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!

6/1/2022 – The claim to be the best ever in chess, in any category, is usually backed up by either hard numbers (Karpov's number of grandmaster tournament wins is not open to debate), or strong opinions such as the best absolute player. But the debate on the greatest prodigy seems to lie somewhere in between, depending on your criteria. Read this article and see if you agree. (photo: Capablanca at age four)

5/31/2022 – The Hamburg Chess Club hosted a GM tournament and an IM tournament last week. Leon Mendonca from India won the GM tournament. Frederick Svane scored a GM norm — 24 hours later Svane's third and last GM norm in the Bundesliga was also official. In the IM tournament, Brandon Clarke was the clear winner. | Photo: Hugo Schulz, Vasilios Kotronias, Leon Mendonca, Frederik Svane and Frank Bracker (Frank Bracker)

5/31/2022 – The new Extra #207 offers, among other things, over an hour of video training with Elisabeth Pähtz and Ivan Sokolov. Germany's best female chess player presents one of her favourite weapons against the Gruenfeld Defence in a short video series. And Sokolov's contribution deals with a topic that should be interesting for many 1.d4 players, especially at club level: The GM from the Netherlands shows a method with which a nice advantage can be comfortably achieved against the Budapest Gambit. This issue's "Brilliancy" comes from Jorden van Foreest, who takes a critical look at his Sicilian experiment (3.Bc4) from the Tata Steel Masters 2022 against Praggnanandhaa. In addition, the "Lucky bag" with 56 annotated games offers a great mix of analyses and surprising ideas. ChessBase Magazine Extra is the perfect complement to ChessBase Magazine. Available as a single issue or by subscription (6 issues per year). Available as a download or on DVD.

5/31/2022 – This year's Norway Chess Tournament in Stavanger started on Monday evening with a blitz tournament. After five rounds Magnus Carlsen led the field but then lost against Wesley So - after trying 1.a4 - and Vishy Anand. So, who had started the tournament with a loss against Wang Hao, used his chance and won the tournament with 6.5/9, one full point ahead of Carlsen who finished second with 5.5/9. | Photos: Norway Chess

5/31/2022 – IM Herman Grooten will offer rules-of-thumb and concepts to give clubchess players the necessary guidance to try and find the right paths in their own games. In this two-part course the emphasis will be on typical pawn-structures, ones that appear quite often in games and that will be very recognisable to club-chess players. Now, you also have the option to watch all of your favourite Fritztrainers in our "Video-Section" as a stream!

5/31/2022 – Pawn endings require precise calculation. In the diagrammed position it is Black to move and win. But how?