Online Olympiad: Kazakhstan, India, Russia and USA top the standings

9/10/2021 – The Top Division of the FIDE Online Olympiad sees 40 teams fighting for 8 spots in the quarterfinals. A single round-robin tournament is played in each of the four pools, with the top two teams advancing to the knockout stage. After 6 out of 9 rounds, Kazakhstan, Russia and the United States still have a perfect 12/12 score. | Pictured: Vihy Anand leading Team India on top board | Photo: Amruta Mokal

Norway Chess: Missed chances, and a King’s Gambit

9/9/2021 – An action-packed second round in Stavanger saw all three classical games ending in draws, with Aryan Tari and Richard Rapport failing to make the most of clearly superior positions against Magnus Carslsen and Sergey Karjakin respectively. In the Armageddon tiebreakers, Carlsen, Rapport and Ian Nepomniachtchi won and collected 1½ points. Nepo played the King’s Gambit to take down Alireza Firouzja in their sudden-death encounter. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

Game of the Week 480: Rapport gives a masterclass

9/9/2021 – This week, Merijn van Delft analyses a strategic masterpiece by Richard Rapport, who treated us to a ‘good knight vs bad bishop’ lesson in his first-round game at the Norway Chess Tournament. | Merijn’s show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

Riddle solved: Réti could have held Rubinstein to a draw

9/9/2021 – At the height of his career, Akiba Rubinstein was considered a possible challenger for World Champion Dr. Emanuel Lasker. Rubinstein was considered to be particularly strong in the endgame, and Rubinstein’s victory over Richard Réti in the tournament in Gothenburg 1920 is regarded as a typical example of his endgame skills. Karsten Müller has now taken a closer look at this endgame with the help of ChessBase readers — the verdict: Reti could have held a draw! | Photo: Deutsche Schachzeitung 1908

Svitlana’s Smart Moves - Middlegame pawn breaks

9/8/2021 – Ask your chess friends or colleagues, “What is the most difficult part for you to understand in chess?” The answer is often: middlegames. Once you have reached the middlegame, it is difficult to make a plan. But luckily, we are blessed with some of Svitlana’s Smart Moves once again. Today we try to figure out how to hold the tension in the middlegame, why to hold it, and how to break through with your pawns in the right moment.

Ex-convict Hector Guifarro: “Chess helped me in so many ways”

9/8/2021 – The first Intercontinental Online Chess Championship for Prisoners will take place on October 13-14, on the International Day of Education in Prison. FIDE Managing Director Dana Reizniece-Ozola talked to ex-convict Hector Guifarro to find out how the game helped him find a second chance in life.

Leo Tolstoy GM in Museum Estate

9/8/2021 – The first international tournament Tolstoy Cup, featuring a stellar line-up, will start in the State Leo Tolstoy Museum-Estate “Yasnaya Polyana”, the Tula region, on the great Russian writer’s birthday, the 9th of September. The event will last for four days and will finish on the 12th of September. The lineup includes Anish Giri, Dmitry Andreikin, Nikita Vitiugov, Evgeny Tomashevsky, Anton Korobov and Boris Gelfand.

Norway Chess: A lively start

9/8/2021 – The 9th edition of the Norway Chess Tournament kicked off on September 7 at the Clarion Hotel in Stavanger. Richard Rapport grabbed the lead by beating Aryan Tari in their classical encounter. Meanwhile, Magnus Carlsen and Alireza Firouzja drew their classical game — the world champion won the Armageddon decider (drew with black) after surviving a dead-lost position. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

AlphaZero analyses, Kramnik explains

9/7/2021 – The pioneering ‘NC World Masters 2021’ saw Vladimir Kramnik and Vishy Anand playing No-Castling chess — an interesting experiment. Kramnik analysed the games together with Deep Mind experts Ulrich Paquet and Nedad Tomasev. The Russian explains motifs and ideas in three instructive videos.

The Chess Saga of Fridrik Ólafsson

9/7/2021 – Fridrik Ólafsson may be the strongest chess player of the 20th century about whom until now no book existed, in any major language. It feels great to present this first book outside of Iceland about the chess career of their first and most prominent grandmaster. It is full of important narrative and wonderfully annotated games, which highlight his personal attacking style, which he used to beat the likes of Keres, Tal, Petrosian, Fischer, Korchnoi and Karpov.

Not all roads lead to Rome

9/7/2021 – When only very few pawns are left on the board the attacker has to be careful that s/he keeps at least one pawn that can queen. In the diagram position White has three pawns left, two more than Black. But there is only one way to win. How should White proceed?

Karsten Mueller’s Endgame Magic #159: Best endgames of 2020

9/6/2021 – Karsten is joined by Arne Kaehler to discuss the best endgames of 2020. Our in-house specialist decided to kick off the show with a fascinating ending played by two amazingly strong engines, Stockfish and Komodo. | Endgame Magic is on air most Mondays. Watch it on-demand with a ChessBase Premium account.

