6/18/2021 – After four rounds Sam Shankland and Nijat Abasov lead the Masters tournament at the Prague Chess Festival with 3.0/4 each and in round 5 they play against each other - Shankland has the white pieces. David Navara, who started the tournament with four losses, plays against Thai Dan Van Nguyen. The round starts at 15:00 CEST (9:00 ET, 13:00 UTC). Follow the games live.

6/18/2021 – In this year's Prague Chess Festival things do not go well for David Navara. In round 4 of the Masters he played against Nijat Abasov (pictured) and suffered his fourth loss in a row. Navara had an excellent position but first gave his advantage away and then lost on time. The other three games of the round ended in a draw. After four rounds Sam Shankland and Abasov now share the lead with 3.0/4 each. | Photo: Nijat Abasov (Vladimir Jagr)

6/18/2021 – Our ChessBase Magazine subscribers recently received a particularly interesting offer: a theme tournament with Spyridos Kapnisis! "Play the Author" lets readers play against their favourite author in a round-robin tournament. Another attraction is the set opening that is played in each round. In this "Play the Author" episode, the Richter-Rauzer Variation in the Sicilian was the chosen setup.

6/18/2021 – The 2021 Superbet Chess Classic concluded on June 14 and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (pictured) won with 6.0/9 (3 wins, 6 draws). FM Joshua Doknjas analyzes four games from the second half of the event, all of which contain interesting opening ideas. | Photo: Lennart Ootes (Archive)

6/18/2021 – A 20-game match between Garry Kasparov and Viswanathan Anand was organized in 1995 by the Professional Chess Association. The match was played on the 107th floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center in New York. After eight draws, Anand took the lead in game 9, but a string of five subpar performances in which the Indian scored a mere half point left him in an unenviable position. Four draws in the following games gave Kasparov a 10½-7½ victory. | Photo: Owen Williams, The Kasparov Agency

6/17/2021 – This week, the well-known Dutch trainer Robert Ris takes a look at new and aggressive idea that helps Black to spice up things up in the Queen's Gambit Accepted. | "Fast and Furious" is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

6/17/2021 – The FIDE World Cup in July and the World Champion match in November still have to be played but FIDE and World Chess already plan ahead and just announced the FIDE Grand Prix Series 2022. It will take place from February to April 2022 and will consist of three tournaments, which will be played in one city. The two best players qualify for the Candidates Tournament 2022.

6/17/2021 – David Navara, the number one Czech player, started the Masters at the Prague Chess Festival with two losses, and in round 3 he had to play against Sam Shankland, who seems to be in good shape in Prague. But Navara still played ambitiously which allowed Shankland to counter and to win a fine game. With 2.5/3 Shankland is now the sole leader at the Masters. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

6/17/2021 – Chess is not all about competitiveness, and Gibraltar has become a place that embodies the multi-faceted character of the royal game. Following this vein, FIDE recorded a series of well-produced videos with the participants of the Women’s Grand Prix that came to an end a couple of weeks ago. Enjoy getting to know a bit more about some of the strongest female chess players in the world! | Photo: David Llada

6/17/2021 – How many different games of chess are possible? Everyone knows it's a very, very large number. It can be written down in seconds, using just a few digits, is unimaginably huge. Unimaginable? The great scientist Enrico Fermi recommended that we at least try to understand very large numbers, to estimate what they entail. Mathematics professor Christian Hesse attempts to do this for the number of chess games. You will be stunned!

6/16/2021 – This week Merijn van Delft takes a look at the game Gukush D. vs Praggnanandhaa, which ultimately decided the Gelfand Challenge, a rapid tournament, in which 20 of the world's best juniors (10 male, 10 female) faced each other in a round robin. | Merijn's show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

6/16/2021 – The ChessBase Magazine Extra is up-to-date and attractive. In the new Extra # 201, Mihail Marin takes the game Grischuk-Vachier-Lagrave from the Candidates Tournament as the starting point of his opening video "Anti-Najdorf à la Carlsen" (1.e4 c5 2.Nc3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Qxd4 Nc6 5.Qd2 ), and Daniel King provides a video analysis of the way Caruana handled the King's Indian in Wojtaszek-Caruana (Tata Steel 2021). And in the famous "Lucky Bag" you will find many high-quality analyses and chess treats. "The brilliancy" is one example of the 25 extensively annotated games in the new edition. Take a look!