News Review - Fair play, Ratings, and a journey to becoming a GM

6/11/2021 – 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 they discuss the juicy topic of how fair you would play chess in a high stakes situation, how Alex Yermolinksy played in Mexico, and Lawrence Trent's journey to becoming a Grandmaster.

Gelfand Challenge: A perfect start for Liang

6/11/2021 – The Julius Baer Chess Tour brings together 20 of the world’s best male and female talented young players. The second tournament of the series, the Gelfand Challenge, started yesterday. After the first five rounds, Awonder Liang leads with a perfect score. Nodirbek Abdussatorov is currently in sole second place with 4 points. | Photo: Crystall Fuller

New Opening Ideas in Bucharest – Part 1

6/11/2021 – The 2021 Superbet Chess Classic is the first event of this year’s Grand Chess Tour and it takes place in Bucharest, Romania from June 5 to June 14. Canadian FM Joshua Doknjas had a look at four interesting games from the first five rounds of the tournament, all of which contain important opening ideas and are dynamic battles.

Magnus Carlsen to play in FIDE World Cup in Sochi

6/11/2021 – Surprising news from FIDE: in a press release the FIDE announced that World Champion Magnus Carlsen will play in the next World Cup, which will take place in Sochi, Russia, from July 10 to August 6. It's a knock-out event with 206 players, in which the two finalists will qualify for the Candidates 2022. However, as reigning World Champion Carlsen is already guaranteed a spot in the Candidates 2022 should he lose the World Championship match against Ian Nepomniachtchi in November. But maybe the World Champion wants to play some over-the-board chess again after the long break caused by the pandemic and enjoys the challenge of a very tough tournament. | Photo: David Llada

Yermo’s travels: Back on the road

6/11/2021 – Yermo is back! Once the restrictions allowed it, he made it down to Mexico City with travelling pal Alexander Shabalov to try his hand in a 10-player round robin. In a thorough report, including plenty of pictures and annotations, he tells us all about his time in CDMX — chapulines, positive COVID tests and good old over-the-board chess made for a great experience in the second-largest metropolitan area of the Western Hemisphere.

Rapid Interview - Irina Krush

6/10/2021 – Rapid interviews are fun: interviewer and guest face each other in an epic rapid chess battle. The chess guest not only has to face the interviewer's questions, but also concentrate on the chess game at the same time. This leads to surprising answers and sometimes to curious chess positions. Irina Krush talks about her time dealing with the coronavirus, which still affects her today, if she has more power and ambition to win another U.S. women's champion title, and what her plans are for the future, involving an own YouTube channel.

Robert Ris’ Fast and Furious: Ruy Lopez Open Variation

6/10/2021 – This week, the well-known Dutch trainer Robert Ris takes a look at new developments in an old opening: the Open Ruy Lopez. Bogdan Deac used this line to surprisingly win with Black against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave in the Superbet Chess Classic Tournament. | "Fast and Furious" is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

Why do some countries always gain and other always lose rating points?

6/10/2021 – World Youth Chess Championships are known to produce tons of interesting games and often very surprising and inconsistent results. However, it appears that at least one thing stays fairly consistent – certain federations typically gain rating points while others lose them at the event. Why is there such a contrasting trend for Asian versus European countries, and what could be the possible reasons behind it? Sveta Demchenko presents the data from which we can draw our conclusions.

Superbet: Mamedyarov joins the lead

6/10/2021 – Shakhriyar Mamedyarov joined Wesley So and Alexander Grischuk in the lead of the Superbet Chess Classic after beating local hero Constantin Lupulescu in round 5. The Romanian, who played with the white pieces, faltered in time trouble and is now sharing last place with Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Anish Giri — a single point behind the leaders, though! | Photo: Bryan Adams

Game of the Week: W. So vs F. Caruana

6/9/2021 – This week Merijn van Delft takes a look at Wesley So's fine win against Fabiano Caruana at the Superbet Chess Classic tournament in Bucharest. | Merijn's show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

Superbet Chess Classic: So and Grischuk grab the lead

6/9/2021 – Wesley So and Alexander Grischuk are now sharing the lead at the Superbet Chess Classic in Bucharest, as each defeated a former co-leader in Tuesday’s fourth round. So played brilliantly to take down Fabiano Caruana, while Grischuk ground out a win against Bogdan-Daniel Deac from a very slightly favourable queen endgame. | Photo: Bryan Adams

Svitlana's Smart Moves - Episode 6

6/9/2021 – Svitlana Demchenko is a 17-year-old, Canadian WIM, and chess coach. Here and now, she will teach us plenty of smart moves on the board, ranging from tactics, strategies, openings, and anything else chess related. In the process, I'm happy to be available as a student at club player level, and pester the female international master with questions. Anyone who wants to strengthen their chess skills is welcome to watch, and actively replay the positions from the video, on our chessboard.

