6/15/2022 – Rating favourite Liviu Dieter Nisipeanu (pictured, on the left) won the Targu Mures Open, a tournament that is part of the Romanian Grand Prix, a series of strong open events in Romania. In round 1 Nisipeanu lost against WGM Mihaela Sandu but he recovered and finished sole first with 7.0/9, ahead of the 13-year old Ukrainian IM Ihor Samunenkov who was sole second with 6.5/9. Irina Bulmaga (pictured, on the right) won the women's prize and sent a report. | Photos: CS Juvenes | Facebook

6/15/2022 – In 2019, the Prague Chess Festival took place for the first time and currently, the 4th Prague Chess Festival is played - with two interesting grandmaster tournaments, the Masters and the Challengers, an Open, the Futures, a tournament for young players, and a number of side events. In an interview, Petr Boleslav, organiser and tournament director of the Prague Chess Festival, talks about the background of the tournament and reveals why he decided to become a chess organiser. | Photo: Petr Boleslav at the opening of the Chess Festival | Photo: Petr Vrabec

6/15/2022 – The Budapest Gambit (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e5 3.dxe5 Ng4) has its most loyal followers in club chess. 1.d4 players who are confronted with the gambit have to reckon with the fact that their opponents are far more familiar with the positions, if only because of the number of games they have played with that system. In the current ChessBase Magazine Extra 207 Ivan Sokolov shows a little-known but very convenient way for White to gain a nice advantage without extensive study of opening theory. You can watch an excerpt from his video analysis here!

6/14/2022 – Le Quang Liem grabbed the sole lead at the Masters section of the Prague Chess Festival after beating Saleh Salem in Tuesday’s sixth round. Pentala Harikrishna is in sole second place a half point back. In the Challengers, former sole leader Vincent Keymer was held to a draw by Marcin Krzyzanowski, which allowed Nodirbek Abdusattorov to climb to the shared lead thanks to a win over Max Warmerdam. | Photo: Petr Vrabec

6/14/2022 – Almost eight years ago, in 2014, it was with deep chagrin that we announced the demise of the decades-old chess column in the venerable New York Times. Its most recent upkeeper at the time was the New York Times journalist, Dylan Loeb McClain, who still writes about chess affairs for the paper. It is with pleasure that we can trumpet its resurrection at the hands of GM Daniel Naroditsky.

6/14/2022 – Mate ends the game and mating attacks also occur in the endgame. In the diagrammed position it is White to move. What should he do?

6/10/2022 – The tenth edition of the Norway Chess Tournament is taking place from May 31 to June 10 in Stavanger. A 10-player single round-robin, the event uses a unique format: in case of a draw in the classical game, an Armageddon follows to have a winner in every single encounter. The action kicks off at 17.00 CEST (11.00 ET, 20.30 IST). | Follow the games live with computer analyses and expert commentary.

6/10/2022 – As promised last episode, we wanted to display the beautiful queen sacrifice by Lawrence Trent from the HSK Gm Invitational open. But the main part of today, is the legendary GM Alexander Kotov, which Arne didn't even know about before. The "Kotov Syndrome" is named after the Soviet Grandmaster, and it describes a situation, where you think about an important position for too long, not finding the winning move, and with little time left, make a blunder instead. Probably all of us have been there.

6/10/2022 – Shakhriyar Mamedyarov defeated Vishy Anand to climb to sole second place with a round to go at the Norway Chess Tournament. The Indian star, who was having a great run in Stavanger, made a one-move blunder and immediately resigned the game on move 22. Meanwhile, Magnus Carlsen beat Maxime Vachier-Lagrave in Armageddon to keep the sole lead — the world champion goes into Friday’s final round a half point ahead of Mamedyarov. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

6/9/2022 – Defending champion Sam Shankland bounced back from his first-round loss against Le Quang Liem by beating Saleh Salem with the white pieces in the Masters section of the Prague Chess Festival. This was the only decisive game of the day. A more eventful second round in the Challengers saw four players scoring wins with white — one of the winners was Vincent Keymer, who grabbed the sole lead as the only participant who scored back-to-back victories in the first two rounds. | Photos: Petr Vrabec

6/9/2022 – This week Robert Ris looks at a fine victory by Alexei Shirov, who recently defeated Jorden van Foreest in a 4-game mini match that took place in Limburg. Fire on board! | "Fast and Furious" is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

6/9/2022 – Are you an 'Activist', a 'Theorist', a 'Reflector' or a 'Pragmatist’, the four types of players identified by Karsten Müller and Luis Engel in their ChessBase course about player types? It might help to know, and in a review in the "New in Chess Magazine" English Grandmaster Matthew Sadler talks about the pros and cons of such a model and argues that it is useful to identify your strengths and weaknesses if you want to improve your game.