Paris Rapid & Blitz: An entertaining first day of action

6/18/2021 – Four players finished day 1 of the Paris Rapid & Blitz Tournament with a +1 score. Ian Nepomniachtchi, Levon Aronian, Wesley So and Peter Svidler are sharing the lead after three rounds of rapid games. Wunderkind Alireza Firouzja drew his first two games and lost against Teimour Radjabov, as he made his Grand Chess Tour debut on his 18th birthday. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

Daniel King’s Power Play Show: Test your attacking play

6/18/2021 – In this Power Play Show GM Daniel King looks at some attacking games from the Gelfand Challenge, an online rapid round-robin tournament with 20 of the world's best juniors that was won by the Indian Gukesh D. | 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.

Prague Chess Festival, Round 5 - Live

6/18/2021 – After four rounds Sam Shankland and Nijat Abasov lead the Masters tournament at the Prague Chess Festival with 3.0/4 each and in round 5 they play against each other - Shankland has the white pieces. David Navara, who started the tournament with four losses, plays against Thai Dan Van Nguyen. The round starts at 15:00 CEST (9:00 ET, 13:00 UTC). Follow the games live.

Prague Chess Festival: Navara loses again

6/18/2021 – In this year's Prague Chess Festival things do not go well for David Navara. In round 4 of the Masters he played against Nijat Abasov (pictured) and suffered his fourth loss in a row. Navara had an excellent position but first gave his advantage away and then lost on time. The other three games of the round ended in a draw. After four rounds Sam Shankland and Abasov now share the lead with 3.0/4 each. | Photo: Nijat Abasov (Vladimir Jagr)

Play the Author - Theme tournament with Spyridos Kapnisis

6/18/2021 – Our ChessBase Magazine subscribers recently received a particularly interesting offer: a theme tournament with Spyridos Kapnisis! "Play the Author" lets readers play against their favourite author in a round-robin tournament. Another attraction is the set opening that is played in each round. In this "Play the Author" episode, the Richter-Rauzer Variation in the Sicilian was the chosen setup.

New Opening Ideas in Bucharest – Part 2

6/18/2021 – The 2021 Superbet Chess Classic concluded on June 14 and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (pictured) won with 6.0/9 (3 wins, 6 draws). FM Joshua Doknjas analyzes four games from the second half of the event, all of which contain interesting opening ideas. | Photo: Lennart Ootes (Archive)

Throwback Thursday: Kasparov and Anand atop the World Trade Center

6/18/2021 – A 20-game match between Garry Kasparov and Viswanathan Anand was organized in 1995 by the Professional Chess Association. The match was played on the 107th floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center in New York. After eight draws, Anand took the lead in game 9, but a string of five subpar performances in which the Indian scored a mere half point left him in an unenviable position. Four draws in the following games gave Kasparov a 10½-7½ victory. | Photo: Owen Williams, The Kasparov Agency

Robert Ris’ Fast and Furious: New ideas for Black in the Queen's Gambit Accepted

6/17/2021 – This week, the well-known Dutch trainer Robert Ris takes a look at new and aggressive idea that helps Black to spice up things up in the Queen's Gambit Accepted. | "Fast and Furious" is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

FIDE and World Chess announce Grand Prix Series 2022

6/17/2021 – The FIDE World Cup in July and the World Champion match in November still have to be played but FIDE and World Chess already plan ahead and just announced the FIDE Grand Prix Series 2022. It will take place from February to April 2022 and will consist of three tournaments, which will be played in one city. The two best players qualify for the Candidates Tournament 2022.

Prague Chess Festival, Round 3: Shankland beats Navara

6/17/2021 – David Navara, the number one Czech player, started the Masters at the Prague Chess Festival with two losses, and in round 3 he had to play against Sam Shankland, who seems to be in good shape in Prague. But Navara still played ambitiously which allowed Shankland to counter and to win a fine game. With 2.5/3 Shankland is now the sole leader at the Masters. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

Meet the participants of the Women’s Grand Prix

6/17/2021 – Chess is not all about competitiveness, and Gibraltar has become a place that embodies the multi-faceted character of the royal game. Following this vein, FIDE recorded a series of well-produced videos with the participants of the Women’s Grand Prix that came to an end a couple of weeks ago. Enjoy getting to know a bit more about some of the strongest female chess players in the world! | Photo: David Llada

The greatest number you can imagine

6/17/2021 – How many different games of chess are possible? Everyone knows it's a very, very large number. It can be written down in seconds, using just a few digits. But it is unimaginably huge. Unimaginable? The great scientist Enrico Fermi recommended that we at least try to understand very large numbers, to estimate what they entail. Mathematics professor Christian Hesse attempts to do this for the number of chess games. You will be stunned!

