World Championship Game 10: Safety first

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

Game of the Week #493: Thomas Beerdsen vs Sergey Fedorchuk

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.

New: Elisabeth Pähtz - Attacking with the Jobava London System

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.

The Endgame Magic Christmas Calendar - Door 8

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.
More...
 3

World Championship: Game 9 annotated by Wesley So

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

World Championship Game 9: Disaster strikes for Nepo

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

New: Andrew Martin - The Barry Attack

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.

The Endgame Magic Christmas Calendar - Door 7

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!
More...
 2

Max Warmerdam wins Dutch Championship

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

The principle of three weaknesses

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?

The Forester Open 2021 - Chess Among the Trees

12/6/2021 – Christmas trees mixed with chess boards at the 2021 Forester Open. Grandmaster Christopher Repka and International Masters Brian Escalante Ramirez and Viktor Gazik shared $3,224 for first through third places, acquiring spending money for this holiday season.

Why did Petrosian stop playing the Petroff

12/6/2021 – At the halfway mark in the 1969 World Championship between Petrosian and Spassky, the match score was level. Petrosian only needed to draw the match to retain his title, and with his super-solid Petroff it looked like he was going to wrap things up. But in game 17 and 19 Petrosian suddenly switched to Sicilian, losing calamitously. John Saunders retraces the course of the match that decided who would defend the title against Fischer three years later.

Karsten Müller’s Endgame Magic Show #174: Carlsen vs Nepomniachtchi, Games 3 to 5

12/6/2021 – In the Endgame Magic Show #174 Karsten Müller and Arne Kähler continue to follow the World Championship match and take a close look how Carlsen and Nepomniachtchi played in games 3 to 5 of the match. | You can watch the Endgame Magic Show on-demand with a ChessBase Premium account.

In memory of Jonathan Penrose (7 October 1933 – 30 November 2021)

12/6/2021 – Last Tuesday, 30 November 2021, the English Grandmaster Jonathan Penrose died at the age of 88. In the 1950s and 1960s Penrose was the best British player, and he became internationally famous when he defeated the reigning World Champion Mikhail Tal at the Chess Olympiad in Leipzig 1960.

The Endgame Magic Christmas Calendar - Door 6

12/6/2021 – The absolute majority of the answers were "B", which proves that you saw a stalemate motif that actually escaped the Komodo engine. Thank you again for the many detailed answers. We'll stay with the engines because the next task could only be solved by Karsten Mueller and Alexei Shirov thanks to "Fritz 3"! Attention, the task is not easy!
More...
 1

St. Nicholas Day: 60 minutes Vienna Opening free of charge

12/6/2021 – Traditionally, small presents are made on Saint Nicholas Day, 6 December. A nice custom, and today we're giving away a 60 Minutes course by Robert Ris on a current and sharp variation in the Vienna Game. Anyone who has a ChessBase account and logs in or creates a ChessBase account today will find the 60 Minutes video course there for download. Without ifs and buts! Enjoy! | Photo: Pixabay

Single battles

12/6/2021 – Match chess is very different from tournament play and, with no respite from your only enemy, considerably more stressful. The first game of a World Championship is a huge deal even for the defending champion (who has played championship matches before) and more so for debutants. In an excellent column, Jon Speelman looks at four first games from matches for the crown, all played between 1954 and 1972. | Pictured: Mikhail Tal | Photo: Bert Verhoeff, Anefo

World Championship Game 8: Nepomniachtchi self-destructs

12/5/2021 – Magnus Carlsen now has a two-point lead at the World Championship match in Dubai, after beating Ian Nepomniachtchi’s Petroff Defence in Sunday’s game 8. Nepo made a couple of inexplicable moves in positions that seemed to be all but forcefully heading to an inevitable draw. Find here the crucial encounter analysed by elite grandmaster and theoretical expert Anish Giri. | Photo: Eric Rosen

Understanding before Moving 56: The Octopus

12/5/2021 – 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 56th instalment of his ChessBase show "Understanding before Moving", Herman takes a look at the "octopus", a strong knight in the enemy camp. | Photo: Tommy Grooten

The Endgame Magic Christmas Calendar - Door 5

12/5/2021 – The bishop had to move to h1 to hold a draw. A ludicrous move, but one that the absolute majority had on their minds. In door 5 is a puzzle that an engine from 2019 couldn't figure out. Are you better than the computer?
More...
 1

World Chess Championship - the Arena

12/4/2021 – Wonder how it looks inside the arena where the World Championship match is taking place? In a big pictorial report, correspondent Venkatachalam Saravanan lets us feel the ambience surrounding the most important chess event of the year. Not to be missed! | Photo: Eric Rosen / FIDE

World Championship Game 7: A quiet draw

12/4/2021 – After a gruelling fight on Friday, Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi played a rather uneventful game at the World Championship match in Dubai. The 41-move draw they signed marks the halfway point of the event, as Nepo now has seven games tu surmount the one-point deficit on the scoreboard. Saturday’s encounter was analysed by Dutch star Anish Giri. | Photo: Niki Riga

The Endgame Magic Christmas Calendar - Door 4

12/4/2021 – Despite the most difficult task to date, a large number of clever players were able to find the solution, C. Kc4. Karsten Müller explains in the video exactly why only Kc4 wins and no other move. By the way - thanks for the lively participation. We have received more responses to our calendar than last year at the same time! That's wonderful! Today's example is about holding a draw, although it's with only one pawn against three pawns.
More...
 2

The Carlsen years (4): Twelve draws

12/4/2021 – Magnus Carlsen is leading the World Championship match against Ian Nepomniachtchi after scoring a memorable win. In our fourth and final instalment of Carlsen’s previous matches, we look at his 2018 confrontation against Fabiano Caruana. For the first time in a match for the crown, all the classical games finished drawn. The defending champion won the rapid tiebreaks categorically though, and thus kept his title. | Photo: Niki Riga