Checkmate in six moves!

6/11/2020 – Stuart Rachels is not only a former chess prodigy and great writer, he also made some beautiful chess puzzles. We are happy to showcase four self-mate riddles which are worth looking at. They are creative in a way, that the white king has to be check-mated in as little moves as possible, on a certain square.

AVRO, Round 9: Alekhine wins against Capablanca

6/11/2020 – Round 9 of AVRO tournament 1938 was played in Arnhem, in the south of the Netherlands, and saw a clash of old rivals: for the first time in his career Alexander Alekhine won a tournament game against José Raúl Capablanca, while Reuben Fine lost in a strange way against Samuel Reshevsky. Mikhail Botvinnik and Paul Keres drew after an exciting fight, Salo Flohr and Max Euwe drew without much excitement. After nine of 14 rounds, Keres and Fine share first with 6.0/9 each. | Photo: Alexander Alekhine and José Raúl Capablanca

José Raúl Capablanca: “Everyone should know how to play chess”

6/11/2020 – José Raúl Capablanca was world chess champion between 1921 and 1927, when he lost the title to Alexander Alekhine in Buenos Aires. A clear favourite in that match, Capablanca strived to get a rematch against his Russian rival. Despite his efforts, he never managed to fight for the world championship again. In this interview from 1932, he talks about Alekhine's alleged unwillingness to face him, the best players in the world, money in chess, and the importance of learning the game as a child. | Pictured: Alekhine and Capablanca in 1914

The historical puzzle: Botvinnik vs Bronstein 1951

6/10/2020 – After the 2nd World War the Soviet Union largely dominated world chess. Mikhail Botvinnik won the World Championship tournament in The Hague and Moscow in 1948. In 1951 Botvinnik was the clear favourite in the World Championship match against David Bronstein which was played in Moscow's Tchaikovsky Concert Hall. After 22 games Bronstein was leading 11½-10½, and needed just one win (or two draws) to become World Champion. Did he miss a chance in game 23?

Game of the Week: Carlsen vs Xiong

6/10/2020 – In this show Merijn van Delft takes a look at a game between Magnus Carlsen and Jeffery Xiong from the Clutch Chess International. | Merijn's show is available at 15.00 UTC (17:00 CEST, 11:00 EDT) on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

Chess Sudoku

6/10/2020 – Can you get better at chess by solving Sudoku puzzles? After all, Sudoku requires you to calculate several moves ahead and some variations of Sudoku make use of chess which makes these Sudokus even more fun to solve. But the question remains: can Sudoku really help to improve your chess?

AVRO, Round 8: The second half of the tournament starts

6/10/2020 – José Raúl Capablanca was the only winner of the 8th round of the AVRO Tournament, which was played in Utrecht. World Champion Alexander Alekhine had a lost endgame against Samuel Reshevsky, but escaped into a draw. Paul Keres and Max Euwe also drew, just as Mikhail Botvinnik and Reuben Fine. After eight rounds Fine leads with 6.0/8, followed by Keres with 5½/8 and Botvinnik and Capablanca with 4½/8 each.

Clutch Chess International QF: Aronian and Caruana in the semis

6/10/2020 – On an exciting fourth day of action, Fabiano Caruana and Levon Aronian secured a spot in the semifinals of the Clutch Chess International Tournament. Caruana reached the semis by trading blows with Leinier Dominguez, as he came from getting ahead on the scoreboard in the first half of the match. Meanwhile, Aronian knocked out Alexander Grischuk by winning the very last game of the match — a clutch win indeed! | Photo: Crystal Fuller

The Weekly Show: Clutch Chess Champions Showdown

6/9/2020 – In his weekly show IM Lawrence Trent takes a look at some exciting moments of the Clutch Chess Champions Showdown organised by the St Louis Chess Club. | Lawrence' 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.

Anniversary Chess Match Space to Earth ends with a draw

6/9/2020 – On June 9, the second chess match between Space and Earth took place in the main hall of the Moscow Museum of Cosmonautics. The event has been co-organized by the Moscow Museum of Cosmonautics, the Roscosmos State Corporation, the Chess Federation of Russia, and the social network VKontakte. The game between Sergey Karjakin and the cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner was short and exciting and ended in a draw. | Photos: Eteri Kublashvili

AVRO, Round 7: Keres wins top encounter against Fine

6/9/2020 – In the first six rounds of the AVRO Tournament Reuben Fine was the dominating player and scored a whopping 5½/6. But in round 7 he lost against Paul Keres who now has 5.0/7 and is only half a point behind Fine. The other games of the round were also interesting and they all ended decisively: Mikhail Botvinnik won against Alexander Alekhine, Samuel Reshevsky defeated Salo Flohr and José Raúl Capablanca beat Max Euwe. | Photo: Amsterdam

Getting the most out of ChessBase 15: a step-by-step guide #5 – Local Engines

6/9/2020 – Historically, the Fritz family of programs were for analysis, and ChessBase was for database management. Nowadays, the distinction is much less pronounced, and ChessBase 15 is an incredibly powerful analysis tool in its own right. Here, Nick Murphy takes you through getting ChessBase ready to analyse, using the local engine of your choice. Allowing you to effortlessly use the power of your chess engines wherever you are!

