2/16/2022 – A 29-move draw in game 2 of the FIDE Grand Prix final means the winner of the event will be decided in Thursday’s tiebreaks. The short game was not without excitement, though, as the players entered a sharp line in which White had the more comfortable position but had to contend with Black grabbing material on the queenside. Hikaru Nakamura will have the white pieces in the first rapid game tomorrow. | Photos: World Chess

2/16/2022 – In his "Game of the Week" show #503 Merijn van Delft takes at a theoretically interesting game in the Italian, which Leinier Dominguez and Wesley So played at the FIDE Grand Prix in Berlin. | Merijn's show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

2/16/2022 – On 14 February the Yugoslav-Serbian grandmaster Borislav Ivkov died in Belgrade at the age of 88. In 1951 Ivkov was World Junior Champion and in the 1960s and 1970s he was one of the world's best players. He made it to the Candidates in 1965, and played in the Interzonal Tournaments in 1967, 1970, 1973, and 1979. | Photo: Durch National Archive

2/16/2022 – In his "Weekly Show" Lawrence Trent analyses the first game of the final of the FIDE Grand Prix in Berlin between Hikaru Nakamura and Levon Aronian, which was a hard-fought draw. | Lawrence’s show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here

2/16/2022 – Hikaru Nakamura had the white pieces in the first game of the final at the FIDE Grand Prix in Berlin. Nakamura was on the back foot after playing what his opponent Levon Aronian considered to be an “erroneous” plan. However, Aronian could not make the most of his advantage and ended up needing to show precision to hold a 54-move draw. | Photos: World Chess

2/15/2022 – The "Battle of the Sexes" was a ten-round Scheveningen match between ten male and ten female players that was played from 24 January to 3rd February in Gibraltar. The men won 53-47, and looking back on the match, Irina Bulmaga (pictured), who commentated the games live in Gibraltar, wonders if and why the men were better at team-building and what this match says about women's chess. | Photo: David Llada

2/15/2022 – For the first time, the Saint Louis Chess Club will host The American Cup, highlighting an exciting and unique double elimination format. This new format and tournament will bring world class chess masters to America's chess capital to compete in a fierce do-or-die struggle for $300,000 total in prize money. With a double elimination format, fans can expect The American Cup to have a combination of exciting chess play, stunning upsets, and epic comebacks. Press release.

2/15/2022 – On 8 February Yury Averbakh celebrated his 100th birthday. GM Sergey Yanovsky visited the jubilarian and presented him with the Golden Plaque of the Russian Chess Federation. An exhibition was opened in his honour at the Central Chess Club. Averbakh received countless congratulations and was greeted per video by FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich and Garry Kasparov. | Photos: Sergey Yanovsky and Vladimir Barsky (Russian Chess Federation)

2/15/2022 – Knights can fork kings, queen and rooks, but in endgames they are often surprisingly helpless against rooks. In the diagrammed position Black's passed pawn on the h-file looks dangerous but the white rooks have everything under control. What did White play to win the game?

2/15/2022 – The English newspaper "The Guardian" recently published an interview with Garry Kasparov in which the 13th World Champion openly talks about his chess career, his political activities, his loss against Deep Blue, and how it feels to be thrown into jail. | Photo: Saint Louis Chess Center

2/14/2022 – In 1972, the World Championship match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky in Reykjavik made headlines all over the world, and during and after the match the games were analysed in detail. One of the highlights of the match was game 10, in which Fischer won a difficult endgame after getting the advantage in a complicated middlegame. 50 years after the match Karsten Müller invited the ChessBase readers to take another look at this classic. Here is what the readers found. | Photo: Skáksamband Íslands – Icelandic Chess Federation

2/14/2022 – In the Endgame Magic Show #182 Karsten Müller continues to present endgame highlights from the Tata Steel Tournament 2022 in Wijk aan Zee. Among these highlights is a fascinating and instructive rook ending that allows you to test your rook endgame skills. | You can watch the Endgame Magic Show on-demand with a ChessBase Premium account.