6/22/2021 – The man behind the Komodo Dragon 2, Larry Kaufman, was a successful broker in the mid-80s. He earned enough money to retire for the rest of his life and lie in a hammock, reading books. But instead, he won the senior chess championship in 2008 to become a chess Grandmaster at the age of over 60 years, worked on several chess engines, like Machack, Rybka, and of course, the Komodo series, steadily played on the highest "Shogi" level for decades, and wrote plenty of books - his newest one "Chess Board Options" just came out a week ago. In the interview with Kaufman, there is even more to discover about his fascinating life. | Photos: Larry Kaufman

6/21/2021 – Hundreds of different Fritztrainers have been teaching us chess on ChessBase for more than a decade. Maybe you sometimes wonder what else the authors of these Fritztrainers do? "Meet the Fritztrainer" takes a look behind the scenes, telling us more about the private life of your favourite chess trainer. Grandmaster Jan Werle recently made the Fritztrainer: "The Saemisch Variation against the King's Indian and Benoni". In our interview, he tells us why his signature glasses are missing, and what his puppy "Molly" has to do with this, and that he also created something else than Fritztrainers, and books, during the last year. | Photos: Jan Werle

6/21/2021 – When Mihail Tal won the Interzonal Tournament in Portoroz 1958 he impressed chess fans all over the world with his bold and daring sacrifices. One of Tal's most complicated and most deeply analyzed games from Portoroz is his win against Oscar Panno. A number of annotators have tried to find the truth about this fantastically complicated game, and Karsten Müller invited ChessBase readers to join the discussion. Zoran Petronijevic had a particularly close look. Is this the final word on this remarkable game?

6/21/2021 – 国际象棋在中国越来越受欢迎--数据库程序ChessBase也是如此。但不是每个人都能流利地使用英语。对于那些喜欢用母语操作的人，我们有一项特殊的服务：ChessBase的中文教程手册。 Chess is becoming more popular in China – as is the database program ChessBase. But not everyone is fluent in English. For those who prefer to operate in their native language we have a special service: a ChessBase tutorial manual in Chinese.

6/21/2021 – Wesley So is leading the Paris Rapid & Blitz Tournament after getting an undefeated 11/18 score in the rapid section. On Sunday, the Filipino-born grandmaster won two out of his three games to go into the blitz phase of the event a full point ahead of Ian Nepomniachtchi. Eighteen rounds of blitz games will be played on Monday and Tuesday. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

6/20/2021 – Sam Shankland reached the final round of the Prague Masters Tournament with a half-point lead over Radoslaw Wojtaszek and Jan-Krzysztof Duda. The American grandmaster was still busy with his game against Jorden van Foreest when Duda had already overtaken him in the standings thanks to a win over Wojtaszek. Shankland only needed a draw, but his opponent was desperate to win. The curse turned into a blessing when Van Foreest blundered: Shankland won and thus became the undisputed tournament winner. | Photo: Official site

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!