2/21/2021 – After two days of qualifying round-robin tournaments, eight teams moved on to the quarterfinals of the FIDE World Corporate Championship. Most of the elite players were eliminated, as more balanced squads outscored them in their pools — except for Ian Nepomniachtchi, Anton Korobov and Georg Meier, whose teams are still in contention.

2/20/2021 – Grandmaster Boris Gulko is the only player to have won both the USSR and USA Chess Championships. He has been a candidate for World Champion. In his honor, I will prepare a recipe I hope he would enjoy and annotate the game Gulko – Mikhalchishin from the 1981 Soviet First League Championship. | Photo: Les Glassman

2/20/2021 – Grandmaster Chess is a series hosted by IM Sagar Shah on the ChessBase India YouTube channel. The idea of the series is to give you a peek into the mind of a world class grandmaster. In every episode a Grandmaster presents one of his or her best games while four famous Indian stand-up comedians comment and ask questions. In episode 14 of the show Humpy Koneru, currently number three on the FIDE Women's World Ranking list, demonstrates her attacking skills. Enjoy!

2/19/2021 – Due to the worldwide crisis, the Candidates Tournament was interrupted exactly halfway through after seven rounds had been played on 26 March 2020. The second half of the event will resume 389 days later. We take a look at the performances of the eight participants during the last 11 months. | Photo: Lennart Ootes / FIDE

2/19/2021 – This summer Vladimir Kramnik and Viswanathan Anand will face each other in an innovative chess variant, proposed by Kramnik: No-Castling chess. There is one simple rule change – no castling allowed, everything else remains the same as in the regular chess – is meant to combat over-preparation and drawing tendencies in chess. Experience shows that it also leads to more exciting games. In parallel the online Sparkassen Playchess Open for participants from all over the world will be in the "No-Castling“ format. This is your chance to try it out.

2/19/2021 – In this Power Play Show, GM Daniel King takes another look at the recently finished Opera Euro Rapid Online Tournament, and presents a fine strategic performance by Anish Giri from that tournament. | Power Play is on air most Fridays at 17:00 UTC (18:00 CET, 13:00 ET). All the usual puzzles, games and instruction will be on offer.

2/19/2021 – Vlastimil Hort is a living chess legend and great and popular storyteller. He regularly shares his stories on ChessBase and recently published a book with memories of his long career. Now Ben Johnson invited Hort to his "Perpetual Chess" podcast and as always it is a pleasure to listen to the Grandmaster and his many stories.

2/19/2021 – The FIDE World Corporate Championship will take place online on February 19-21. It will be a team tournament in which companies will present a roster made up of employees and at the most one invited player. Giants like Amazon, Samsung, Ford, Microsoft and Gazprom have registered to participate, with some of them inviting elite grandmasters to join their teams — among them, Kindred (Magnus Carlsen), Sberbank (Ian Nepomniachtchi) and Optiver (Anish Giri) just to name a few.

2/19/2021 – In the diagram position, White's line-up of major pieces on the kingside makes one eager to strike. 23.hxg6 or 23.g5 - how would you continue the attack?

2/18/2021 – 15 years ago, on 18 February 2006, the Russian-Soviet grandmaster Ratmir Kholmov died in Moscow. Kholmov was a sailor and during World War II he was taken prisoner by the Japanese. After the war he became one of the best players in the Soviet Union though the Soviet again and again hindered his career. But in the course of his career Kholmov still won against players such as Mikhail Botvinnik, Tigran Petrosian, Boris Spassky, Robert Fischer and many more strong players. Dagobert Kohlmeyer remembers. | Photo: Kholmov-Vaganian, Moscow 1975 (chespro.ru)

2/18/2021 – Now that FIDE has announced that the second half of the Candidates Tournament will be played in April, it’s a good time to remember how Magnus Carlsen qualified to play for the World Championship title for the first time, in 2013. The Norwegian was the favourite and started strong, but Vladimir Kramnik made an impressive comeback in the second half. The Russian, however, fell barely short at the very end, and Carlsen won the tournament on tiebreaks. | Photos: Ray Morris-Hill

2/18/2021 – The history of the U.S. Women's Chess Championship contains a wealth of information about chess in America and countless fascinating stories about champions from all walks of life. Alexey Root, who is currently writing a book about the history of the U.S. Women's Championship, takes a look at some recent research about women's chess in the U.S. | Photo: Reigning and eight-time U.S. Women's Champion Irina Krush winning the title 2015 | Photo: Lennart Ootes