Can a roulette wheel decide the game?

6/24/2019 – It is something little hard to imagine but yes, in the history of chess there was one occasion when FIDE had no certain type of play — such as Armageddon — to decide the winner in case of draw. For those who are unaware of the format, Armageddon is the ultimate form of tie-breaker in chess, where time-odds are there and Black just needs to draw the game to win the match and White must win the game to advance or be declared as the winner of the match.

Hersonissos: Stress management for the soul

6/23/2019 – An instant fix for a thalassophile (a person who loves the sea) with the sounds and shades of sunset waves. It's just impossible to get bored on the Lyttos Beach (pictured). IM ALINA L'AMI sends her photo reportage of another picturesque chess holiday destination that will have you dialing your travel agent. Don't miss her instructive annotated games and game fragments!

Proposing a new system for top tournaments

6/22/2019 – Entrepreneur, trainer, and Grandmaster Miguel Illescas puts down some thoughts on how to make elite chess touranments more fan friendly. Inspired by the Norway Chess Armageddon experiment, he offers a proposal to improve the format with tweaks to the scoring and time control. We encourage you to offer feedback in the comments below.

What chess can learn from racing

6/22/2019 – Annually, sponsors spend over five billion dollars per year on motorsports. Millions of fans watch motorsports, such as Formula One, IndyCar, and NASCAR. In this first article of a two-article set, WIM ALEXEY ROOT explores what chess can learn from racing after interviewing — and playing chess with — race car driver Kory Enders (pictured) at the Texas Motor Speedway. | Photo: Louis A. Reed Jr.

The Power Play Show: Maria Muzychuk v. Aleksandra Goryachkina

6/21/2019 – On the show today: GM Daniel King be looking at the game that won the brilliancy prize at the Women's Candidates' tournament, Maria Muzychuk v. Aleksandra Goryachkina. Power Play is live most Fridays at 16:00 UTC (18:00 CEST, Noon EDT) on playchess.com. You can watch the episode live for free! All the usual puzzles, games and instruction will be on offer. Puzzle and the live video...

Light summer mate I

6/21/2019 – From the diagram, the pawn sac 6.Nb5!? a6 7.Nd6+ Bxd6 8.Qxd6 (Bxe4) gives White the typical dark-squared compensation. The catastrophe to follow shortly after was of course not forced but, some might feel, not completely unexpected either.

ACM: American chess in the melting pot

6/21/2019 – Home run: Grandmaster and former U.S. Champion JOEL BENJAMIN muses on the effect of immigration on the US chess scene in an opinion piece reproduced with kind permission from American Chess Magazine #11. Plus ACM's reviewer FM CARSTEN HANSEN gives Yannick Pelletier's latest video series on an Anti-London repertoire the maximum five stars! It's one of "many interesting new titles and many more on the way", writes Hansen.

Summer Classic: Howell and Xiong on top

6/21/2019 – The Summer Classic 2019 in Saint Louis consists of three tournaments with six players each held from June 18th to 28th. Sam Shankland is the top seed in the A group, but lost his first round game to the tournament leader David Howell. Another 'Sam' — Sam Sevian — heads the B group but Surya Ganguly is off to a strong start with 2½/3. | Pictured: Swiercz vs. Jones via commentary webcast with GM Jesse Kraai and Caleb Denby

Karjakin win kicks off World Chess "Armageddon" series

6/20/2019 – World Chess has developed a new tournament format for Russian television, dubbed the World Chess Armageddon series. Eight players entered a virtual arena, donned branded clothing and played blitz for $50,000 in prize money. In the end, as if according to script, local hero Sergey Karjakin defeated Ian Nepomniachtchi. | Photos: World Chess

Prague: Ding, Ding, Ding

6/20/2019 – From June 16th to 19th, Prague hosted a chess festival featuring two attractive rapid matches: David Navara played against Ding Liren, and chess legend Jan Timman fought Thai Dai Van Nguyen, the best Czech junior. Both matches ended 7:3 with Ding and Nguyen dominating the final day of action to emerge victorious. Here are the highlights. | Photos: Prague Chess Society

Game of the Week: Parham Maghsoodloo vs Murali Karthikeyan

6/19/2019 – Last week IM Merijn van Delft analysed a great positional queen sacrifice by Murali Karthikeyan in the King's Indian. Tonight he will return to the Asian Continental, since later in the tournament, Karthikeyan again played an inspiring positional sacrifice. The live show is free to watch, and available on-demand for ChessBase Premium account holders (but FREE for a limited time!). To chat, please visit videos.chessbase.com/live or login via Playchess for Windows. Merijn is live at 18:00 UTC (20:00 CEST / 2 PM EDT).

