Norway Chess: a tricky endgame - Caruana vs Duda

10/7/2020 – The players at the Altibox Norway Chess Tournament seem to enjoy playing "live" again, and the fighting spirit is high. The current tournament leader Fabiano Caruana started with two wins, and he won both games in the endgame. But was his endgame against Jan-Krzysztof Duda in round 2 really won? Karsten Müller is not sure and took a deeper look. | Photos: Lennart Ootes

Growing with golf and chess

10/7/2020 – The Mechanics’ Institute’s Judit Sztaray discusses how her daughter Reka is growing from golf and chess. Reka outlines developing as a golfer thanks to her teammates and videos of golf pros. WIM Alexey Root compares Reka’s golf advice to learning from world chess champions’ games. College golfer Alex Chin and his chess opponent, National Master Mike Walder, annotate their game. | Pictured: Paul Whitehead teaching at Mechanics’ Institute in the summer of 2019 | All photos: Judit Sztaray

Game of the Week: Aryan Tari vs Fabiano Caruana

10/7/2020 – In his "Game of the Week" show, Merijn van Delft takes a look at a game from the first round of the Altibox Norway Chess Tournament: Fabiano Caruana's win with Black against Aryan Tari. | Merijn's show is freely available at 15.00 UTC (17:00 CEST, 11:00 EDT) for a limited time, and on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here. | Photo:

Blohberger and Happala win 1. Austrian Internet Championships

10/7/2020 – The 1. Austrian Internet Championship turned into a race between Stefan Kindermann and Felix Blohberger and was only decided in the last round - by a mouse slip. Blohberger became champion. Elisabeth Happala smoothly won the women's tournament. | Photos: Chess.at

Norway Chess: Caruana remains perfect, Carlsen wins on time

10/7/2020 – Fabiano Caruana took the sole lead of the Altibox Norway Chess tournament by beating Jan-Krzysztof Duda with the white pieces to reach a perfect 6/6 score. Meanwhile, on his 38th birthday, Levon Aronian inflicted Aryan Tari’s second loss, and Magnus Carlsen defeated Alireza Firouzja in Armageddon after the latter failed to make the most of a very favourable position and lost on time. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

Fedoseev wins Jackpot Blitz Tournament

10/6/2020 – The Pacific Northwest Chess Center (PNWCC) is a very active, Seattle based club that organised a couple of strong online events during the COVID-19 pandemic. One of these events was the so-called Jackpot Blitz, a series of blitz tournaments. The excellent conditions and the attractive prizes attracted some of the world's best players, but a few weeks ago the Jackpot series ended with the 20th and last Jackpot Blitz. It was won by GM Vladimir Fedoseev, who sends a report and annotates games.

The Weekly Show: Jan-Krzysztof Duda vs Alireza Firouzja

10/6/2020 – In round 1 of the Altibox Norway Chess Tournament Alireza Firouzja (pictured), the world's best junior, won a nice game against Jan-Krzysztof Duda, who is also an extraordinary talent. In his weekly show IM Lawrence Trent takes a closer look at the action. | Lawrence’s show is available at 17:00 UTC (19:00 CEST, 13:00 EDT) on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here. | Photo: Official site | Photo: Amruta Mokal (Archive)

New: Sergei Tiviakov - How to play the Ruy Lopez with Qe2

10/6/2020 – There are few other Grandmasters who can go into such detail, and explain complicated variations like Sergei Tiviakov. This is why our ChessBase community enjoys his content so much, and why he already has made 17 Fritztrainers with us so far. For this volume, Tiviakov concentrates on his favourite variation in the Ruy Lopez, with the White move - queen to e2. The Russian-Dutch Grandmaster analyses several variations, explains their purposes, tactics and strategies, and lets you establish a very solid continuation in this popular chess opening. Furthermore, 30 exercises round up this great download.

More than 100 players start at the Fagernes Open

10/6/2020 – Despite the ongoing corona pandemic, the organisers of the Fagernes Open in Norway decided to go ahead with their tournament, which is played live and under strict hygiene regulations. Evgeny Postny, Simen Agdestein and Frode Urkedal are the top seeds in the A-Open, which also functions as Norwegian National Championship. | Photos: Tom Eriksen, Malgorzata Kopaczek-Styczen (Tournament page)

Breaking the blockade

10/6/2020 – Knights are ideal to block passed pawns. However, in the diagram position White's knight on the rim cannot stop the black pawns. If Black is careful and proceeds with precision.

Norway Chess: Caruana and Firouzja get off to a good start

10/6/2020 – In a fighting first round at the Altibox Norway Chess tournament in Stavanger, Fabiano Caruana and Alireza Firouzja (pictured) grabbed the early lead by beating Aryan Tari and Jan-Krzysztof Duda without going to Armageddon. Meanwhile, Magnus Carlsen defeated Levon Aronian in sudden death after signing a 30-move draw in the classical encounter. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

Simon Says: Should one play systems or openings?