Demchenko and Keymer tie for first at European Championship

9/6/2021 – Thanks to a final-round win, Vincent Keymer caught up with former sole leader Anton Demchenko atop the standings of the European Championship in Reykjavík. Demchenko was crowned European champion on tiebreak criteria, and thus became the first sub-2600 player to earn the title. A total of 23 players gained a ticket to the next edition of the FIDE World Cup. | Photos: Official site

What is a Cloud Database. And how to use it.

9/6/2021 – With so many cloud-based tools and services with 'cloud' in their name, it would be easy to overlook this incredibly useful tool inside ChessBase 16, which allows you to seamlessly work across multiple devices and even share with others in real time. Even professional players can miss this tool, and what is more it integrates directly with the web apps from ChessBase Account. Read on to learn more!

Pawn sac in the Grünfeld

9/6/2021 – Fighting against the Grünfeld (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 d5), quite a number of players try to make things easier for themselves by going for the sideline 4.Bg5. After all, it threatens Bxf6, followed by picking Black's d-pawn. So, what should Black do about it? "Nothing" is the answer by GM Lars Schandorff. In his article from ChessBase Magazine #203, he recommends to simply reply with 4…Bg7 — a pawn sacrifice employed by Peter Svidler already thirty years ago.

Carlsen blows out Artemiev, wins Aimchess US Rapid

9/6/2021 – A convincing performance in the finals of the Aimchess US Rapid gave Magnus Carlsen tournament victory in the last ‘regular’ event of this year’s Meltwater Champions Chess Tour. The world champion beat Vladislav Artemiev 2½-½ in the second set of the finals. The young Russian nonetheless made it into the grand finale of the series, despite only playing in 3 of the 9 qualifying tournaments.

Online Olympiad: 15 qualifiers join China, India and Russia in the main event

9/5/2021 – Division Two came to a close on Saturday with some very exciting last-round matches, deciding the three winners of each group. Although a couple of teams (especially Colombia) dominated their groups, this stage of the event was very closely fought in general.

The patter of tiny feet

9/5/2021 – The humble pawn is the foot soldier of chess. A single passed pawn may be a huge threat if well-supported, but can also become a liability if not. Today we look at some instances of pawn “avalanches”, in which the patter of tiny feet became thunder. | Pictured: Louis-Charles Mahé de La Bourdonnais

Remembering Dima

9/5/2021 – A year ago, on September 4 2020, Dmitry Svetushkin passed away. The Moldovan Grandmaster played ten times for his country at chess Olympiads and was an active and renowned trainer. Friends describe ‘Dima’ as a very friendly, well-read and versatile person, who, for example, tried to learn German just to read Goethe in the original. Carl Strugnell shares memories and lessons of his friend and trainer. | Photo: Andreas Kontokanis

Aimchess US Rapid Finals - Carlsen beats Artemiev

9/5/2021 – Magnus Carlsen is the Aimchess US Rapid winner after a near-faultless display against Vladislav Artemiev. The World Champion now marches into next month’s $300,000 Meltwater Champions Chess Tour Final top of the leaderboard and in top form. | Full report to follow shortly

European Championship - Final round

9/5/2021 – The 2021 European Individual Championship is taking place from August 26 to September 5 at the Hotel Natura in Reykjavík, Iceland. A field of 184 players will fight to get a share of the €100,000 prize fund and one of the 23 spots at the FIDE World Cup that are in offer. The games start at 15.00 local time (17.00 CEST, 11.00 ET). Follow the action live! | Pictured: Alexey Sarana

Intensive training course with GMs Tkachev and Kazhgaleyev

9/5/2021 – The first Intensive Training Course of the Chess-Magic Academy will be held from the 24th to the 30th October 2021. GMs Vladislav Tkachiev (France) and Murtas Kazhgaleyev (Kazakhstan) are the main coaches. The theme will be the Soviet Chess School - Botvinnik’s “Total Chess” Approach.

European Championship (R10): Demchenko sole leader

9/5/2021 – The 2021 European Individual Championship is taking place from August 26 to September 5 at the Hotel Natura in Reykjavík, Iceland. With one round to go, 34-year-old Russian GM Anton Demchenko is the sole leader in the standings table. Four (young) players stand a half point behind, while a host of strong grandmasters will fight to get a ticket to the next World Cup — to do so they need to finish among the top 23. | Pictured: Vincent Keymer

Aimchess US Rapid Finals: Carlsen clinches first set

9/5/2021 – Magnus Carlsen obtained a clear victory in the first set of the finals at the Aimchess US Rapid. The world champion beat Vladislav Artemiev 2½-1½ thanks to wins in the first two games of the day. Meanwhile, Levon Aronian was awarded third place, since Alireza Firouzja had to withdraw due to illness. | Photo: Lennart Ootes