Live in Prague: David Navara versus Ding Liren

6/19/2019 – Prague is a beautiful city and it is a chess city: from June 16 to June 19 Prague hosts the Chess Festival Prague and two attractive rapid matches: David Navara plays against Ding Liren, and chess legend Jan Timman plays against Thai Dai Van Nguyen, the best Czech junior. Both matches go over ten games and after two days and seven games Ding Liren and Nguyen both lead 4-3. Games 8 to 10 will follow today, game 8 starts at 4 pm local time (10 am EDT, 2 pm GMT). Follow the games live. | Picture: Prague Chess Society

How Carlsen thinks: an interview

6/19/2019 – On May 22, 2019, before the Lindores Abbey Tournament and Norway Chess, Energi Danmark invited Magnus Carlsen to come to Copenhagen, Denmark, to play a two-game exhibition match against 14-year old Danish IM Jonas Suhl Bjerre and a simul against 24 opponents. Carlsen won the match 2-0 and the simul 24-0 but between simul and match he still found time for an interview in which he talked about his development, how he got better, strategy, planning, and the way he thinks. | Photo: Screenshot from the interview | Energi Danmark

Tactical puzzles for your web site

6/19/2019 – With the relaunch of our training site tactics.chessbase.com, it was time to renew the embeddable tactics board which you can put into your own web site. Improve your Google rankings by keeping users longer on your page - give them a chance to solve tactics! All you need is to add one line of html-code.
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The Weekly Show: Teplice Open

6/18/2019 – On the show Lawrence had a look at the Women's Candidates tournament in general and the performance of Goryachkina in particular. Free for a limited time, or forever on-demand with a ChessBase Basic Account. You can register a free 90-day account to watch.

A strong but helpless knight

6/18/2019 – The duel bishop vs knight is often more complicated than it seems at first. "Strong" knights are often not as strong as they seem and "bad" bishops can become really bad - for the unsuspecting opponent. How should Black continue in the diagram position?

Endgame training with the ChessBase Magazine

6/18/2019 – Endgames can be tricky - which offers good chances to save or gain a point if you know what you are doing. ChessBase and the ChessBase Magazine help you to know what you should do and what you can do in the endgame. Here's a short tutorial. | Picture: ChessBase
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Simon Says — The London System

6/18/2019 – Grandmaster Simon Williams shows the latest trends in the London System in his Simon says show. Watch it now from the archive.

Women's Candidates: The Muzychuk sisters end on a high note

6/18/2019 – The 2019 Women's Candidates Tournament in Kazan concluded with two decisive results in round fourteen — Mariya Muzychuk inflicted a first loss on Aleksandra Goryachkina, while Tan Zhogyi defeated Valentina Gunina to finish with a 7 out of 14 score. As expected, Anna Muzychuk secured second place by splitting the point with Alexandra Kosteniuk. Third place was shared between Kateryna Lagno and Tan Zhongyi. | Photo: Eteri Kublashvili

Le Quang Liem wins Asian Continental Championship

6/17/2019 – With 7.0/9 Vietnamese Grandmaster Le Quang Liem was sole winner of the Asian Continental Championships in Xingtai, China, five players qualified for the World Cup 2019, Dinara Saduakossava won the women's event with 7½/9, Nihal Sarin finished first in the blitz tournament, and a number of interesting games were played. | Photos: Chinese Chess Federation

Women's Candidates 2019, Round 14: Live

6/17/2019 – The Women's Candidates is taking place in Kazan, Russia from May 31 to June 17. In addition to the EUR €200,000 prize fund, the largest in history for a tournament of this kind, the winner earns the right to challenge World Champion Ju Wenjun in match play. And the winner is Aleksandra Goryachkina! With one round to go she leads with 9½/13 and is 2 points ahead of her closest rival, Anna Muzychuk. The 14th and last round starts at 3:00 pm local time (12 Noon UTC / 14:00 CEST). Follow the games live, with video commentary by GM Evgeny Miroshnichenko. | Picture: FIDE Chess

Artemiev wins Karpov Poikowsky Tournament

6/17/2019 – So far, 2019 has been a good year for Vladislav Artemiev: in February 2019 the Russian Grandmaster had a rating of 2709 but after winning the Gibraltar Masters in January and the European Individual Championship in March he now has a rating of 2761 and is number 10 on the FIDE World Ranking List. At the strong Karpov Tournament in Poikovsky Artemiev was the number one seed but he needed a strong finish to win the tournament on tie-break. | Photos: Vasily Papin

Women's Candidates: Still fighting

6/17/2019 – The penultimate round of the 2019 Women's Candidates Tournament was played on Sunday in Kazan. Aleksandra Goryachkina had already secured first place on Friday, but the rest of the players showed they are still in the mood to fight for the remaining prizes. Anna Muzychuk defeated Valentina Gunina and practically secured second place, while Aleksandra Kosteniuk got a third win with White in the tournament, over Mariya Muzychuk. | Photo: Eteri Kublashvili

Racing to victory

6/16/2019 – In the 100th edition of his Agony column, grandmaster JON SPEELMAN takes a look at three games from Ph.D. in Computer Science and race car driver Guy Argo, a player who "is happiest at the chess board when hacking". | Send in your own games! Jon can always use more material from readers. If your games are selected for the Agony column, not only will you get free detailed commentary of your games by one of chess’s great authors and instructors, and former world no. 4 player, but you also win a free three-month ChessBase Premium Account!