10/5/2020 – In this "Simon Says" the Ginger GM takes a look at some games from the Pro Chess League and wonders whether it is better to play a system or to play specific openings. | Watch "Simon Says" for free and on-demand (for a limited time, or forever with a ChessBase Premium account). (Normally 18:00 UTC (20:00 CEST / 14:00). | Photo: Bobby Fischer at the Candidates Tournament Portoroz 1959 | Photo: Tournament book

Cheating controversy at Pro Chess League

10/5/2020 – The final of the Chess.com Pro Chess League was overshadowed by a cheating incident. The Chess.com Fair Play Team came to the conclusion that the Armenian Grandmaster Tigran Petrosian, who played for the Armenian Eagles, the team that had won the finals and the tournament, had used computer assistance in the final. The Armenian Eagles were deprived of victory, and Tigran Petrosian was banned for life from playing on the Chess.com server.

Claus Dieter Meyer Memorial

10/5/2020 – Claus Dieter Meyer was a prominent and legendary figure in German chess: as a player, author, trainer, and analyst. On March 5, 2020, Meyer died after a long illness at the age of 73. As a tribute to the many achievements and the friendly personality of Meyer, his club, the SV Werder Bremen, now organises a strong tournament to remember him: the Claus Dieter Meyer Memorial. | Photo: Werder Bremen

Mint: Why women lose at chess

10/5/2020 – Mint, one of India’s premium business news publications, just published an article written by Omkar Khandekar focused on the rating gap between the top men and women chess players. The author wonders whether it has to do with conventional gender roles or unequal access. | Pictured: Harika Dronavalli observes her compatriot Humpy Koneru in action against Alexandra Kosteniuk | Photo: FIDE

Sacred squares and foolish horses

10/4/2020 – Two days ago, October 2, it was Jon Speelman’s 64th birthday. Given that 64 is a canonical number for chess players, our columnist used this chance to remind us that every single square of the chessboard may be important. In order to illustrate his point, he goes on to show a game in which, as Black, he placed his knights on both h1 and a8 during a single game. Happy birthday, Jon! And many thanks for your ever-ingenious columns! | Pictured: Speelman usin PressTel Chessbox to play long distance chess | Source: British Chess News

Norway Chess: Carlsen, Caruana and wooden boards

10/3/2020 – World numbers one and two will participate in the over-the-board Altibox Norway Chess tournament starting Monday. Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana will be joined by Armenian star Levon Aronian (pictured), Polish number one Jan-Krzysztof Duda, wunderkind Alireza Firouzja and local representative Aryan Tari. No matchup will split the points evenly between the contestants, as an Armageddon decider will follow each and every drawn classical game. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

Keira Knightley and chess

10/3/2020 – Almost ten years ago, English actress Keira Knighley caused a stir among motorbike enthusiasts when she roared through the streets in style for a promotional clip on a Ducati 750 Cafe Racer. Now the chess community can rejoice, as the royal game was featured in Coco Chanel’s latest promotional video with Mrs Knightley. | Photo: Coco Chanel

Remembering Alberic O'Kelly de Galway (May 17, 1911 – October 3, 1980)

10/3/2020 – Alberic O'Kelly de Galway was a Belgian Grandmaster of Irish descent. One of his trainers was Akiba Rubinstein, and after World War II O'Kelly belonged to the extended world class. He won the 3. World Championship of Correspondence Chess and supported chess as arbiter and author. O'Kelly died 40 years ago, on October 3, 1980. | Photos: Dutch National Archive

Throwback Thursday: 17-year-old Hou Yifan ties for first in Gibraltar

10/3/2020 – A 17-year-old Hou Yifan, already the women’s world champion at the time, tied for first place with Nigel Short at the main event of the 2012 Gibraltar Chess Festival. Short won the playoff, but Hou’s performance was a milestone in her career, as she proved she could compete neck-in-neck with the very best in the world. Hou also defeated Judit Polgar in their first-ever encounter. | Photos: Zeljka Malobabic / Ray Morris-Hill

Surya Shekhar Ganguly in conversation with Vladimir Kramnik

10/2/2020 – In the latest episode of ‘In conversation with...’, Surya Shekhar Ganguly talked for an hour and a half with former world champion Vladimir Kramnik. The Russian star, who retired from classical chess almost two years ago, discusses some of his games, refers to the young Indian players he recently trained and shares a bit of the wealth of knowledge he gathered during his career. | Photo: Amruta Mokal

The Origins of the Database with Frederic Friedel

10/2/2020 – Some might think that ChessBase was the inventor of the chess database. That is true to some degree, but there is a predecessor, and Frederic Friedel was a part of it. In the video we talk about one of the very first commercially available chess database systems, called "Intelligent Chess", and we opened our little ChessBase museum to present to you, the original prototype including a database on audio cassette.

No threat to the Najdorf

10/2/2020 – "With the games and analyses in this article, I'm confident you are well-equipped to face 6.f4 against the Najdorf in a practical game." That's how Niclas Huschenbeth closes his article on 6.f4 in the Najdorf in the current ChessBase Magazine #197. Only a few days after the editorial deadline, he had the opportunity to test his analyses in practice at the German Masters. Andreas Heimann promptly attacked Huschenbeth's Najdorf with the aggressive 6.f4. And? Huschenbeth came out of the opening without any problems, but missed a nice winning chance in the middlegame.
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King in the middle (2)

10/2/2020 – In the diagram position White is a pawn down but Black has not castled yet and is far from being fully developed. Black's last move 13...Qb8 targets White's pawn on e5 but did not do anything for Black's development. Don't you let him get away with it!