4/26/2021 – Ian Nepomniachtchi gained the right to challenge Magnus Carlsen in the upcoming World Championship match after winning the Candidates Tournament with a round to spare. Russia’s number 1 drew Maxime Vachier-Lagrave while second-placed Anish Giri was defeated by Alexander Grischuk. Given the tiebreak criteria, even if Giri catches up with Nepo in the last round, he would not be granted tournament victory. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

4/26/2021 – ChessBase Magazine offers a window to the world of professional chess and it also provides arsenal for the tournament player. With this bi-centennial issue it has reached a landmark. GM Rainer Knaak recalls the memorable journey with some nice videos. Then we are back to tournament preparation. This issue offers games from three major events, Tata Steel 2021, Skilling Open and 73rd Russian Championship Superfinal. 413 games, 3 opening videos, 11 opening surveys, demo. lectures and exercises for training. It also includes games annotated by Wesley So, Anish Giri, Van Foreest, Jan Duda, Vladimir Fedoseev, Nikita Vitiugov to mention a few. Prof. Nagesh Havanur takes a look.

4/26/2021 – With two wins and three draws, Magnus Carlsen climbed to sole first place in the preliminaries of the New in Chess Classic. The world champion and Hikaru Nakamura are the only two players who remain undefeated in the online tournament. Naka, who also collected two wins on Sunday, is now sharing second place with Alireza Firouzja. The best score of day 2, was obtained by Vietnamese star Le Quang Liem. | Pictured: Carlsen, Tari and Christiansen are playing from the Meltwater offices in Oslo.

4/25/2021 – The preliminaries of the New In Chess Classic, the fifth event of the Champions Chess Tour, kicked off on Saturday. The most successful player on day 1 was Teimour Radjabov, who scored 4 out of 5 points. Second place is shared by Alireza Firouzja and Magnus Carlsen with 3½/5 each. The aim of the preliminaries is to find out which 8 (out of 16) players move on to the knockout stage. Expert analyses by GM Karsten Müller. | Photo: FIDE

4/25/2021 – An exciting round with four decisive results left two players as the main contenders to win the Candidates Tournament. Anish Giri continued his run of excellent form and beat Fabiano Caruana with the black pieces, but could not catch up with Ian Nepomniachtchi, who got the better of Wang Hao. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Ding Liren also won. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

4/25/2021 – 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 24th instalment of his ChessBase show "Understanding before Moving", Herman illustrates how powerful strategic thinking can be. | Photo: Tommy Grooten

4/25/2021 – In the endgame riddle from 15 April ChessBase readers were invited to analyse an interesting and complicated endgame knight vs bishop. In the game E. Torre vs O. Jakobsen, Amsterdam 1973, from which the riddle was taken, the knight defeated the bishop, but Karsten Müller wanted to know whether the knight would also have won against best defense. Now, he has the answer.

4/24/2021 – How do you know that there is exactly one way to solve an endgame study? Tablebases are a proof, but unlike many other genres, there is no way to heuristically solve a study to find a complete proof of it being correct. That is where cook hunters come in. Columnist Siegfried Hornecker introduces us to the world of ‘cooks’ within the fascinating community of chess composers. | Pictured: Dutch composer Harold van der Heijden

4/24/2021 – Black's weak back rank is shielded only by the Ne6 - basically that's all you need to have in mind to work out how White wins from the diagram position. Especially the first move is a toughie, though. Have fun!

4/24/2021 – Anish Giri climbed to sole second place at the Candidates Tournament in Yekaterinburg thanks to a brilliant win over Ding Liren in round 11. While Ian Nepomniachtchi and Fabiano Caruana drew their direct encounter, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave was defeated by Alexander Grischuk in a sharp battle. In a crucial face-off, Caruana will have the white pieces against Giri in Saturday’s twelfth round. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

4/23/2021 – Lawrence Trent and Arne Kaehler talk about what happened chess-wise last week. They give their opinions on various topics, and encourage you to think about the subject, analyse games, or read the articles thoroughly yourself. This week some topics are Schwarzenegger vs. Tyson, who Bob Wade was, and some analysis of the Candidates Tournament, including some further predictions.

4/23/2021 – In this Power Play Show, GM Daniel King takes a look at the game Wang Hao vs Alexander Grischuk, played in round 10 of the Candidates. In this game Grischuk thought for 72(!) minutes in a theoretically known position, and Wang Hao later tried to win with a queen sacrifice that was certainly dangerous and creative - but was it really sound? | Power Play is on air most Fridays. Watch it on-demand with a ChessBase Premium account. All the usual puzzles, games and instruction will be on offer.