The Weekly Show: The Superbet Chess Classic

6/8/2021 – In his "Weekly Show" IM Lawrence Trent will take a look at the Superbet Chess Classic Tournament in Bucharest. The game of the day will be Lupulescu-Giri, where the big underdog stunned the Dutch number 1. | Lawrence's show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

New: Chess training with video on Playchess!

6/8/2021 – Train and analyse with video - almost like in a chess club, but simply via the browser! The new training functions in the PlayChess web browser are already being actively used by Stefan Kindermann and the Munich Chess Academy! You can see, hear, analyse, train and of course play! Anyone can create their own virtual room, invite friends and training groups and get started. Martin Fischer explains step-by-step how it works. Online training has never been so much fun!

Superbet Chess Classic: Lupulescu tricks Giri

6/8/2021 – In the one game of the day that finished decisively, Constantin Lupulescu took down Anish Giri to bounce back from his defeat against Fabiano Caruana in the preceding round. The Romanian contestants — Lupulescu and Bogdan-Daniel Deac — have shown the most fighting chess so far in Bucharest, with their higher-rated colleagues often choosing to play it safe in their direct encounters. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

Bishop vs pawns

6/8/2021 – Connected passed pawns can be powerful, in the middlegame but especially in the endgame. A good reason to stop them sooner rather than later. What should White do in the diagram position to stop Black's pawns from becoming really powerful?

Fair play in chess

6/7/2021 – Imagine you play in an important online event and your opponent makes a move that is obviously a mouse-slip. What do you do? Do you use the opportunity to exploit the blunder and to win the game? Or do you allow your opponent to take the move back or do you offer a draw? What, do you think, is fair play in this and other cases? Assi Philosoph shares some thoughts.

Superbet: Deac and Caruana strike first

6/7/2021 – The first two decisive results of the Superbet Chess Classic were seen in Sunday’s second round, as the top seed and the bottom seed won their games and are now sharing the lead. Fabiano Caruana defeated Constantin Lupulescu, while Bogdan-Daniel Deac [pictured] stunned Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

Jan Werle: Beat the King's Indian

6/7/2021 – When you play 1.d4, one of the most common openings that you will encounter is the King's Indian Defence. After 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.e4 d6 how do continue? GM Jan Werle of the Netherlands suggests 5.f3 – the Saemisch Variation. Guess what: you can also use the same antidote against the Benoni! Jan, who has published a ChessBase DVD on the subject, shows you how this works – in this video stream with ChessBase India. It is the perfect 1½ lesson to build your understanding of this opening.

Overthinking the silence

6/6/2021 – Often times during a chess game you have to make a choice between waiting and initiating concrete action. Star columnist Jon Speelman notes that “this eerie silence before battle is perhaps the most difficult moment psychologically”, and goes on to show how even world champion Magnus Carlsen can take a wrong turn from time to time. | Photo: Georgios Souleidis

Understanding before Moving 30: To exchange or not to exchange (2)

6/6/2021 – 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 30th instalment of his ChessBase show "Understanding before Moving", Herman continues to talk about the right exchange. | Photo: Tommy Grooten

Superbet: Giri lives dangerously, escapes

6/5/2021 – A rather quiet round on opening day saw all five games finishing drawn at the Superbet Classic in Bucharest. The one exciting encounter of the round saw Anish Giri going for complications at every turn against late replacement Bogdan-Daniel Deac. In the end, it was the Dutchman who needed to tread lightly to save a half point. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

African Individual Continental Championships 2021

6/5/2021 – The 2021 African Continental Championships were held on May 17-28 at the Crossroads Hotel in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi. The top players from the continent fought to get one of the fours spots granted to participate in the upcoming World Cup. Egyptian grandmasters Ahmed Adly, Amin Bassem, Fawzy Adham and Hesham Abdelrahman finished atop the standings. Diana Mihajlova reports from the ‘warm heart of Africa’

Deep

6/5/2021 – White's continuation in the diagram position truly belongs into the category "very special". How about a little test: how did White continue here and was this move among your first three candidate moves?