12/16/2021 – Judit Polgar followed the World Championship match between Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi in Dubai particularly closely. She was in Dubai and commentated the match live. In an interview with Sagar Shah after the match she talks about criticial moments of the match, claims that it is sometimes good to be a "bad boy", and reveals what it takes to win a match against Carlsen. | Photo: Screenshot from the interview

12/16/2021 – In 1865 Gustav Neumann (15 December 1838 - 16 February 1881) scored 34 points from 34 games in the club tournament of the "Berliner Schachgesellschaft", the Berlin Chess Society. Neumann had not yet played a single international tournament at that time, but he was one of the leading players in Germany and thus one of the leading players in the world. Neumann's opponents in this club tournament were not particularly strong, but to win 34 games without losing or drawing shows ambition and the will to win. Neumann had both.

12/16/2021 – So many people knew very well that yesterday the Centurini draw position was on the board, and it could only be achieved with the cunning move B. Kf4. Bravo! On Day 16 Anand and Radjabov duel, but what move did the Indian grandmaster make in this game, and what is the "queen and knight attacking duo" called against "queen and bishop"?

12/16/2021 – On Monday, the 8th Sunway Sitges Open began near Barcelona. 31 players in the strong field have an Elo-rating of more than 2500, but Anton Korobov (pictured), the winner of 2019, is top seed and again among the favourites. He started the tournament with three wins - as did 18 other players. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

12/15/2021 – This week, Merijn van Delft takes a looks at a theoretically interesting King's Indian, played by Boris Gelfand and Gawain Jones at the London Chess Classic 2021. | Merijn’s show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

12/15/2021 – The new ChessBase Magazine Extra #204 offers a collection top games with top annotations, including analyses by Anish Giri, Peter Heine Nielsen and Romain Edouard. Christian Bauer and Mihail Marin provide the two opening videos in this issue. The Scandinavian expert from France presents various ways of avoiding an extremely critical variation with Black in the system with 3…Qa5. Mihail Marin's video claims that "The Catalan is still alive!", which he illustrates with the game Daniel Deac - Lucas van Foreest from the 2021 European Championship. Watch an excerpt from both videos!

12/15/2021 – After Magnus Carlsen convincingly won the World Championship match 7.5-3.5 against challenger Ian Nepomniachtchi, the old and new World Champion seems to be tired of defending his title. In a Norwegian podcast interview with his friend Magnus Barstad, Carlsen indicated that he lacked the motivation to defend his title again. Unless the next challenger would be Alireza Firouzja. | Photo: FIDE | Niki Riga

12/15/2021 – Were you able to force "Stamma's" mate with the knight yesterday? It only works if the king goes to the square f3. The rest should be easy. Now it's getting more difficult again! Today, it looks like you can give up immediately. But the riddle will end in a draw if the right move is found for Black.

12/15/2021 – The 2021 Speed Chess Championship, organized by chess.com, is coming to an end. During this week, the two semifinals decide who gets to play in Sunday’s final match, in which the contenders will be fighting for a prize fund of $20,000. In the first semi, played on Monday, Wesley So edged Nihal Sarin, who came from knocking out Alexander Grischuk and Richard Rapport.

12/14/2021 – From the 1970s to the 1990s Jan Timman, born in Amsterdam on 14 December 1951, was one of the world's best players. He qualified several times for the candidates and in 1993 he became FIDE Vice World Champion. Timman is also a renowned study composer and a prolific and excellent writer. Today, the Dutch Grandmaster celebrates his 70th birthday.

12/14/2021 – In his "Weekly Show" IM Lawrence Trent briefly talks about the World Championships but concentrates on the English Rapidplay Championship 2021 - where Lawrence played himself. | Lawrence’s show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here

12/14/2021 – Peter Heine Nielsen has been Magnus Carlsen's head coach and second since 2013, and in an in-depth interview with IM Sagar Shah the Danish grandmaster and ChessBase author has now revealed some background on Carlsen's World Championship match against Ian Nepomniachtchi: Nielsen reviews the critical moments of all eleven games, discusses what makes a good coach and talks about the upcoming World Championship cycle and Alireza Firouzja's chances in it. | Photo: Hartmut Metz | Archiv