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.

Tata Steel R8: Arjun clear leader in the Challengers

1/24/2022 – Three decisive games in round 8 of the Tata Steel Masters tournament left Magnus Carlsen and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov sharing the lead on 5½ points. The Azerbaijani defeated Praggnanandhaa to catch up with the world champion. Meanwhile, in the Challengers, Arjun Erigaisi won his sixth game (in eight rounds!) to go into the second rest day of the event with a 1½-point lead. | Photo: Jurriaan Hoefsmit

Müller/ Engel: Player types - a review

1/24/2022 – Can players be classified into certain types? On their new ChessBase course Karsten Müller and Luis Engel follow a model of Danish Grandmaster Lars Bo Hansen and distinguish between four types of players and illustrate their different playing styles with typical games. This model helps to understand your own strengths and weaknesses and the strengths and weaknesses of your opponents better. Christian Höthe took a look at the course.

Gibraltar: Battle of the Sexes begins

1/24/2022 – The opening ceremony of the #GibChess Battle of Sexes Chess Match-Tournament, to be held at the Garrison Library, 24 January to 3 February 2022, took place at the Garrison Library at 6pm on Sunday 23 January 2022 in the presence of the Hon. Dr John Cortes, Minister for the Environment, Sustainability, Climate Change and Education, and Dr Jennifer Ballantine, Director of the Gibraltar Garrison Library, which is hosting the event.

The Best In Iceland

1/24/2022 – In 2020, we started a series called "The Best In", and interviewed some of the strongest male and female players of Aruba, The Bahamas, Brazil, Trinidad & Tobago, Armenia and Austria. The popular series will continue as a YouTube version with a 1-to-1 Zoom interview, including an analysis of the player's favourite game. We start the new chapter with the coldest country so far - Iceland. And in 2021, Hjörvar Steinn Grétarsson has had his best chess year so far. He speaks with us about the chess situation in Iceland, his motivation for the next years, and an interesting, mad story with another "ginger" chess fellow - Simon Williams.

All set for first leg of the FIDE Grand Prix series

1/23/2022 – In less than two weeks, Berlin will host the first leg of the FIDE Grand Prix Series 2022, organized by World Chess. From February 3 to 17, sixteen elite chess players, including grandmaster Pentala Harikrishna — who replaces Wei Yi — will compete for the chance to win the last two spots in the Candidates Tournament to be held later this year.

Understanding before Moving 63: The light-squared beast

1/23/2022 – 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 63rd instalment of his ChessBase show "Understanding before Moving", Herman looks at "light-squared beasts". | Photo: Tommy Grooten