Trent's Tactics - Devastating queens

10/29/2021 – Today's tactical focus: how to harness the power of devastating queens. Trent uses examples from 1880 and 100 years later. The Playchess training playground is getting more and more difficult, and some problems took us a few minutes to solve. But we were able to reach a rating of over 2050 meanwhile.

CBM #204: A "Special" on Judit Polgar, clear and modern concepts against the Najdorf and the Rubinstein Variation, and much more!

10/29/2021 – The new ChessBase Magazine #204 dedicates its "Special" to the strongest female chess player of all time: Judit Polgar! The CBM authors annotate their favourite games of the attacking artist, Mihail Marin shows her great strategic skills and Karsten Müller shows her virtuosity in the endgame. The issue also contains the best from the European Championship 2021 - with analyes by the new Champion Anton Demchenko, Viktor Erdos, Daniel Fridman, Nils Grandelius, Maxime Lagarde, Aleksei Sarana, Ivan Saric and others. In his first opening video for the magazine, Austrian GM Markus Ragger presents an idea of World Champion Magnus Carlsen in the 3.Bb5+ Sicilian. Plus 11 opening articles ("A clear attacking plan against the Rubinstein Variation: 7.Be3", "Modern and simple vs. the Najdorf: 7.Nf3/8.Bg5" etc.), as well as training columns on tactics, strategy and endgame. All in a new layout!
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Grand Swiss: Firouzja wins, Nihal escapes

10/29/2021 – Three players are sharing the lead at the open section of the FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss in Riga, as Alireza Firouzja, Alexandr Predke and Ivan Saric are the only participants to have won both their games so far. Meanwhile, seven players have a 2/2 score in the women’s section. | Photo: Anna Shtourman

Reconstructing ancient games with an AI

10/28/2021 – When talking about ancient games you might have an image of a couple of dozen at most, ranging from chess and its precursors, to backgammon, Go, and a few more, but humanity has long had a passion for a good game. This passion has spanned across the globe with thousands of games uncovered, but no way to learn how to play them...until now. (image: papyrus dated c.1200 BC)

Game of the Week 487: S. Mamedyarov vs G. Kamsky

10/28/2021 – This week, Merijn van Delft takes a look at a game Shakhryar Mamedyarov played in the Bundesliga against Gata Kamsky, "one of the most beautiful positional games of the year". | Merijn’s show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

Svitlana's Smart Moves - Playing against two weaknesses: Alekhine shows the way

10/28/2021 – Using a fine game by Alexander Alekhine, Svitlana shows how to play against two weaknesses, an important strategic motif in middlegame and endgame. Svitlana and Arne also discuss how to pronounce "Alekhine", and wonder whether the German Master Friedrich "Fritz" Saemisch (1896-1975), name-giver of several popular opening lines, inspired developers to call their chess engine "Fritz".

The ACO World Senior Championship 2021

10/28/2021 – From 1-10 October the World Senior Championships 2021, organised by the Amateur Chess Organization (ACO), were played on the Greek island of Crete. 178 players fought in seven rating groups for the titles. Several Grandmasters, including Vlastimil Hort and Daniel King, supported the amateurs.

Grand Swiss: Caruana and Firouzja start off with wins

10/28/2021 – Despite the lockdown-related difficulties in Latvia, the Grand Swiss kicked off on Wednesday at the Hanzas Perons Cultural Centre in Riga. The open section saw draws on 7 out of the top 10 boards, with Fabiano Caruana, Alireza Firouzja and Kirill Alekseenko all winning with the white pieces. A larger number of decisive results was seen in the women’s section, including a few upsets. | Photo: Mark Livshitz

Elisabeth Pähtz: Why chess players can't win against artificial intelligence

10/27/2021 – Top German player, IM Elisabeth Pähtz, was recently invited to speak at the Digital Demo Day in Germany, in English, where she was asked to discuss the application of quantum computing on chess. She was later interviewed about her life as a chess player with questions on how it compares to Queen's Gambit, but the key question she was asked was: can quantum computing solve chess?

The Weekly Show: A fine victory by Vitiugov

10/27/2021 – In his "Weekly Show" IM Lawrence Trent focuses on the Russian Superfinal, which was won by Nikita Vitiugov. He also talks about the upcoming World Championship Match and the Grand Swiss in Riga. The "Game of the Day" is Vitiugov vs Andreikin, "a perfect display by the winner who played a simply flawless game". | Lawrence’s show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here

Magnus Carlsen plays at Tata Steel 2022

10/26/2021 – In a press release the organisers of the Tata Steel Tournament in Wijk aan Zee 2022 just revealed the names of 13 of the 14 participants. It is a fantastic line-up with Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana as top seeds and exciting and young players such as Richard Rapport, Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Andrey Esipenko, Daniil Dubov or Praggnanandhaa in the field. The tournament runs from 14 January until 30 January 2022. | Photo: Hans van den Berg (left), Anish Giri and Jeroen van den Berg (© Tata Steel Chess)

Pert's path to winning the British OTB Championship 2021

10/26/2021 – On 10 October Nick Pert won the British Over-the-Board Championship 2021. In a 50-minute video, he now walks us through the games he played in the Championship, explaining key positions, tactics and why and how he chose the openings he played. A fascinating look into the mind of a modern Grandmaster - including the first game of his career, in which Pert mated his opponent "en passant"!

