Congratulations! Vlastimil Hort celebrates his 77th birthday!

1/12/2021 – Today, January 12, Vlastimil Hort celebrates his 77th birthday. Congratulations! To mark the anniversary, the former World Championship candidate and great chess connoisseur gives the chess community another - albeit somewhat macabre - story.

Racing rook pawns

1/12/2021 – Usually, in a race of passed pawns it is better to have a bishop than a knight. After all, bishops are long ranging pieces while knights can easily become short of breath. But there are exceptions, this position for example. White to play and win.

Playchess - A step closer to reality

1/12/2021 – Playing chess with a friend in these weird times is not as easy as it used to be, and nothing compares to a "real" played game over the board. But Playchess still has a beautiful alternative, which every premium member can use in less than a couple of minutes. I wanted to play a friend, and surprised him on Facebook by inviting him to play a game on Playchess to try out the video and audio options.

Paul Keres "special" in ChessBase Magazine #199

1/11/2021 – 105 years ago, on January 7, 1916, Paul Keres, one of the best chess players of all time, was born. On the occasion of the anniversary, the new ChessBase Magazine #199 dedicates a "special" to the Estonian grandmaster: 18 players present and annotate their favourite Paul Keres games - 18 wonderful games and 18 stories that show how chess players from all over the world still admire this extraordinary player and personality.

French Blitz Team Championship on Playchess: Nizza and Mulhouse win preliminaries

1/11/2021 – On Saturday the preliminaries of the French Online Blitz Team Championship were played on Playchess. The two groups with four teams each were named after famous French chess masters of the past. In the group "Philidor" the team from Nice with GM Christian Bauer (pictured) won smoothly; as did the team of Mulhouse (Mulhouse) with Jean-Noël Riffin in the group "de La Bourdonnais".

Understanding before Moving 9: Hunting the king - Part I

1/11/2021 – 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 ninth part of his ChessBase show "Understanding before Moving" Herman shows how important it is to develop your pieces. | Photo: Hans Hoornstra

David Howell dominates Hastings online tournament

1/11/2021 – Already closing on a hundred editions, the Hastings International Chess Congress was organized this year despite the pandemic. Sponsored by Caplin Systems for a second time, the tournament was played online on Saturday and Sunday. In the end, David Howell won the event with a commanding performance, scoring seven wins and four draws to finish 1½ points ahead of second-placed Luke McShane. | Photo: Lennart Ootes / London Chess Classic

Grandmaster Chef: Kirill Alekseenko

1/10/2021 – Grandmaster Kirill Alekseenko is the youngest participant in the 2020 Candidates Tournament. National Master Mike Walder prepares a dish that Alekseenko might like and annotates one of Alekseenko’s draws from the Candidates. WIM Alexey Root tells why Kirill Alekseenko is a Grandmaster Chef honoree. | Photo: Lennart Ootes / FIDE

Yannick Pelletier: My most memorable game

1/10/2021 – A six-time Swiss chess champion, Yannick Pelletier is only one of three Swiss players to have defeated a reigning world champion — he beat Magnus Carlsen with the black pieces in 2015. In his most memorable game, Pelletier looks at a fine win he obtained over Ruslan Ponomariov in his home town of Biel, back in 2004.

Taking on Leon in Playchess

1/10/2021 – He's a 14-year-old lad, mischievous and full of fun. For a full year now Leon and his father Lyndon, who hail from Goa, India, are stuck in Europe, due to severe Covid restrictions. But Leon, aged 14, used this exile wisely: to gain his grandmaster title. Today at 3:30 p.m. CET you can challenge him on Playchess. But do be gentle with him – he is rated just 2538! | Photo: Amruta Mokal

A new North American chess hub?

1/9/2021 – The chess boom in the US, despite the halt of the pandemic, has kept surging thanks to several benefactors in different locations in the US. One of these benefactors (a non-profit organization) whose activities have grown substantially in 2020 is the Pacific Northwest Chess Center (PNWCC). | Pictured: Wildflowers around Mount Rainier in Washington State

French Online Blitz Team Championship: Live

1/9/2021 – Today, Saturday, January 9, and next weekend, the French Online Blitz Team Championship will be played on Playchess. In the preliminaries eight teams start in two groups with four teams each, and play a round robin tournament. The matches between the teams are played according to Scheveninger System. The finals will follow next weekend. Follow the games live, with video stream. Start: 10am CET (4am EST, 9am UTC).