Avoiding a bodycheck

6/9/2020 – Rook endings have drawish tendencies and that should be reason enough to be very careful when you have a rook ending on the board - even if you think you are clearly better.

Clutch Chess International QF: Carlsen and So qualify to the semifinals

6/9/2020 – Magnus Carlsen and Wesley So are the first players to reach the semifinals of the Clutch Chess International Tournament. Carlsen had some trouble in the mid-part of his match against Jeffery Xiong, but recovered control after a crucial win in the third game of the day. Meanwhile, So delivered when it mattered the most, winning both “clutch games” of day two to beat Maxime Vachier-Lagrave by a massive score. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

Simon Says: Online games and thoughts about the Fajarowicz Variation

6/8/2020 – In this Simon Says I show you a couple of fun games that I have had online. We then look at a new opening that I have been trying, 'The Fajarowicz Variation'! | Watch for free and on-demand (for a limited time, or forever with a ChessBase Premium account). (Normally 16:00 UTC (18:00 CEST / 12 Noon EST).

Daniel King's Power Play Show: Dubov wins Lindores Abbey Challenge

6/8/2020 – In this Power Play Show Grandmaster Daniel King takes a look at what happened in the final of the Lindores Abbey Rapid Challenge. Daniil Dubov faced Hikaru Nakamura and after four interesting rapid games the match and the tournament was decided in the Armageddon play-off. | Photo: Daniil Dubov | Photo: Niki Riga

AVRO, Round 6: The World Champions lose

6/8/2020 – Three World Champions are competing in the 1938 AVRO tournament: José Raúl Capablanca, Max Euwe and Alexander Alekhine, the reigning World Champion. But in round 6 all three lost. Capablanca was outplayed by Paul Keres (pictured), Alekhine found no remedy against Reuben Fine's stubborn defense and lost in the endgame while Euwe was too optimistic against Samuel Reshevsky. Salo Flohr and Mikhail Botvinnik drew. With 5,5 out of 6, Fine is still the sole leader. | Photo: Paul Keres | Photo: Valter Heuer (Archive)

Riddle solved: Spielmann could have drawn!

6/8/2020 – The famous rook endgame Spielmann-Rubinstein is indeed amazingly deep, and all published analysis is incomplete or partly wrong. Most controversial was the question about which was Spielmann's last mistake. Charles Sullivan has solved this riddle and proved that with 60.Rc1! Spielmann could still have drawn. This is a challenge even for the modern engines, as an eight-piece rook ending with three against one pawn must be evaluated as a draw at the end of a critical line.

Clutch Chess International QF: Aronian and Caruana start strong

6/8/2020 – The international edition of the “Clutch Chess Champions Showdown” had its second day of action on Sunday. The second pair of quarterfinal matches saw Levon Aronian and Fabiano Caruana getting ahead on the scoreboard. Aronian is leading his matchup against Alexander Grischuk 5:3, while Caruana has a 5½:2½ lead over Leinier Dominguez. These confrontations are set to continue on Tuesday. | Photo: Cyrstal Fuller

Reginacide II: Jettisoning the Lady

6/7/2020 – Star columnist Jonathan Speelman continues looking at queen sacrifices — or “reginacides”. In this instalment, he analyzes two from his games and two from games played by Ding Liren. Not to be missed! | Painting by Abel de Pujol: "La mort de Marie Stuart", 1587

CBM 195: Boys will be boys!

6/7/2020 – ChessBase offers a window to the world of professional chess. The current issue offers a bird’s eye view of three major events, the Candidates 2020, the FIDE Women's Grand Prix and Moscow Aeroflot, 918 games, 11 opening surveys, demo lectures and exercises for training. It also includes games annotated by Boris Gelfand, Anish Giri and Romain Edouard, just to mention a few. Columnist Nagesh Havanur takes a look. | Photo: Lennart Ootes / FIDE

AVRO 1938, Round 5: Fine profits from his rivals’ draws

6/7/2020 – At the AVRO tournament in the Netherlands, the lead of the young American Reuben Fine over his closest rivals has increased further. Now that about a third of the games have been played, Fine has collected 4½ points, while World Champions Alexander Alekhine and Paul Keres are lagging behind with 3 points apiece in second place. In round five, Fine was the only one to score a win, while the game between Alekhine and Keres was drawn. | Pictured: Studios of the broadcasting company "AVRO" in Hilversum

Clutch Chess International QF: So grabs big lead

6/7/2020 – The “clutch chess” format returns a week after the four highest-rated players of the United States tried it out for the first time. With international players included now, the first pair of quarterfinal matches took place on Saturday. Six games were played in each confrontation, with the last two worth two points apiece. Wesley So grabbed a big lead over Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, while world champion Magnus Carlsen has a one-point advantage over Jeffery Xiong. | Photo: Justin Kellar

Chemo brain and chess: One master’s story

6/6/2020 – In 2011, Mike Walder had stage 4 inoperable stomach cancer and less than a 4% chance to survive for one more year. In 2014, he started playing chess again to counteract ‘chemo brain’, a term which describes the thinking and memory problems experienced by many chemotherapy patients. WIM Alexey Root interviews Walder about his two chess master roommates, losing chess rating points, and chemotherapy. | Pictured: Mike Walder (2019) | Photo: Mechanics’ Institute Chess Club