episode, after the first half of the Candidates, Super-grandmaster Anish Giri gives his take. In an hour-long interview by Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam, he candidly shares his assessment of the players so far. Anish sees Ian Nepomniachtchi as one of the top favourites to win the Candidates and qualify for the World Championship match. But he also speaks at great length about the other players.

4/14/2024 – In his new Fast & Furious episode, Robert Ris analyses a couple of games from the Candidates Tournament, specifically the two encounters in which Ian Nepomniachtchi played his beloved Petroff Defence with 6...Bd6. | Fast & Furious is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

4/14/2024 – Anish Giri's Opening Fritztrainer's are available 18th of April. But we added a sneak peek to his take on the Caro-Kann and King's Indian openings. Since this is still quite a new feature, we made a video which explains the setup in just 3 minutes.

4/14/2024 – Lei Tingjie scored a third consecutive win in round 8 of the Women’s Candidates Tournament. Importantly, Lei defeated former long-standing sole leader Tan Zhongyi, which resulted in three players sharing first place at the end of the round — Lei, Tan and Aleksandra Goryachkina are now sharing the lead with 5 points each. One more game ended decisively on Saturday, as Humpy Koneru got the better of Vaishali R with the white pieces. | Photo: FIDE / Michal Walusza

4/14/2024 – Two decisive games in Saturday’s eighth round had a big impact on the standings of the Candidates Tournament. Gukesh D beat Vidit Gujrathi to retake the shared lead (with Ian Nepomniachtchi), while Hikaru Nakamura defeated Fabiano Caruana to climb to shared third place, a half point behind the co-leaders. This was Nakamura’s fourth consecutive classical win with the white pieces over Caruana. | Photo: FIDE / Michal Walusza

4/13/2024 – The World Chess Hall of Fame (WCHOF) opened “Clash for the Crown: Celebrating Chess Champions”, an all-new exhibition on April 11, 2024. The exhibition explores the histories of the World Chess Championship and Women’s World Chess Championship through a display of artifacts from the collection of the WCHOF, FIDE and loans from world chess champions including World’s No. 1 Magnus Carlsen and private lenders.

4/10/2024 – In his new Game of the Week show, Merijn van Delft takes a look at the Candidates and shows how Ian Nepomniachtchi instructively won against Alireza Firouzja in an Anti-Berlin. | Merijn’s show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

4/10/2024 – Two games ended decisively in round 5 of the Candidates Tournament, though all four could have easily finished with decisive results. Praggnanandhaa R and Vidit Gujrathi got superior positions but failed to make the most of their advantages against Ian Nepomniachtchi and Fabiano Caruana respectively, while Hikaru Nakamura and Gukesh D obtained full points after their opponents faltered in technical endgames. Nepomniachtchi and Gukesh are now sharing the lead with 3½ points each. | Photo: FIDE / Michal Walusza

4/9/2024 – Four rounds have been played in the Candidates Tournament and Ian Nepomniachtchi is in the lead with 3.0 out of 4. But, as we often hear, nothing is decided yet because, after all, 14 rounds are played in Toronto, which is still a long way to go. But the numbers tell a different story: in the six Candidates Tournaments from London 2013 to Madrid 2022, the player leading after four rounds has always won. | Photo: Ian Nepomniachtchi at the Madrid 2022 Candidates Tournament, which he won comfortably. | Photo: Stev Bonhage (FIDE)

4/9/2024 – In the present world, good marketing is everything. Surprisingly enough, this applies also to chess openings. For example, the Kings Indian Defence has got a phantastic PR among club players. It is considered to be fun to play, and a good weapon when it comes to playing for a win. On the contrary, the Nimzo Indian Defence is perceived as dull and drawish. The result is that after 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4, club players (rated around 1800) play 2…g6 more often than 2…e6. Interestingly, with the GMs the ratio is considerably different. Players rated 2500+ play 2…e6 three times as often than 2…g6. But why? | Photo: Aron Nimzowitsch, name-giver of the Nimzo Indian Defence (Photo: L'Echiquier 1931)

4/9/2024 – He was born on 3 June 2011 in Bursa, Turkey. On April 1st (no April Fool's joke) the twelve-year-old, playing in the very strong GRENKE Chess Open, Yagiz Kaan Erdpgmus scored 7.0/9 points with a 2646 performance. With that he had fulfilled his final GM norm and become the youngest grandmaster in the world – the fourth youngest in chess history. We will be watching this young boy carefully. | Photo Ugur Medya

4/9/2024 – If knights are on the board things often get tricky in the endgame. Very much depends on the circumstances - knights can be very strong or very weak. In the diagram position it is White to move. How can he dominate Black's knight and win the game after 44...Nd1?