9/12/2021 – The Tolstoy Cup is taking place at the Yasnaya Polyana cultural centre on September 11–12. The tournament is a 9-round single round-robin event with a time control of 15 minutes for the whole game plus a 10-second increment per move. Anish Giri, Boris Gelfand, Anton Korobov and Nikita Vitiugov are among the participants. | Photo: Eteri Kublashvili

9/11/2021 – Four players reached the final round of the Champions Showdown tournament tied for first place. Only Leinier Dominguez managed to score a win in his last game, though, and thus claimed clear first place and $37,500 in prize money. Garry Kasparov was among the four players sharing the lead after eight rounds, but a loss against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave left him in fifth place in the final standings. | Photo: Crystal Fuller

9/11/2021 – Twenty years ago, on September 12, 2001, we launched our brand new database-driven news page. The very first report we were forced to file was about the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York, which had been perpetrated on the previous day. It had a special meaning for chess. Six years earlier the World Chess Championship had been staged on the Observation Deck on the 107th floor.

9/11/2021 – In the diagram position Black's attacked rook should definitely not leave the back rank - after 35...Rc2?? White has a forced checkmate. Enjoy!

9/11/2021 – Richard Rapport beat Alireza Firouzja in their round-4 classical encounter to increase his lead atop the standings of the Norway Chess Tournament. In the stellar contest of the day, Magnus Carlsen beat Ian Nepomniachtchi in the Armageddon decider after drawing the classical game out of a Berlin Defence. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

9/11/2021 – The Top Division of the Online Olympiad finished on Friday after three days of intense top-level chess. Three weeks after the tournament began, we are closing in on the final stage of the event: the play-offs. The pairings in the quarterfinals starting Monday are Kazakhstan vs USA, Ukraine vs India, Russia (pictured) vs Hungary and China vs Poland. | Photo: Boris Dolmatovsky

9/10/2021 – In this week’s show, GM Daniel King focuses on the Spanish Opening, using a game between Levon Aronian and Magnus Carlsen as his main example and going through some of his own games to explain his take on the popular setup. | 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.

9/10/2021 – Ten grandmasters, including living legend Garry Kasparov, are the protagonists of Champions Showdown: Chess 9LX, a rapid tournament played at the Saint Louis Chess Club. The event, taking place on September 8-10, is being played in Chess 9LX style, also known as Fischer Random, with a $150,000 total prize fund. The action kicks off at 14.00 local time (21.00 CEST, 15.00 ET). | Photo: Crystal Fuller

9/10/2021 – Leinier Dominguez scored a perfect 3 out of 3 on the second day of action at the Champions Showdown Tournament, leapfrogging Fabiano Caruana atop the standings table with three rounds to go. Meanwhile, Garry Kasparov collected 2½ points and climbed to shared third place! | Photo: Bryan Adams

9/10/2021 – In April 2021, Ian Nepomniachtchi won the Candidates Tournament in Ekaterinenburg and thus gained the right to challenge world champion Magnus Carlsen in a match to be staged later this year. A perfect occasion to present the challenger's skills in the "Special" of ChessBase Magazine #203. Our authors (including Adhiban, Berg, Edouard, Krasenkow and others) annotated their favourite game by the 31-year-old Russian. This has resulted in an exclusive collection of 21 high-class encounters played between 2002 and 2021. One of them — Nepomniachtchi-Carlsen from the Legends of Chess Final in 2020 — is presented in this article, annotated by IM Robert Ris. "A wonderful prelude to their upcoming World Championship match". Enjoy!

9/10/2021 – The third round of the Norway Chess Tournament saw three draws in the classical games, two of them by perpetual check. Magnus Carlsen played 18 moves of a King’s Indian before signing a draw against Richard Rapport on move 18. The Armageddon tiebreakers that followed all favoured the black player. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

9/10/2021 – This week, well-known Dutch trainer Robert Ris takes a look at a sideline in the Botvinnik Variation of the Semi Slav — 7.a4. He analyses a game in which Indian prodigy Gukesh had the white pieces, and pays special attention to a 2019 predecessor in which Daniil Dubov beat Anish Giri with white. | “Fast and Furious” is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.