Game of the Week: Gukesh-Praggnanandhaa

6/16/2021 – This week Merijn van Delft takes a look at the game Gukush D. vs Praggnanandhaa, which ultimately decided the Gelfand Challenge, a rapid tournament, in which 20 of the world's best juniors (10 male, 10 female) faced each other in a round robin. | Merijn's show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

CBM Extra #201: "The brilliancy"

6/16/2021 – The ChessBase Magazine Extra is up-to-date and attractive. In the new Extra # 201, Mihail Marin takes the game Grischuk-Vachier-Lagrave from the Candidates Tournament as the starting point of his opening video "Anti-Najdorf à la Carlsen" (1.e4 c5 2.Nc3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Qxd4 Nc6 5.Qd2 ), and Daniel King provides a video analysis of the way Caruana handled the King's Indian in Wojtaszek-Caruana (Tata Steel 2021). And in the famous "Lucky Bag" you will find many high-quality analyses and chess treats. "The brilliancy" is one example of the 25 extensively annotated games in the new edition. Take a look!
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Billionaire and celebrities cheat at Charity Simul

6/16/2021 – Computer cheating in online chess is a real plague. Now an Indian billionaire and two Bollywood celebrities have even cheated when they had the chance to play against Vishy Anand at the online charity simul "Checkmate Covid", an event to help the Indian Red Cross' COVID-19 relief.

Prague Chess Festival: Three decisions in round 2

6/16/2021 – In round 2 of the Masters at the Prague Chess Festival David Navara played against Radoslaw Wojtaszek and suffered his second loss in a row. Sam Shankland won against Jan-Krzysztof Duda and Nihat Abasov defeated Nils Grandelius. After two rounds Sam Shankland, Radoslav Wojtaszek and Nijat Abasov share the lead with 1.5/2 each. | Picture: The hotel Don Giovanni, the host of the event

David Smerdon introduces the Fighting Chess Index

6/15/2021 – Unlike other sports, chess allows for players to agree to a draw, be it explicitly or implicitly — for example, by entering a forced line that leads to a threefold repetition. Many workarounds have been proposed to prevent this from happening too often, but at the end of the day, it mostly has to do with how ‘fighting’ a player is. But how to measure the players’ combativeness? GM David Smerdon has developed a method to answer this question.

The Weekly Show: The Superbet Chess Classic

6/15/2021 – In his "Weekly Show" IM Lawrence Trent will take a look at Shakhriyar Mamedyarov’s win at the Superbet Classic in Bucharest. The featured game will be Caruana-Mamedyarov where Mamedyarov scored a brilliant victory with Black against the world's number two. | Lawrence's show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

Duda beats Navara in the first round of the Prague Chess Festival

6/15/2021 – Yesterday, 14 June, the Prague Chess Festival 2021 began at the Don Giovanni Hotel in Prague, with a Masters tournament, an Open and a few other tournaments. In the Masters Jan-Krzysztof Duda started with a win over David Navara. | Photo: Tournament page

Arbiter, organiser, author and roulette millionaire Carol Jarecki (13 February 1935 - 13 June 2021) died

6/15/2021 – On Sunday, 13 June, Carol Jarecki died at the age of 86. She came to chess through her son, promoted and organised chess tournaments and was the arbiter in many top level tournaments and matches, including the world championship match Kasparov vs. Anand in 1995 and the match Kasparov vs. Deep Blue in 1997. She was a passionate pilot, and together with her husband Richard Jarecki she also won millions in casinos by exploiting mechanical imperfections of roulette wheels.

Endgame tactics

6/15/2021 – The diagram position is complicated and extremely sharp. Both sides have dangerous passed pawns which the knights might or might not stop. However, it was Black to move and he had a way to win. But in the game Black failed to find the winning move - can you do better?

Shakhriyar Mamedyarov wins Superbet Chess Classic

6/15/2021 – In the last round of the Superbet Chess Classic, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov safely drew Maxime Vachier-Lagrave with the black to secure tournament victory. Wesley So, Levon Aronian and Alexander Grischuk shared second place a full point behind the Azerbaijani. The second event of the tour, the Paris Rapid & Blitz Tournament, kicks off on Friday. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

"Homo Neubau": An exhibition featuring Ernst Grünfeld

6/14/2021 – In the winter of 1921/22, Ernst Grünfeld developed a revolutionary chess opening. Almost a hundred years later, the Viennese, who became a professional player out of necessity and joined the NSDAP because of his Jewish-sounding name, is the unlikely star of an exhibition in his hometown. Stefan Löffler visited it. | Photos, if not otherwise indicated: Collection Michael Ehn

Gukesh D. wins the Gelfand Challenge

6/14/2021 – On Sunday, the last four of the 19 rounds of the "Gelfand Challenge" were played. After 15 rounds Vincent Keymer from Germany had led the tournament but he only scored 1.5/4 on the final day. This was the chance for the 15-year old Indian Gukesh D., who had started the day two points behind Keymer, to catch up. After a 4.0/4 run Gukesh finished on 14.0/19 and tied first with his compatriot Praggnanandhaa but Gukesh won the tournament on tiebreak because he had won the direct encounter against "Pragg". Half a point behind the two Indians, Vincent Keymer came third. | Picture: Julius Baer Challengers Chess Tour