Daniel King’s Power Play Show: An exemplary endgame by Wei Yi

1/8/2021 – In this Power Play Show, GM Daniel King takes a look at an exemplary endgame by Chinese Grandmaster Wei Yi. A game that should be added to the long list of textbook positional performances. | 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.

Max Warmerdam wins Vergani Cup

1/8/2021 – At the beginning of the year the Vergani Cup was played in the picturesque town of Bassano del Grappa, close to the Italian Alps. Max Warmerdam from the Netherlands won the over-the-board tournament and secured his third grandmaster norm and the title! | Photo: Google

Striker

1/8/2021 – In the diagram position White develops a powerful initiative with 12.Rb5! This play on the wing finally allowed White to score. Enjoy!

Robert Ris' Fast and Furious: The Italian à la Dubov

1/7/2021 – In this week's show, well-known Dutch trainer Robert Ris takes a look at the Italian, and in particular how Daniil Dubov played it in his masterpiece against Sergey Karjakin at the Russian Championship 2020. | "Fast and Furious" is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here. | Photo: Photo: Lennart Ootes / World Rapid Championship 2018

Outstanding: Paul Keres at the Chess Olympiad 1954

1/7/2021 – 105 years ago today, on January 7, 1916, Paul Keres was born. For more than 30 years, Keres was one of the world's best players, but although he finished second in four Candidates Tournaments, he never played a match for the World Championship. 105 years is not a round anniversary, but an occasion to look at a highlight of a long career. At the 1954 Chess Olympiad, Keres won gold with the Soviet Union team, and scored 13½/14 on board 4 - one of the best results ever achieved at Olympiads.

Dana Reizniece-Ozola appointed as new Managing Director of FIDE

1/7/2021 – FIDE has a new Managing Director. Dana Reizniece-Ozola, Woman Grandmaster and former Latvian Minister of Economics and later Finance, leaves the world of Latvian politics and dedicates herself to the politics of chess. | Image: Janis Deinats

Meet the Fritztrainer - Merijn van Delft

1/7/2021 – Hundreds of different Fritztrainers have been teaching us chess on ChessBase for more than a decade. Maybe you sometimes wonder what else the authors of these Fritztrainers do? "Meet the Fritztrainer" takes a look behind the scenes, telling us more about the private life of your favourite chess trainer. We already had the pleasure to talk to GM Chris Ward, and in this second episode we turn our attention to IM Merijn van Delft. The Dutch IM talks a bit about his weekly show "Game of the week", his first Fritztrainer and what "chess" means to him. | Photos: Merijn van Delft

FIDE Women's Grand Prix Gibraltar rescheduled

1/7/2021 – Originally, the fourth and final tournament of the Women's Grand Prix 2019 was scheduled to take place in Gibraltar, from January 17th to January 29th. But due to the Corona pandemic and high infection rates in Gibraltar, FIDE decided to postpone the tournament. Press release...

Game of the Week: Daniil Dubov vs Maxime Vachier-Lagrave

1/6/2021 – This week Merijn van Delft takes another look at the Airthings Masters. He focuses on the match between Daniil Dubov and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, an interesting clash of styles and a tense battle with a lot of decisive games. | Merijn's show is available at 16.00 UTC (17:00 CET, 12:00 EDT) and on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

Michael Adams wins British Online Championship

1/6/2021 – Over the turn of the year, the British Chess Federations organised their annual championship as an online tournament. Michael Adams, with a rating of 2716 currently Britain's number 1, was clear favourite. Adams indeed won the title, but only after a close play-off against IM Ameet Ghasi. | Photo: ECF

Queens of Chess: "Beth Harmon" and Judit Polgar have a little chat

1/6/2021 – At the end of the year, Netflix organised a little video chat between Anya Taylor-Joy, who played Beth Harmon, the fictional world's best player, in the Netflix series "The Queen's Gambit", and the real-life best women player in history: Judit Polgar. An interesting talk!

Kovalenko, Pantsulaia and Martirosyan win Winter of Washington Online Tournament

1/6/2021 – The Pacific Northwest Chess Center (PNWCC) wants to make chess more popular and wants to give chess players opportunities to play and to improve. Before corona the PNWCC was organising a lot of live events, during the pandemic the Chess Center organises attractive and strong online tournaments. At the end of last year, the Winter of Washington tournament was played, a nine-round online tournament. Igor Kovalenko, Levan Pantsulaia and Haik Martirosyan shared first with 7.0/9 each.