2021 Hardware Buyer's Guide

9/12/2021 – Your computers and computer components are feeling a bit long in the tooth, and although still good (or not), you know you are behind the curve. Or perhaps you are buying a dedicated machine for chess and unsure what will be best for you. Either way, this long-awaited guide will help you plan your purchase with confidence for all budgets.

Norway Chess: Nepomniachtchi climbs to second place

9/12/2021 – Ian Nepomniachtchi beat Sergey Karjakin on the rest day of the Norway Chess Tournament. The round-1 game had to be rescheduled after Nepo could not make it in time to Stavanger due to visa issues. Thanks to the victory in the classical game, the next challenger for the World Championship climbed to sole second place in the standings table. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

Tolstoy Cup - Live!

9/12/2021 – The Tolstoy Cup is taking place at the Yasnaya Polyana cultural centre on September 11–12. The tournament is a 9-round single round-robin event with a time control of 15 minutes for the whole game plus a 10-second increment per move. Anish Giri, Boris Gelfand, Anton Korobov and Nikita Vitiugov are among the participants. | Photo: Eteri Kublashvili

Leinier Dominguez wins Champions Showdown in Saint Louis

9/11/2021 – Four players reached the final round of the Champions Showdown tournament tied for first place. Only Leinier Dominguez managed to score a win in his last game, though, and thus claimed clear first place and $37,500 in prize money. Garry Kasparov was among the four players sharing the lead after eight rounds, but a loss against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave left him in fifth place in the final standings. | Photo: Crystal Fuller

Twenty years ago...

9/11/2021 – Twenty years ago, on September 12, 2001, we launched our brand new database-driven news page. The very first report we were forced to file was about the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York, which had been perpetrated on the previous day. It had a special meaning for chess. Six years earlier the World Chess Championship had been staged on the Observation Deck on the 107th floor.

Fatal activity

9/11/2021 – In the diagram position Black's attacked rook should definitely not leave the back rank - after 35...Rc2?? White has a forced checkmate. Enjoy!

Norway Chess: Carlsen beats Nepo in Armageddon

9/11/2021 – Richard Rapport beat Alireza Firouzja in their round-4 classical encounter to increase his lead atop the standings of the Norway Chess Tournament. In the stellar contest of the day, Magnus Carlsen beat Ian Nepomniachtchi in the Armageddon decider after drawing the classical game out of a Berlin Defence. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

Online Olympiad: On to the play-offs

9/11/2021 – The Top Division of the Online Olympiad finished on Friday after three days of intense top-level chess. Three weeks after the tournament began, we are closing in on the final stage of the event: the play-offs. The pairings in the quarterfinals starting Monday are Kazakhstan vs USA, Ukraine vs India, Russia (pictured) vs Hungary and China vs Poland. | Photo: Boris Dolmatovsky

Daniel King’s Power Play Show: The Spanish

9/10/2021 – In this week’s show, GM Daniel King focuses on the Spanish Opening, using a game between Levon Aronian and Magnus Carlsen as his main example and going through some of his own games to explain his take on the popular setup. | Power Play is on air most Fridays. Watch it on-demand with a ChessBase Premium account. All the usual puzzles, games and instruction will be on offer.

Champions Showdown: Chess 9LX - Dominguez wins

9/10/2021 – Ten grandmasters, including living legend Garry Kasparov, are the protagonists of Champions Showdown: Chess 9LX, a rapid tournament played at the Saint Louis Chess Club. The event, taking place on September 8-10, is being played in Chess 9LX style, also known as Fischer Random, with a $150,000 total prize fund. The action kicks off at 14.00 local time (21.00 CEST, 15.00 ET). | Photo: Crystal Fuller

Chess 9LX: Dominguez leads, Kasparov on a roll

9/10/2021 – Leinier Dominguez scored a perfect 3 out of 3 on the second day of action at the Champions Showdown Tournament, leapfrogging Fabiano Caruana atop the standings table with three rounds to go. Meanwhile, Garry Kasparov collected 2½ points and climbed to shared third place! | Photo: Bryan Adams

"My favourite Nepomniachtchi game"

9/10/2021 – In April 2021, Ian Nepomniachtchi won the Candidates Tournament in Ekaterinenburg and thus gained the right to challenge world champion Magnus Carlsen in a match to be staged later this year. A perfect occasion to present the challenger's skills in the "Special" of ChessBase Magazine #203. Our authors (including Adhiban, Berg, Edouard, Krasenkow and others) annotated their favourite game by the 31-year-old Russian. This has resulted in an exclusive collection of 21 high-class encounters played between 2002 and 2021. One of them — Nepomniachtchi-Carlsen from the Legends of Chess Final in 2020 — is presented in this article, annotated by IM Robert Ris. "A wonderful prelude to their upcoming World Championship match". Enjoy!

