2/7/2021 – Day 1 of the Opera Euro Rapid tournament finished with Magnus Carlsen alone atop the standings table on 4/5. Carlsen had lost his first game against Wesley So, but managed to win four in a row to go into day 2 half a point ahead of So and Ian Nepomniachtchi. The preliminary round robin serves as a qualifier to the knockout stage — 8 out of 16 players will advance to the quarterfinals. | Photo: Crystal Fuller / Saint Louis Chess Club

2/6/2021 – Every Monday and Wednesday, a chess workshop takes place at the “Centro Vida de Cáritas Diocesana”, a centre for homeless people in the Spanish city of Coria-Cáceres. For eight consecutive years the workshop has been organized thanks to an agreement between Cáritas and the Club “Magic Extremadura Deportivo-Social”. Juan Antonio Montero and Ainoa Jiménez share an encouraging, inspiring story.

2/6/2021 – The Salamanca Chess Festival is taking place on 2-6 February at the Colegio Mayor de Fonseca, a historical edifice founded over five centuries ago, in 1519. The main event is an 8-player rapid tournament including an equal number of male and female representatives — Veselin Topalov, David Antón, Alexei Shirov, Eduardo Iturrizaga, Elisabeth Paehtz, Almira Skripchenko, Nurgyul Salimova and Sabrina Vega. The action kicks off at 16.00 CET

2/6/2021 – An eventful fifth round in Salamanca left Alexei Shirov as the sole leader of the single round robin tournament. In typical style, Shirov went all in for a kingside attack — which the engines evaluated as unsound — to take down Almira Skripchenko. Former co-leader Veselin Topalov, in the meantime, was defeated by Eduardo Iturrizaga. Expert analysis by GM Karsten Müller. | Photos: Official site

2/5/2021 – On Saturday, February 6, the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour continues. 16 top players will start in the Opera Euro Rapid to fight for a prize pool of $100,000. Title sponsor is the Norwegian company "Opera Software", number one seed is Magnus Carlsen. All rounds begin at 11:00 AM ET, 5:00 PM CET, 9:30 IST.

2/5/2021 – In this Power Play Show, GM Daniel King looks back to Wijk aan Zee and offers a "Tata Steel tactics test". Do you see what the grandmasters saw or did not see? | 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.

2/2/2021 – In his "Weekly Show" IM Lawrence Trent will summarise the action at the Tata Steel Tournament, with a focus on the fantastic last-round game between Jorden van Foreest and Nils Grandelius that helped van Foreest to win the tournament. Lawrence's show is available at 17:00 UTC (18:00 CET, 12:00 ET) on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

2/2/2021 – The Caro-Kann is one of the most solid and respected responses against 1.e4. Since it is so solid, the Caro-Kann is an absolute brainteaser for most 1.e4 players. If you like sharp and attacking lines against this solid opening, but the 3.Nc3 and 3.e5 lines are too theoretical and too explored for you, then the Panov is definitely the solution!

2/2/2021 – Magnus Carlsen has won the Tata Steel tournament seven times, more than any other player. But the tournament in 2021 was a disappointment for the World Champion. He finished with 7½/13, but he was not happy about his play and lost 15.3 rating points. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave fared even worse - he lost more than 26 points, twice as much as Jan-Krzyszof Duda (-13). Rating winners in Wijk are Jorden van Foreest (+ 30), Andrey Esipenko (+24), Anish Giri (+12), and Alireza Firouzja (+10).

2/2/2021 – Knight endings are often tricky and both sides have to calculate precisely. In the diagram position Black has to make a difficult decision: should he try to advance and to queen the f-pawn or should he catch White's a-pawn and convert the kingside pawns later? What would you do?

2/2/2021 – You gain a good positon in a game. That's great, but how can you "realize" your advantage, how can you increase it, what should you focus on, how should you think about the advantage you have gained. That is what this Fritztrainer is about, with many instructive thoughts, ideas and plans pointed out by Grandmaster Sergei Tiviakov, who is a renowned chess trainer and teacher. Review with examples by Mattis Trätmar.

2/1/2021 – In the fifth and last episode of the "Wijk aan Zee Storytellers" podcast Eric van Reem talks to his compatriot Loek van Wely. "KingLoek" played 25 times in Wijk and 297 games in group A, only Dutch Grandmaster Jan Hein Donner can boast of more. In the podcast van Wely talks about his first tournament, where he played in group B and lost to all three Polgar sisters, the soccer games on the restdays, the rivalry between the Dutch players, and what the Netflix series "The Queen's Gambit" has to do with Wijk and himself. | Photo: Magnus Carlsen (left) and Loek van Wely (right) during an intense soccer match. | Photo: Alina l'Ami