New: ChessBase Magazine Extra #205

1/29/2022 – Videos: Mihail Marin examines the Berlin Defence with 4.d3 d6 and finds some practical advantages for Black over the standard move 4...Bc5. Christian Bauer presents a new knight sacrifice in the Voronezh Variation of the Alekhine Defence. In this issue's "Brilliancy" Imre Hera took the initiative against Zoltan Almasi in the London System after 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 e6 3.Bf4 b6 4.e3 Be7 5.h3 c5 6.Nc3! "The lucky bag" is particularly well stocked with 72 (!) extensively annotated games! Among them are analyses by Vladimir Belous, Spyridon Kapnisis, Michal Krasenkow, Krishnan Sasikiran and many others. ChessBase Magazine Extra is the perfect supplement to ChessBase Magazine. Available as a single issue or by subscription (6 issues per year). Available on DVD or as a download.
More...
 5

No endgame technique required!

1/29/2022 – In the diagram position White has a shortcut to victory, enabling him to hunt down Black's king ... or his queen on h1! Can you work it all out in your head?

Study of the Month: Endgame Studies, Endgame Theory

1/29/2022 – Endgame studies sometimes go to extremes, e.g. by demonstrating a win in 584(!) moves in a study, in which King, Rook, two Bishops (standing on the same colour), and pawn fight against King, Queen and Pawn. But are these and similar studies relevant for the theory of the endgame or practical games? It depends. Siegfried Hornecker takes a closer look.

Tata Steel R11: Van Foreest takes down Giri

1/29/2022 – Anish Giri is all but out of contention for first place at the Tata Steel Masters tournament, as he was defeated by Jorden van Foreest in Friday’s eleventh round. Magnus Carlsen signed a draw against Vidit Gujrathi and has a half-point lead over Richard Rapport going into the final weekend of the event. Moreover, Carlsen will get a free point in the last round, when he was supposed to face Daniil Dubov, who had to leave the tournament after testing positive for Covid-19. | Photo: Jurriaan Hoefsmit

Daniel King’s Power Play Show: Tata tactics

1/28/2022 – In his Power Play Show, GM Daniel King looks at tactical moments from the Tata Steel tournaments. The main game under consideration is Caruana vs Rapport which is more strategic and displays Rapport's ambitious and somewhat unorthodox style. | 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.

Trent's Tactics - An incredible tactic between Keres and Raud

1/28/2022 – Lawrence Trent thinks that Paul Keres might be one of the most underrated players in the chess world. Time to witness a special game of his against Ilmar Raud. The tactical combination is quite stunning. It is also time to catch up with the tactics training on ChessBase, and break through the 2400 rating wall. Will it finally work out today?

Battle of the Sexes, Round 4: Team Sabino catches up

1/28/2022 – The fourth round of the #GibChess Battle of the Sexes at Gibraltar’s Garrison Library, ended in a narrow victory for the men’s team by 5½-4½, wielding the white pieces for the second time. This was Team Sabino’s second successive victory, following the women’s double success in the first two rounds but of course only game points are relevant and Team Pia remain in the lead by a single point. The score is thus 20½ to the women, 19½ to the men. John Saunders reports. | Photos: John Saunders | Photo: Steven Linares, Gibraltar Minister for Housing, Employment, Youth and Sport, makes the opening move for Eric Rosen against Olga Girya

Robert Ris’ Fast and Furious: Rapport plays the Dutch

1/28/2022 – This week Robert Ris takes a close how the Hungarian Grandmaster Richard Rapport, who is well-known for his interesting ideas, (successfully) treats the Classical Dutch with Black. Inspiring! | "Fast and Furious" is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

Breaking news: Dubov leaves Tata Steel Chess Tournament

1/28/2022 – In a press release the organisers of the Tata Steel tournament in Wijk aan Zee, announced that "Daniil Dubov will leave the Tata Steel Chess Tournament after testing positive for the corona virus in a PCR test yesterday. This means that the results of his previous matches will stand and that Dubov will forfeit the games against the opponents he was to face in the last three rounds. They are Rapport, Praggnanandhaa and Carlsen respectively." | Photo: Press Release Wijk

Meet The Fritztrainer - Robert Ris

1/28/2022 – Hundreds of different Fritztrainers have been teaching us chess on ChessBase for more than a decade. Maybe you sometimes wonder what else the authors do? "Meet the Fritztrainer" takes a look behind the scenes, telling us more about the private life of your favourite chess trainer. We already had the pleasure to talk to the Dutch Fritztrainers GM Jan Werle, and IM Merijn van Delft. Today we speak with another very active Fritztrainer from the Netherlands, who also has his own weekly show on ChessBase - IM Robert Ris.

Petrosyan and Mkrtchyan are the 2022 Armenian champions

1/28/2022 – The 2022 Armenian Championships took place at the Tigran Petrosian Chess House in Yerevan on January 12-23. Manuel Petrosyan and Mariam Mkrtchyan won the national championships — open and women’s respectively — for the first time in their careers. | Photos: Armenian Chess Federation

Chess festival in Marienbad

1/27/2022 – Last week a chess festival took place in Mariánské Lázne (known as Marienbad in German), Czech Republic, as part of the Czech Chess Tour, with two GM tournaments, three IM tournaments and a number of open events. Among the stars of the festival were the winter landscape and the astounding architecture. | Photos: Arne Bracker / Official site

Endgame Riddle Unzicker vs Botvinnik solved: Unzicker could have won!

