Legends of Chess Final: Carlsen wins

8/4/2020 – The fourth tournament of the Magnus Carlsen Chess Tour is taking place from July 21 through August 4. Six illustrious players from the previous generation are in the mix — Vladimir Kramnik, Viswanathan Anand, Vassily Ivanchuk, Boris Gelfand, Peter Leko and Peter Svidler — and are joined by Magnus Carlsen, Ding Liren, Anish Giri and Ian Nepomniachtchi. Action kicks off at 16:00 CEST (14:00 UTC, 10:00 ET). Read the report on the first set of the final! | Photo: Lennart Ootes

Mighty pawn wave

8/4/2020 – Far advanced connected passed pawns are often very dangerous in the endgame.

Legends of Chess: Sharp games, Carlsen wins first set

8/4/2020 – It was a thrilling first set in the final of the ‘chess24 Legends of Chess’ tournament. Ian Nepomniachtchi played the same sharp line against Magnus Carlsen’s Sicilian the three times he had the white pieces, winning once and losing twice. In the end, Carlsen got a 4:2 victory after winning both blitz tiebreakers. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

Simon Says: Ulf Andersson with the Black pieces

8/3/2020 – In this "Simon Says" Simon continues to look at the games of Swedish Grandmaster Ulf Andersson who is famous for his endgame technique and his smooth solid play. The show is an extension of Simon's previous show, but this time Simon looks at Ulf's play with the Black pieces. | Watch "Simon Says" 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). | Photo: Ulf Anderssen at the Hoogovenschaaktoernooi, Wijk aan Zee 1971 | Photo: Bert Verhoeff / Anefo / CCO

Getting the most out of ChessBase 15: a step-by-step guide #9 – Backups

8/3/2020 – One thing is certain – if you work with computers, data loss is not a matter of IF, but WHEN. However careful you are, there is no way to guarantee that you are safe. The answer is simple - back up your work. Or as we say in chess – “back up your chess databases”. This week Nick Murphy takes you through the thrilling world of backing up in ChessBase 15.

Kacper Piorun wins Polish Championship

8/3/2020 – The 28-year old Polish Grandmaster Kacper Piorun is five-time World Champion in problem solving but also a very strong over-the-board player. At the end of July he won the 77th Polish Championships in Warsaw. This year, the Polish Championship was a knockout tournament and in the final Piorun won against Daniel Sadzikowski. But the match was close and was only decided in the Armageddon game. | Photos: Polish Chess Federation / Krzysztof Ćwik

The anatomy of Agony

8/3/2020 – Star columnist Jon Speelman tells a story from the old days, when Soviet tournaments were long and inordinately slow. In it, he mentions Leonid Yurtaev, a fierce attacking player who in 1996 became Kyrgyzstan’s first-ever grandmaster and sadly died in 2011 aged just 52. Speelman then goes on to analyse two of Yurtaev’s finest efforts. | Pictured: The city of Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

Legends of Chess: Nepomniachtchi to face Carlsen in the final

8/3/2020 – Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi moved on to the final of the ‘chess24 Legends of Chess’ online tournament. While Carlsen made quick work of Peter Svidler, beating him in straight sets, Nepomniachtchi missed chances in the second set and only got the victory over Anish Giri in the blitz tiebreakers of the third. The final will be played from Monday to Wednesday (or Tuesday, if someone wins the first two sets). | Photo: Niki Riga

Daniel Gormally’s take on lockdown life

8/2/2020 – Near the end of March, the world came to a halt — even FIDE had to cancel the second half of the Candidates Tournament, the last sporting event taking place amid the corona crisis. It’s been four months and the chess world has almost turned completely to online events. Great conditions have been given to those at the very top of the rating ladder, but how has this impacted the rest of chess professionals? Daniel Gormally sent us his take in his usual painfully honest, self-deprecating style. | Photo: John Upham / British Chess News

August FIDE ratings

8/2/2020 – The virus is not gone, but here and there chess players have ventured out of domestic isolation and played a few games “over the board”. The International Chess Festival in Biel/Bienne only ended a few days ago. The changes in the world ratings list published by FIDE on August 1st compared to the one published on April 1st are nevertheless still minimal - but they do exist! Pentala Harikrishna [pictured] gained 13 points, while Alexander Donchenko is now the higest-rated German player. | Photo: Simon Bohnenblust

Birthday columns and puzzles

8/2/2020 – What do you get when you celebrate a birthday? What happens when it is an especially auspicious birthday, e.g. one marking that you have made it to 3/4 of a century? Champagne, gifts, family party with the grandkids (in pandemic times in the garden). Chess friends have special things in store. They will write you a column in a national newspaper, or compose "number problems" for the years you have reached.

