1/18/2023 – For much of its storied existence, Howard University in Washington D.C. – a historically Black university located in America’s capital city – has been known as "The Mecca of Black Education," or just "The Mecca". This year, at the Pan-American Intercollegiate Team Championship the Howard University Chess Club achieved the best result it has ever achieved in the Team Championship. A success that is partly due to hard training and the help of Jerald Times, an award-winning chess educator from New York City, and Tani Adewumi, the 12-year old chess talent from Nigeria, who helped the team to prepare. | Photo: (from left to right: Goodness Atanda, Lawrence D. Custis, Samir Acharya, Malcolm Wooten and Malik Castro-DeVarona | Photo: Jerald Times

1/18/2023 – Gaining the initiative in chess is one of the most effective tools to decide a game in your favour. It always depends on what kind of player you are of course, and for some it seems easier, others struggle a lot more to make initiative moves. Anish Giri is momentarily storming towards the Tata Steel chess title, with his spectacular playing style. Svitlana presents us his victory against Gukesh D., where he took over the game with a few moves for the win. The same applies to Max Wamerdam's game against Jergus Pechac, and it contains a valuable lesson.

1/18/2023 – Can a massive volume of lengthy chess interviews, some dating back to over two decades, attract chess enthusiasts today. Can they be of interest to a heavily satiated chess audience? You bet they can. Frederic Friedel started reading the 476-page book – and was immediately hooked. He describes the reason for his fascination and tells us what is unique about this work.

1/18/2023 – Round 4 of the Tata Steel Masters saw the two highest-rated players in the world losing on adjacent boards, as Anish Giri and Praggnanandhaa defeated Magnus Carlsen and Ding Liren respectively. Giri is now sharing the lead with Nodirbek Abdusattorov, who got the better of Parham Maghsoodloo. In the Challengers, four decisive results left three players sharing the lead on 3/4 points. | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Tata Steel Chess Tournament 2023

1/17/2023 – Last month World Chess, the company that ran the World Chess Championships, announced its plans to float on the main London Stock Exchange in November, inviting institutional and retail investors to subscribe for eight million Euro shares. This comes at the heels of planned 483 million takeover of PlayMagnus by the giant Chess.com. What this all means is discussed by Peter O’Brien in the latest issue of The British Chess Magazine.

1/17/2023 – In the diagram position both sides have dangerous passed pawns. But it is Black to move - and he can win by making the most of his passed pawns. How?

1/13/2023 – While Eugene Manlapao was doing research on Amos Burn (pictured on the right) and Isidor Gunsberg (left), the subjects of his last two articles, he came upon an interesting episode in their careers. Burn and Gunsberg were two of the leading British players in the late 19th century, and they naturally became fierce rivals. This rivalry, however, triggered a controversy that spilled to the press. Burn, Gunsberg, and another master dragged into the issue, all turned contentious. Public opinion was divided.

1/13/2023 – The 2022-23 edition of the German Bundesliga kicked off on October 22 last year and is set to finish on April 30. All 16 teams have played at least four rounds, but 10 of them have brought forward their round-7 matches. Three squads won all their confrontations: SG Solingen, OSG Baden-Baden and SC Viernheim. The next three rounds are scheduled for February 2-4.

1/12/2023 – In his "Fast & Furious" show Robert Ris presents a relatively new idea in the Queen's Gambit Declined. The provocative move Robert discusses has brought a number of successes. | "Fast and Furious" is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

1/12/2023 – After Dorian Rogozenco had concluded his "Classics" series in ChessBase Magazine in summer last year, he started his new column "Modern Classics" in CBM #210 with a game Fischer-Petrosian from the 1971 Candidates Match. In CBM #211 he takes up the "Special" of the new issue and presents a brilliant game by Mikhail Tal. On the programme is the sixth game of the World Championship match from 1960 against Mikhail Botvinnik. You can watch an excerpt from Rogozenco's video analysis here!

1/12/2023 – Luckily, we will probably never run out of good games played! With the new ChessBase 17 function to find beautiful games, it is even easier than ever, to find some tremendous tactics. Svitlana reviews a couple of games, and lets us guess the right move. If you remember the games, you will have an easier time finding them. Wesley So's game, was surely the most spectacular game, against Hrant Melkumyan. But also the often overseen game between Can and Maghsoodloo was quite phenomenal.

1/12/2023 – On January 8, the FIDE Online Arena played host to the latest round of the Armageddon Online Final: Europe & Africa, a competitive online chess tournament that saw top grandmasters as well as amateurs players from across the continent compete for an unprecedented prize fund of €10,000.