1/27/2022 – The German Grandmaster Wolfgang Unzicker was an amateur and a judge by profession but even for the world's best players he was a dangerous opponent. At the Chess Olympiad 1954 in Amsterdam he was close to winning against Mikhail Botvinnik but Botvinnik managed to save an endgame that seemed impossible to save. Karsten Müller invited ChessBase readers to take a look at this endgame, and now presents the solution of this endgame riddle.

Battle of the Sexes, Round 3: The men bounce back

1/27/2022 – After two tough rounds in which they were heavily defeated, the men’s team fought back with a vengeance in round three of the #GibChess Battle of the Sexes Tournament and won by the impressive margin of 7-3 in this men versus women classical chess event, played at Gibraltar’s Garrison Library on Wednesday 26 January. The match score is thus now 16-14 in favour of the women but with the men close behind with a long way to go. | Report and photos by John Saunders

Game of the Week #500:

1/27/2022 – In his "Game of the Week" show #500 Merijn van Delft focuses on the tournament in Wijk aan Zee, and especially on Magnus Carlsen's fine win against Shakhryar Mamedyarov in the Catalan. | Merijn's show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

Tata Steel R10: Plenty of action

1/27/2022 – Round 10 of the Tata Steel Masters tournament saw the two main contenders for first place, Magnus Carlsen and Anish Giri, drawing their games, thus keeping the status quo atop the standings table. There was no lack of excitement on the remaining boards, though, as Richard Rapport, Andrey Esipenko, Nils Grandelius and Praggnanandhaa (pictured) all managed to score full points. | Photo: Jurriaan Hoefsmit

The Weekly Show: Battle of the Sexes

1/26/2022 – In his “Weekly Show” Lawrence Trent covers a great game between Olga Girya and Joe Gallagher from the Battle of the Sexes, which he is currently commentating at in Gibraltar! Of course, he also goes over the highlights of the Tata Steel Chess Tournament. | Lawrence’s show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here

Texas Chess Center Grand Opening

1/26/2022 – With Omicron on the rise and social gatherings discouraged, leasing 2,000 square feet for in-person chess seems risky. Yet the gamble paid off for the Texas Chess Center, which attracted 67 players to its grand opening on January 22, 2022. WIM Alexey Root reports.| Photo: Christopher Tetzlaff

Battle of the Sexes, Round 2: Team Pia wins again

1/26/2022 – Round two on Tuesday 25 January of the #GibChess "Battle of the Sexes" in Gibraltar, a ten-round Scheveningen match between ten male and ten female players, proved to be an exact repeat of the medicine dished out by the women to the men in round one - a 6½-3½ drubbing for the male sex. John Saunders reports, with a description of the games and interesting video interviews with the players. | Photos: John Saunders

Tata Steel R9: Carlsen beats Shakh, Giri wins again

1/26/2022 – In a crucial confrontation, Magnus Carlsen beat Shakhriyar Mamedyarov to reclaim the sole lead at the Tata Steel Masters tournament. The one player keeping up the pace with the world champion is Anish Giri, who got the better of Sam Shankland to remain a half point behind the Norwegian. Sergey Karjakin and Fabiano Caruana also won in round 9. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

Svitlana's Smart Moves - Winning in an equal position

1/26/2022 – Magnus Carlsen is the epiphany of winning in an equal position. But what to take care of? How to gain an advantage? What should we consider, once a very equal position has been reached? In one full game, starting from the "Scotch Game" opening, to the very end - with three pawns vs. one rook - Svitlana takes us on a journey, on how to advance our chess skills.

Battle of the Sexes, Round 1: A clear win for team Pia

1/25/2022 – Round one of the #GibChess Battle of the Sexes Tournament, held at the Gibraltar Garrison Library on Monday 24 January, got off to a pulsating start as the team of women’s players, dubbed "Team Pia" after their captain, GM Pia Cramling, scored a big win over "Team Sabino", as the men’s team is now known, with four of the ten women’s players scoring wins against their male adversaries, with only one male player able to win in reply. The first player to win a game was Olga Girya (pictured) who defeated Joe Gallagher in a King's Indian. | Photos: John Saunders

The power of passed pawns

1/25/2022 – In the diagrammed position it is White to move and draw. White has a powerful passed pawn on g7 that forces Black's bishop to control the g8-square, but White is a pawn down and Black also has a powerful passed pawn that just attacked White's bishop on d3. Should the bishop go to b5 or to c2?

Karsten Müller’s Endgame Magic Show #179: Best endgames of 2021

1/24/2022 – In the Endgame Magic Show #179 Karsten Müller and Arne Kähler take a look at some of the best endgames played in 2021. Karsten's favourite is game six of the World Championship match between Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi, arguably the decisive game of the match. Arne had another favourite - a fine endgame from the Sitges Open. But what is your favorite endgame of 2021? Share it in the comments! | You can watch the Endgame Magic Show on-demand with a ChessBase Premium account.