Italian FM Michel Bifulco wins 43. Open Int. Città di Arco

10/26/2021 – In mid-October, the 43rd edition of the traditional Open of the City of Arco was played. In late summer weather many strong amateurs and several title holders, including two Grandmasters, competed for victory. In the end, four players shared first place but the Italian FM Michel Bifulco won the tournament on tiebreak. | Photo: Gerhard Bertagnolli

Annotating in ChessBase: Arrows and highlighted squares

10/26/2021 – While entering moves, writing comments, and evaluating positions are the most fundamental aspects of chess annotation, there is little doubt that illustrating the board with well-placed arrows, and timely highlighted squares can tell you in a glance you can see what is going on without a single variation or comment. Be sure to have these tools in your tool kit.

Zugzwang

10/26/2021 – Zugzwang is a powerful endgame weapon, particularly against a passive knight. In the diagram position, White's knight is passive but how can Black bring White into zugzwang and win the game?

Top GMs to fight for Candidates spots at Grand Swiss in Riga

10/26/2021 – The 2021 FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss is set to take place from October 27 until November 7 in Riga, Latvia. An open tournament and a women’s tournament will take place concurrently, each an 11-round Swiss event. The participants’ main focus will be to finish in the top two places, as the tournaments grant two spots in the next edition of the Candidates (Open and Women’s respectively). | Photo: Mark Livshitz

Daniel King on Magnus and the Masterclass

10/25/2021 – On 26 November Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi will play the first game of their World Championship match in Dubai. A good opportunity to ask Daniel King about his work for the updated ChessBase Master Class about Carlsen, about Carlsen as a person, King's favourite Carlsen game, and of course, King's predictions for the match. As part of the interview King shows two games of the current World Champion - one against Sergey Karjakin, and one against Anish Giri, which is one of King's favourite endgames by Carlsen.

Karsten Müller’s Endgame Magic #167: Endgame highlights from the Bundesliga

10/25/2021 – In the Endgame Magic Show #167 Karsten Müller Arne and Karsten discuss endgame highlights from the Bundesliga, one of the world's strongest national team championships. | You can watch the Endgame Magic Show on-demand with a ChessBase Premium account.

Attacking idea against the Sicilian Taimanov

10/25/2021 – The advance g2-g4 is a well-known motif in various lines of the Sicilian. In the Taimanov Variation (1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 exd4 4.Nxd4 Nc6 5.Nc3 Qc7) with 6.Be3 a6, however, the move 7.g4 was established in top chess by Anish Giri just over half a year ago. In the current ChessBase Magazine Extra #203 Robert Ris explains the ideas of this very concrete concept in his opening video. Total playing time: 38 minutes. You can watch an excerpt of his analysis here. Take a look!
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Allan Stig Rasmussen wins Danish Championship

10/25/2021 – The Danish Championship, played in Svendborg on the island of Funen, ended on Sunday with the victory of Allan Stig Rasmussen. With a score of 7.0/9 the 37-year-old Grandmaster finished half a point ahead of Sune Berg Hansen and Jesper Søndergård Thybo, who shared second place. It was the fifth time Rasmussen won the title. | Photos: Dansk Skak Union

Dutch Championship: Four players move on to final stage

10/24/2021 – The Dutch Championship will be played in two stages this year. On Saturday, the three-round knockout phase was completed in the town hall of Hoogeveen. The field of participants was thus reduced from 16 to 4, who will determine the new champion in a double round-robin in Rotterdam at the end of November. The qualified players are Roeland Pruijssers, Max Warmerdam, Robin Swinkels and Hing Ting Lai. Meanwhile, the Women's Championship, which was played concurrently, was organized as a round robin tournament — the event was won by WGM Anne Haast. | Photos: Frans Peeters

Understanding before Moving 50: Typical Sacrifices

10/24/2021 – 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 50th instalment of his ChessBase show "Understanding before Moving", Herman talks about typical sacrifices. | Photo: Tommy Grooten

A review: The Saemisch Variation by Jan Werle

10/23/2021 – The Saemisch Variation is a very stable response to the King’s Indian Defence. And the Benoni can also be answered with the same setup and the same underlying ideas. Jan Werle presents the white setup thoroughly on his DVD. Philipp Hillebrand has looked at the FritzTrainer just as thoroughly!

Icelandic isolani

10/23/2021 – In the diagram position White's knight is about to occupy the blockade square in front of the pawn d5. How would you react with Black?