6/10/2022 – In his “Power Play Show” Daniel King focuses on one of Yuri Averbakh’s biggest contributions to chess theory: the King’s Indian Defence system he developed and pioneered in the 1950s. Still one of the most reliable setups up to this day! | 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.

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.

6/6/2022 – One of the prerequisites for playing chess well is to have a decent feel for the geometry of the board. In today’s column, GM Jon Speelman explores this theme through a couple of somewhat unusual patterns — the staircase and the stairwell. He also looks at a game by Will Watson, a player once described by Boris Spassky as “a drunk with a machine gun”. | Pictured: ‘Relativity’ by M. C. Escher

6/6/2022 – Vishy Anand regained the sole lead at the Norway Chess Tournament thanks to a victory in Armageddon over former co-leader Magnus Carlsen. The Indian missed a huge chance to defeat the world number one in their classical encounter, but quickly managed to recover from the setback to get an all-important win in the sudden-death decider. Anish Giri and Aryan Tari scored three points by winning their classical games with the white pieces. | Photos: Lennart Ootes

6/5/2022 – 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 82nd instalment of his ChessBase show "Understanding before Moving", Herman explains why playing the Benko Gambit might be a good choice for club players. | Photo: Pascal Simon

6/4/2022 – At the Tata Steel Masters 2022 Jorden van Foreest got the opportunity to conduct a long-planned opening experiment: In the Sicilian with 2.Nc6 he surprised his opponent Praggnanandhaa with 3.Bc4?! "Finally, here it was. There aren't all that many good reasons for why I like the move, the main probably being the fact that it looks so stupid :-)", writes the young Dutchman at the beginning of his analysis in the new CBM Extra #207. And the game continued no less exceptionally: after 3...e6 4.0-0 d5 5.Bb5! dxe4 6.Ne5 Qc7 7.Nxc6 bxc6 8.Bc4! White hast lost a pawn and moved his bishop three times in the opening! In the end, with a bit of luck, Van Foreest still won the game. It's "The brillancy" in CBM Extra #207. On top of that, the new edition offers no less than 56 annotated games and over an hour of video training with Elisabeth Pähtz and Ivan Sokolov.

6/4/2022 – Round 4 of the Norway Chess tournament was played on Friday. Magnus Carlsen won his classical against Anish Giri, and was awarded three points for his victory. Previously in the sole lead, Viswanathan Anand, playing with Black, had to settle for a draw against Wesley So before losing the Armageddon game. Anand received only one point in this round and is now sharing the lead with Carlsen. Round 5 will be played on Sunday after a rest day. | Photos: Lennart Ootes

6/4/2022 – It is said that "Vishy" Anand only needed seconds to find White's winning continuation in the diagram position - whereas you have all the time in the world!