3/30/2022 – Finding novelties is a fun way for students to learn how to use a database to annotate chess games. Novelties, loosely defined, are new moves but not necessarily good moves. National Master Jeffrey Ashton explains.

3/30/2022 – In his "Weekly Show" Lawrence Trent will continue his coverage of the Berlin Grand Prix. He will take a close look at the performance of Hikaru Nakamura who qualified for the Candidates in Berlin. But the game of the day will be Aronian-Esipenko from round 5, in which White started rather unassumingly and then suddenly launched an attack out of nowhere, which led to a quick win. | Lawrence’s show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here

3/30/2022 – Wesley So and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, the rating favourites in Tuesday’s rapid and blitz tiebreakers at the Berlin Grand Prix, defeated Sam Shankland and Vincent Keymer and thus advanced to the event’s semifinals. So will face Amin Tabatabaei, while Mamedyarov will play Hikaru Nakamura in 2-game matches starting Wednesday. | Photos: World Chess

3/30/2022 – India’s own elite online chess tour starts on March 31 with a star-studded line-up of 16 top talents from every corner of the country.

3/29/2022 – Lawrence has found a position, which looks familiar to many of us. We just have to calculate, as good as we can, how to win the game. The important lesson is, that many variations can lead to a position which is slightly better, but not clearly won. A so-called insurance. We can put this variation in the back of our head, and keep on finding a better way to win. If everything fails, we use the variation with the small advantage.

3/29/2022 – After two rounds 41 players with 2.0/2 share the lead at the European Individual Championship. One of them is the 15-year old strong junior Aydin Suleymanli (pictured) from Azerbaijan who defeated Anton Korobov in round two. | Photos: SZS/Luka Rifelj

3/29/2022 – Rook endings have a large drawish tendency and in this case I thought that White can hold with a study-like defense. But ChessBase reader Frits Fritschy proved me wrong.

3/29/2022 – All results in round 6 of the Berlin Grand Prix favoured Hikaru Nakamura, as he won pool A and secured a spot in the Candidates Tournament after beating Andrey Esipenko with the black pieces. The four players who could have leapfrogged the US grandmaster in the overall standings of the series had they also reached the semis were knocked out on Monday — i.e. Levon Aronian (also from pool A), Leinier Dominguez, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Anish Giri. The one other player who made it to semis was Amin Tabatabaei, who got a convincing victory over Giri to win pool D. | Photos: World Chess

3/28/2022 – The Kragero Open had a large and strong field which led to many games with fascinating endgames. In his Endgame Magic Show #187 Karsten Müller presents seven of these endgames. | You can watch the Endgame Magic Show on-demand with a ChessBase Premium account.

3/28/2022 – The last endgame riddle showed a position from a game between Bojan Kurajica and Anatoly Karpov, played in Skopje 1976. Karpov won the game but as endings with opposite-coloured bishops have huge drawish tendencies one wonders where Kurajica went wrong. The ChessBase readers, Charles Sullivan, Wolfram Schön, Zoran Petronijevic and Karsten Müller took a close look at the ending and came up with a number of improvements for both sides.

3/28/2022 – The schedule and venue of the FIDE Candidates Tournament 2022 have been recently announced by FIDE. The double round-robin tournament will be played at the magnificent Palacio de Santoña, a centrally located historic building in Madrid. The first round will take place on June 17.

3/28/2022 – Four players representing the United States scored full points in round 5 of the Berlin Grand Prix. Levon Aronian and Hikaru Nakamura both won and are now sharing the lead in pool A, much like Wesley So and Sam Shankland, who are now co-leaders in pool C. Given round-5’s results, we are likely to see tiebreaks after Monday’s final round, as none of the four groups has a sole leader at the moment. | Photos: World Chess