12/17/2021 – The European Rapid and Blitz Championships will take place on December 17-19 at the Spodek Sport and Entertainment Centre in Katowice, Poland. Local hero Jan-Krzysztof Duda (pictured) heads the list of participants in the blitz tournament which is played on 17 December. Follow the games live! | Photo: Duda at the World Cup 2021 | Photo: Eric Rosen

12/17/2021 – For no fewer than 18 years, the Gibraltar Chess Festival was organized at the Caleta Hotel. Now that the hotel is about to close and a new format will be used in 2022, we look back at a memorable edition of the Masters Tournament. Ten years ago, in 2011, Vasyl Ivanchuk was the rating favourite on the Rock. The Ukrainian lived up to the expectations and won the event with an astounding 9/10 score and a 2968 rating performance.

12/16/2021 – This week, well-known Dutch trainer Robert Ris looks at a promising line that White may try against the Pirc. | "Fast and Furious" is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

12/16/2021 – For the past eighteen years the Gibraltar International Chess Festival has been held in the Caleta Hotel. But the organisers have found an ideal replacement: Gibraltar’s historic Garrison Library. The 2022 event, #GibChess, is entitled "Battle of the Sexes Match-Tournament" and takes place from Monday 24 January until Thursday 3 February 2022.

12/16/2021 – The European Rapid and Blitz Championships will take place on December 17-19 at the Spodek Sport and Entertainment Centre in Katowice, Poland. Local hero Jan-Krzysztof Duda heads the list of participants in the blitz section. The tournament serves as a warm-up for the World Rapid and Blitz Championships which will kick off a week later in Warsaw.

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