1/7/2022 – Trents Tactics is back in 2022! Lawrence and Arne decide to talk about the chess year 2021, the tournaments, and the best male and female player. They then move directly to highly creative tactical patterns, and finally play some ChessBase training, trying come closer to the rating of 2400.

1/7/2022 – Parallel to the Rapid and Blitz World Championships in Warsaw, FIDE held its annual congress. Delegates participated mostly online. On its website, FIDE recently published the "results and decisions" of the congress. Despite the Corona pandemic, FIDE is solidly financed, now largely from sponsorship, donations and broadcasting rights, less so from membership fees. The World Chess Federation has reacquired the rights to the World Championships. | Photos: David Llada

1/7/2022 – The MegaBase 2022 is Chess History in Action: It offers 9.210.512 games, the earliest played in 1475 and the most recent played October 2021, many of them annotated. Here our columnist, offers an introduction to three epic matches from the MegaBase with six annotated games. There is a lot more to discover in this treasure trove, grand battles, opening novelties and exemplary endgames.

1/6/2022 – In the first episode of his "Fast & Furious" show in 2022, Dutch trainer Robert Ris presents his favourite game of 2021, that features an impressive attack in a sharp line of the Sicilian Najdorf. | "Fast and Furious" is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

1/6/2022 – In the second week of December Nigel Short caught Corona though he was vaccinated twice. Short's infection was so severe that he had to go hospital, but it did not stop the English Grandmaster from playing at the 6th Vergani Cup in Cattolica, Italy, at the beginning of the year. However, he needed some help from chess goddess Caissa when the tournament began. But Short did not forget his duties as a chess ambassador. | Photos: Circolo Scacchistico Forlivese, Rupali Mullick

1/6/2022 – "One of the most difficult games I have ever played." That is how Mikhail Botvinnik described his encounter with Wolfgang Unzicker from Germany at the Chess Olympiad 1954 in Amsterdam. Botvinnik wound up in a difficult rook ending in which he was a pawn down. However, he managed to save the endgame, once again proving his analytical abilities and his endgame skills. But was the endgame really drawn? Or did Unzicker miss a win? Karsten Müller invites you to take a look at this fascinating endgame. | Photo: Botvinnik at the Chess Olympiad 1960 in Leipzig

1/6/2022 – Svitlana is back, and in her first episode of 2022, she shows us a couple of beautiful, and memorable games of 2021. Players like Firouzja, Caruana, and Kosteniuk had some magnificent games, and it always delightful to check them out again. What was your favourite game with the smartest moves of 2021?

1/5/2022 – In this first "Game of the Week" show of the new year Merijn van Delft takes a final look at the World Rapid Championship. Magnus Carlsen pushed a little too hard and lost against 17-year old Nodirbek Abdusattorov, and in the end Abusattorov qualified for his third tournament playoff in a row (earlier in December twice in Spain) and again he won to become the youngest Rapid World Champion ever. In the final game of the playoff he impressively beat Ian Nepomniachtchi, which is Merijn's Game of the Week. | Merijn's show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

1/5/2022 – In the 2021 World Championship match between challenger Ian Nepomniachtchi and defending champion Magnus Carlsen, Nepomniachtchi blundered in a couple of games. He is in good company. In his Power Play Chess show on YouTube Daniel King takes a look at blunders that happened in previous World Championship matches and found a number of amazing, amusing and entertaining mistakes made by the best players in the history of chess.

1/5/2022 – The World Championship match between Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi was the chess highlight of the year 2021, and chess fans all over the world followed the games and the match avidly. Carlsen won 7.5-3.5 and defended his title. Shortly after the match, Oliver Roeder and Simran Parwani took a look at some statistics of the match and presented their findings on www.538.com, a statistics-oriented website that focuses on American politics and sports. | Image: FIDE

1/5/2022 – The new ChessBase Magazine #205 offers a wealth of ideas and recommendations for your repertoire. The topics of the eleven opening articles in the new issue range from the Benko Gambit (4.cxb5 a6 5.b6 e6), the French Tarrasch (8.0-0 g5!), the Ruy Lopez (5.Qe2) to recipes against the King's Indian (after 6.Be2). Sergey Grigoriants looks at a topic that will interest many chess fans: He presents an active repertoire against the London System! However, you have to be ready to sacrifice a pawn with 6...e5! and to continue playing "precisely and powerfully" afterwards. But that shouldn't be difficult for you after reading Grigoriant's article!

1/4/2022 – This "Weekly Show" is all about the World Rapid and Blitz Championships and a look ahead to 2022. Lawrence takes a close look at the battle Gukesh-Abdusattorov from the World Rapid, "a great display of resilience from the young Uzbek who went on to shock the field and win the entire tournament". | Lawrence’s show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here