12/9/2021 – The FIDE Rapid and Blitz World Championships cannot take place in Nur Sultan (Kazakhstan) in December as originally planned. Due to the tightened Corona security measures imposed by the Kazakh government, FIDE has cancelled the tournament in Kazakhstan and is currently looking at alternative venues.

12/9/2021 – "A short and quite uneventful draw, which totally makes sense as Magnus is on the verge of match victory." This is how Wesley So summed up game 10 of the World Championship match between Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi. However, in his analyses he still managed to dig deep and indicates a lot of hidden subtleties of the game, particularly in regard to opening theory and match strategy. | Picture: FIDE

12/8/2021 – An uneventful draw in game 10 of the World Championship match kept Magnus Carlsen’s 3-point lead going into the fourth rest day of the contest. The defending champion only needs to score 1 point in the remaining 4 encounters to keep his crown. | Photo: Niki Riga

12/8/2021 – This week, Merijn van Delft takes a look at a game between the Dutch player Thomas Beerdsen and Sergey Fedorchuk from Ukraine. The game was played at a tournament in Barcelona and helped Beerdsen to make his second grandmaster norm. | Merijn’s show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

12/8/2021 – The Jobava London System, named after the top Georgian player Baadur Jobava, is a side form of the London System, which differs in principle in only one small detail - the white knight is established early on c3. This brings two major advantages. On the one hand, it is possible to castle longside more quickly, and on the other hand, tactical motifs sometimes arise on the queenside. Since the system is still relatively new, there is no need to learn tons of theory.

12/8/2021 – Oh dear! The last door really was a tough cookie. Rarely have we received so many different answers, so we decided to draw two more winners for the day. In the video, we see the details of the solution Kc2, which lay dormant for more than 100 years. Today we have only four pieces on the board, and yet the solution is not crystal clear.

12/8/2021 – After blundering in game 8 of his World Championship match against Magnus Carlsen, Ian Nepomniachtchi also blundered and lost in game 9. Carlsen now leads 6-3 and with five games to go the match is practically over. Wesley So took a close look at game 9 and concludes: "Ian was playing very well early on in the match but ... game 6 was clearly the turning point in this match as before that both players were playing equally well and it seems that Ian was no inferior to Magnus. ... Ian is a great player and even the greatest players make mistakes. Unexpected and miserable stuff happens to us all, and we hope Ian will be able to move on and get his mojo back asap!" | Photo: Wesley So (Archive) | Photo: Lennart Ootes

12/7/2021 – The World Championship match in Dubai might theoretically finish after 11 (out of 14) games, as Magnus Carlsen scored a third victory in four games after Ian Nepomniachtchi inexplicably blundered a piece in an equal position on Tuesday. The challenger now needs to win 3 out of the 5 remaining encounters to take the match to tiebreaks. | Photo: Niki Riga

12/7/2021 – Not quite a London System and not quite a Veresov. The unusually named ‘Barry Attack‘ lies somewhere between the two. Yet another challenging queen pawn system that Black has to prepare for.

12/7/2021 – First, thank you very much for all the answers! We are delighted that this calendar is so well received. Door number 6 proved to be one of the most difficult ones, although the majority were able to find the somewhat bizarre move Kh8. If you thought door 6 was tough already, today we raise the difficulty even more. Good luck!

12/7/2021 – This year, the Dutch National Championship was played in two stages. In the knockout preliminaries four players had qualified for the finals: Max Warmerdam, Robin Swinkels, Roeland Pruijssers, and Hing Ting Lai. Max Warmerdam convincingly won the finals, a double round-robin which was played last week. | Photos: Harry Gielen

12/7/2021 – In queen endgames having the initiative is crucial. In the diagram position it is Black to move and it is Black who has the initiative. But how should he proceed?