Nino Batsiashvili wins Georgian Women’s Chess Championship

8/1/2020 – Despite losing in round 3, Nino Batsiashvili showed great form at the end of the tournament and won the 77th Georgian Women’s Chess Championship with a 7/9 score. Bela Khotenashvili and Meri Arabidze each collected 6½ points in the single round-robin event. The championship took place at the Chess Palace in Tbilisi. | Photos: Georgian Chess Federation

Legends of Chess: Carlsen and Nepomniachtchi in the zone

8/1/2020 – Both Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi won the first sets of their semifinal matchups in three games (each set consists of four rapid games and an Armageddon in case of a tie). Carlsen defeated Peter Svidler, while Nepomniachtchi beat Anish Giri. The semifinals are played to the best of three sets. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

What on Earth is 5D chess?

7/31/2020 – Just last week a new chess game launched on the Steam client — 5D chess. The term 3D stands for third dimension, while 4D includes “time” plus the three spatial dimensions. 5D chess boldly claims to go even beyond that as it mixes chess, as we know it, with a multiverse time-travel function. And this is where my mind starts to go a bit crazy! | Photos: 5D Chess press kit

Power Play Show: A World Champion squeeze

7/31/2020 – In this Power Play Show, grandmaster Daniel King shows the solution to last week’s mate-in-two problem, presents a new problem, and takes a look at an exciting game between Ding Liren and former world champion Vishy Anand. | Power Play is on air most Fridays at 17:00 UK (18:00 CEST, 11:00 EST) on playchess.com. All the usual puzzles, games and instruction will be on offer. | Photo: Austin Fuller

Donchenko and Tomilova win ACP Knockout Tournaments

7/31/2020 – Alexander Donchenko won the ACP-ChessBase Knockout Tournament, which took place in the Emanuel Lasker Arena of the PlayChess server. In the final, the young German grandmaster defeated two-time British champion Gawain Jones 3:1. In the women’s section, penultimate seed Elena Tomilova from Russia stunned by winning the event after beating Anastasia Bodnaruk in the final.

Light squares, dark squares

7/31/2020 – Refuting White's 27.Rxf5 in the diagram position may take time, which Black in this (rapid) game simply didn't have and failed. Not pressed by the clock, can you do better?

Improve your openings skill

7/31/2020 – How would you like to learn to play the King's Indian Defence (KID)? How about a 1½-hour lesson by a 2765 rated super-grandmaster, the number 9 in the world? Azerbaijani GM Teimour Radjabov is one of the finest exponents of the KID in the world, and illustrates this interactive lesson with games from his stellar career.

GM Maurice Ashley on the Tim Ferriss Show

7/30/2020 – For a number of years now, bestselling author Tim Ferriss has hosted a very successful podcast. Chess is a reccurring theme, and people like “Wunderkind” Josh Waitzkin and Adam Robinson (a very close friend of Bobby Fischer’s) have been guests on the show. It is no secret that Tim and Maurice have been friends for a very long time. The podcast episode doesn’t disappoint at all, and we can learn a lot about top commentator and grandmaster Maurice Ashley.

This Saturday: Knighthood Online Blitz Open

7/30/2020 – This Saturday, 1st August, will witness the biggest ever Online Blitz tournament in the history of ChessBase India. The Knighthood Online Blitz will have a total prize fund of ₹1,50,000 and the first prize of ₹40,000! And guess what? All the entry fees will be used for a good cause — to promote and support specially-abled chess players of India. The tournament is sponsored by a chess lover named Sujit Varghese. What's more, India's no.2 GM Vidit Gujrathi is also involved in the event and will play a simul against the age-group winners and specially-abled players on the 2nd of August 2020.

Robert Ris' Fast and Furious: Bishop's Opening

7/30/2020 – In this week's show, well-known Dutch trainer Robert Ris gives all those looking for a simple repertoire with White against 1.e4 e5 a simple solution: to play 2.Bc4. The model games he presents, with Nepomniachtchi, Firouzja and Kasparov marshaling the white pieces, show how dangerous this opening can be. | "Fast and Furious" is available from 17:00 UTC (19:00 CEST / 15:00 EDT) on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

Legends of Chess: Svidler qualifies to the semifinals

7/30/2020 – Vladimir Kramnik still had a theoretical chance to get into the knockout stage of the Legends of Chess had Peter Svidler lost to Anish Giri — which he did — and he defeated Magnus Carlsen — in round 9 of the preliminaries. Kramnik could not beat the world champion in the end, which means Carlsen, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Giri and Svidler are the semifinalists. The four-player knockout kicks off on Friday. | Photo: Eteri Kublashvili

Biel: Wojtaszek wins triathlon

7/30/2020 – Radoslaw Wojtaszek won the 2020 edition of the Grandmaster Tournament, this year played as a triathlon, in Biel. The Polish grandmaster did it by losing one game in total across all three time controls (he played 28 games!). Pentala Harikrishna came in second place, after getting the highest score in classical chess, winning four games and losing none. Michael Adams finished third. | Photos: Simon Bohnenblust

Historical riddle: Hort vs. Fischer 1970

7/29/2020 – Bobby Fischer obtained an astounding 18½ out of 23 score to win the 1970 Interzonal Tournament in Palma de Mallorca. In round 5, the American genius defeated Vlastimil Hort with black in an opposite-coloured bishops endgame, but it is not clear whether the ending was always winning or not! Endgame specialist Karsten Müller asks for your help.