Norway Chess: Armageddon

9/10/2021 – The third round of the Norway Chess Tournament saw three draws in the classical games, two of them by perpetual check. Magnus Carlsen played 18 moves of a King’s Indian before signing a draw against Richard Rapport on move 18. The Armageddon tiebreakers that followed all favoured the black player. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

Robert Ris’ Fast and Furious: The Botvinnik Variation in the Semi-Slav

9/10/2021 – This week, well-known Dutch trainer Robert Ris takes a look at a sideline in the Botvinnik Variation of the Semi Slav — 7.a4. He analyses a game in which Indian prodigy Gukesh had the white pieces, and pays special attention to a 2019 predecessor in which Daniil Dubov beat Anish Giri with white. | “Fast and Furious” is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

Chess education in children reduces their risk aversion

9/10/2021 – Professor Wang-Sheng Lee co-authored the paper "The Effects of Chess Instruction on Academic and Non-cognitive Outcomes". This was *not* yet another paper to attempt to link academic success (ex: math scores) with chess education. Instead, the goal was to study the potential benefits in developing 'soft skills' such as risk aversion, patience, and creativity. A video interview that should not be missed.

Online Olympiad: Kazakhstan, India, Russia and USA top the standings

9/10/2021 – The Top Division of the FIDE Online Olympiad sees 40 teams fighting for 8 spots in the quarterfinals. A single round-robin tournament is played in each of the four pools, with the top two teams advancing to the knockout stage. After 6 out of 9 rounds, Kazakhstan, Russia and the United States still have a perfect 12/12 score. | Pictured: Vihy Anand leading Team India on top board | Photo: Amruta Mokal

Norway Chess: Missed chances, and a King’s Gambit

9/9/2021 – An action-packed second round in Stavanger saw all three classical games ending in draws, with Aryan Tari and Richard Rapport failing to make the most of clearly superior positions against Magnus Carslsen and Sergey Karjakin respectively. In the Armageddon tiebreakers, Carlsen, Rapport and Ian Nepomniachtchi won and collected 1½ points. Nepo played the King’s Gambit to take down Alireza Firouzja in their sudden-death encounter. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

Game of the Week 480: Rapport gives a masterclass

9/9/2021 – This week, Merijn van Delft analyses a strategic masterpiece by Richard Rapport, who treated us to a ‘good knight vs bad bishop’ lesson in his first-round game at the Norway Chess Tournament. | Merijn’s show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

Riddle solved: Réti could have held Rubinstein to a draw

9/9/2021 – At the height of his career, Akiba Rubinstein was considered a possible challenger for World Champion Dr. Emanuel Lasker. Rubinstein was considered to be particularly strong in the endgame, and Rubinstein’s victory over Richard Réti in the tournament in Gothenburg 1920 is regarded as a typical example of his endgame skills. Karsten Müller has now taken a closer look at this endgame with the help of ChessBase readers — the verdict: Reti could have held a draw! | Photo: Deutsche Schachzeitung 1908

Svitlana’s Smart Moves - Middlegame pawn breaks

9/8/2021 – Ask your chess friends or colleagues, “What is the most difficult part for you to understand in chess?” The answer is often: middlegames. Once you have reached the middlegame, it is difficult to make a plan. But luckily, we are blessed with some of Svitlana’s Smart Moves once again. Today we try to figure out how to hold the tension in the middlegame, why to hold it, and how to break through with your pawns in the right moment.

Ex-convict Hector Guifarro: “Chess helped me in so many ways”

9/8/2021 – The first Intercontinental Online Chess Championship for Prisoners will take place on October 13-14, on the International Day of Education in Prison. FIDE Managing Director Dana Reizniece-Ozola talked to ex-convict Hector Guifarro to find out how the game helped him find a second chance in life.

Leo Tolstoy GM in Museum Estate

9/8/2021 – The first international tournament Tolstoy Cup, featuring a stellar line-up, will start in the State Leo Tolstoy Museum-Estate “Yasnaya Polyana”, the Tula region, on the great Russian writer’s birthday, the 9th of September. The event will last for four days and will finish on the 12th of September. The lineup includes Anish Giri, Dmitry Andreikin, Nikita Vitiugov, Evgeny Tomashevsky, Anton Korobov and Boris Gelfand.

Norway Chess: A lively start

9/8/2021 – The 9th edition of the Norway Chess Tournament kicked off on September 7 at the Clarion Hotel in Stavanger. Richard Rapport grabbed the lead by beating Aryan Tari in their classical encounter. Meanwhile, Magnus Carlsen and Alireza Firouzja drew their classical game — the world champion won the Armageddon decider (drew with black) after surviving a dead-lost position. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

AlphaZero analyses, Kramnik explains

9/7/2021 – The pioneering ‘NC World Masters 2021’ saw Vladimir Kramnik and Vishy Anand playing No-Castling chess — an interesting experiment. Kramnik analysed the games together with Deep Mind experts Ulrich Paquet and Nedad Tomasev. The Russian explains motifs and ideas in three instructive videos.