12/1/2022 – This week Robert Ris takes a look at the Van Geet Opening: 1.Nc3!?, a move that helped Arjun Erigaisi to achieve a miniature victory against his compatriot Praggnanandhaa at the finals of the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour. | "Fast and Furious" is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

12/1/2022 – Much like on the first day of the Women’s Candidates (Pool B) in Khiva, two tense draws were signed by the contenders looking to get a spot in the final against Lei Tingjie. After a rest day on Thursday, two more games will be played in this phase, with tiebreaks scheduled for Sunday in case of a 2-2 result in the classical portion. | Photo: Xushnud Baltaev

12/1/2022 – The ChessBase Magazine Extra is the perfect addition to the ChessBase Magazine and keeps you informed about everything that happens in tournament chess. The current issue - CBM Extra #210 - contains training videos with Robert Ris and Mihail Marin (total playing time: just under 1 hour) and 38 deep and comprehensive analyses by Anish Giri, Romain Edouard, Lubomir Ftacnik, Michal Krasenkow, and many others.

12/1/2022 – Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura and Vishy Anand are certainly among the most prominent players in the chess world. Samuel Reshevsky, Akiba Rubinstein and Vasja Pirc are the Sagittarius legends. Karsten Müller, Rustam Kasimdzhanov and Victor Bologan are super popular FritzTrainers. Sagittarius is chivalrous, swift as an arrow, and fair. And apparently Sagittarians are also absolutely brilliant chess players. | Photo: Pixabay

12/1/2022 – The 1972 World Championship match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spasski is regarded as one of the most critical moments in the history of chess, occurring 50 years ago. To present you with this year's Christmas calendar in the proper setting, Arne swiftly constructed a time machine, and went back 50 years. Of course, the 1972 World Cup is the main calendar focus this time! You have the opportunity to guess, count, and conduct research every day for a chance to win one of 90 ChessBase prizes. Your chances of winning one of the major prizes increases, the more questions you can correctly guess. | Photo: Original by World Chess Hall of Fame

12/1/2022 – In his “Game of the Week” show #544 Merijn van Delft presents a game in which the well-known commentator and streamer Jan Gustafsson demonstrated his attacking and his tactical skills. | Merijn’s show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

11/27/2022 – Top International Grandmasters, top Indian men and women Grandmasters, young Indian talents and Viswanathan Anand — as the ambassador and advisor of the tournament — will enrich the fourth edition of the Tata Steel Chess Tournament. For the first time, a women’s tournament will be played with the same format and the same prize fund. The tournament will take place from November 29 to December 4 in Kolkata.

11/27/2022 – Herman Grooten is an International Master, a renowned trainer and the author of several highly acclaimed books about chess training and chess strategy. In the 101st instalment of his ChessBase show "Understanding before Moving", Herman continues to explain why it is good to study and to play the Sicilian. | Photo: Pascal Simon

11/27/2022 – Today, the Czech Grandmaster Vlastimil Jansa celebrates his 80th birthday. For many years, Jansa was one of the best Czechoslovak players, and he took part in ten chess Olympiads and was Czechoslovak national champion three times. In his youth, he was also part of the national junior team of Czechoslovakia - the football team. In 2018, he became senior world champion. Eduard Frey congratulates. | Photo: Jansa at the World Senior Championship 2022 in Assisi | Photo: Tournament page

11/26/2022 – Pattern recognition is a major feat of the human brain, albeit one that can lead to wrong outputs. Examples include seeing faces where there are none, known as pareidolia. Once it was believed that the planet Mars has a face structure on it, speculations about former inhabitants of the planet ran wild, later it turned out that this isn't the case and could be attributed to the low resolution of the photo. | Photo: Pixabay

11/26/2022 – By beating Uzbekistan in the final match, China won the World Team Championship in Jerusalem. The Chinese squad won both sets by a 2½-1½ score to claim the title. Meanwhile, in the match for third place, Spain got the better of India in tiebreaks, with wins for Jaime Santos and David Anton in the blitz decider. | Photo: Mark Livshitz

11/26/2022 – Garry Kasparov was the eight of the twelve World Chess Champions whom Frederic met. In our new weekly series he tells us how he met and befriended the top players, and the adventures they experienced together. Frederic has written a new book, together with Professor Christian Hesse, with fascinating chess stories from the last 50 years. It appeared (first in German) in October.