Gibraltar: Another January tradition

1/22/2019 – The Gibraltar International Chess Festival 2019 kicks off Tuesday at Hotel Caleta on the East coast of Gibraltar. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave leads the starting list along side Top 20 players Levon Aronian, Wesley So, Yu Yangyi and Hikaru Nakamura. Women's World Champion Ju Wenjun is the top female player in the field. | Photo: John Saunders

The most recent opening trends

1/21/2019 – The World Rapid and Blitz Championships in St. Petersburg at the end of 2018 offered interesting insights into the openings. After all, some of the strongest players took part and many games were played over the five-day event. THORSTEN CMIEL had a closer look to see what opening trends may be in store for 2019.

Turbo charge your endgame knowledge

1/21/2019 – Perfect endgame analysis and a much better engine performance: the new Endgame Turbo 5 is more than perfect! It comes on an USB 3.0 flash drive (128 GB), covers the most important six piece endgames, all endgames with less than six pieces, and helps top engines such as Fritz, Komodo Chess and Houdini to play these endgames perfectly. Here's a short tutorial on how to install the Endgame Turbo and set up the tablebases. | Drawing: ChessBase

Tata Steel Chess: The usual suspects

1/21/2019 – Magnus Carlsen and Vishy Anand defeated Richard Rapport and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov respectively to share the lead on 5½/8 at the Tata Steel Masters. Jan-Krzysztof Duda and Vladimir Fedoseev also won in Sunday's eighth round and received a boost of confidence before the second rest day. In the Challengers, Maksim Chigaev got his third straight win and is the sole leader. GM ADHIBAN BASKARAN sent expert analysis. | Photos: Alina l'Ami / Official site

A dubious Greek gift

1/20/2019 – Fittingly, since the Netherlands is the focus of the chess world this week, a Dutchman is featured in this week's Agony/Ecstasy column. Both games feature bishop sacrifices to attack the castled king. Feel free to 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! | Image: ChessBase 15 Raytracing

Tata Steel Chess: Yermolinsky on Round 7

1/20/2019 – The youngsters in both the Masters and Challengers scored wins in Round 7, but GM ALEX YERMOLINSKY also focuses on the first victory of Wijk aan Zee veteran Teimour Radjabov. "The traditional Tata Steel tournaments are in full swing, and I'm grateful for an opportunity to share my impressions." | Pictured: Andrey Esipenko and Jorden van Foreest | Photos: Alina l'Ami

Tata Steel Chess: Anand wins derby and joins the lead

1/20/2019 – On a day filled with remarkably fighting chess in Wijk aan Zee, Vishy Anand defeated his old rival and friend Vladimir Kramnik to join the leading pack on 4½/7 — the Indian now shares first place with Carlsen, Giri, Nepomniachtchi and Ding Liren. Meanwhile, Teimour Radjabov and Sam Shankland grabbed their first wins this year. In the Challengers, Maksim Chigaev won and caught up with Vladislav Kovalev on 5/7. | Photos: Alina l'Ami / Official site

Tata Steel Chess: Double-Dutch Day

1/19/2019 – Anish Giri continued his strong run in the Tata Steel Chess Masters: he won with black against Jan-Krzysztof and extends his black winning streak to three games. The other Dutch player in the group scored as well — Jorden van Foreest even turned in a minor brilliancy. GM DANIEL FERNANDEZ looks at that plus all the games. Magnus Carlsen clinched his second successive win, beating Shakhriyar Mamedyarov in a long endgame — Carlsen, Nepomniachtchi, Giri and Ding Liren now share the lead with 4 out of 6 points each. | Photo: Alina l'Ami, Tata Steel Chess

Magnus Carlsen: Do "yunomi"?

1/18/2019 – "Yunomi" is the name for a traditional Japanese pottery teacup, but now also a new magazine about photography, art and design. The chess connection is not only that GM Yannick Pelletier helps coordinate the new bi-annual publication helmed by his wife Marie Boyard, but the inaugural issue features a story and photo spread on World Champion Magnus Carlsen.

The Power Play Show - Ljubojevic-Karpov 1975

1/18/2019 – Friday at 18:00 CET (17:00 UT) Daniel King will go on air 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...

Marching through

1/18/2019 – In the diagram position White has just played 33.Ne3-f1, overprotecting the square h2 and posing the threat 34.Re7. Do you have Black's nerves of steel to find his striking continuation?

Vidit: "There is absolutely no time to get nervous"

1/18/2019 – GM Vidit Gujrathi has every reason to be happy about his performance thus far at the Tata Steel Masters. Scoring 3/5, he is not only just a half point behind the leaders but has also remained undefeated, saving crucial games against Jan-Krzysztof Duda and even the mighty Magnus Carlsen. On the first rest day of the event, ADITYA PAI caught up with Vidit to talk about how he prepared for his maiden appearance at the Tata Steel Masters, his saves against Carlsen and Duda, his love for the city of Prague and a lot more. | Photo: Alina L'ami

The Weekly Show: The next youngest GM

1/17/2019 – IM Lawrence Trent brings you the latest trends, games and combinations from elite chess tournaments ever Tuesdays at 17:00 UTC (18:00 CET, Noon EST). This week he deals with the games of D. Gukesh, who recently became the second youngest ever to qualify for the GM title. Free to watch on-demand for a limited time with a ChessBase Basic Account. You can register a free 90-day account to watch.

Nimzowitsch: Warm words and a system

1/17/2019 – Aron Nimzowitsch was an original chess thinker but he liked to share his ideas in a peculiar way. His most important book, "My System", is at times brilliant but CONRAD SCHORMANN thinks the book sometimes simply contains too many warm words. Still, there's much to learn: "We still use some of the terms he used, coined and made popular — but in a different way". As for his eccentricities, you be the judge.

Tata Steel Chess: Carlsen scores his first win

1/17/2019 – World Champion Magnus Carlsen broke his long streak of consecutive draws in classical chess by beating the weakest player GM Jorden van Foreest in the "Chess on Tour" round in Alkmaar today. With the win, he climbs into a tie for third, a half point behind Ding Liren and Ian Nepomniachtchi. Grandmasterly analysis by GM DAVID HOWELL! Korobov and Kovalev lead in the Challengers group. | Pictured: The players outside the venue in Alkmaar, one of the Netherland's well-known cheese towns. | Photo: Alina l'Ami

1975: Fischer beats Karpov 10-4?

1/16/2019 – What if Bobby Fischer had played Anatoly Karpov in 1975? It's a persistent question and thought experiment that fascinates our readers, but also contributor STEPHAN OLIVER PLATZ, who shares a computer simulated 1975 World Chess Championship match, to add his own fuel to the fires of speculation.

Game of the Week: The Challengers

1/16/2019 – Ideas and strategies in Grandmaster games can be quite instructive. IM Merijn van Delft presents games like these every Wednesday at 19:00 UTC (20:00 CET, 2 pm EST). On this week's show: The Tata Steel Chess Challengers. 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.

Toronto is king of the CUCC

1/16/2019 – We recently covered the larger Pan-American Intercollegiate Championship, now our Canadian contributor QIYU ZHOU reports on the Canadian University Chess Championship (CUCC) which was won by the University of Toronto last weekend. | Pictured: Toronto A team: Joseph Bellissimo, Qiyu Zhou, Mark Plotkin, James Fu (not pictured: Zehn Nasir) | Photo: Adrian Santhakumar

Tata Steel Chess: Magnus keeps on drawing

1/15/2019 – The drawing streak of Magnus Carlsen continues as the World Champion tied his fourth round match-up against Vladimir Kramnik at the Tata Steel Masters. Meanwhile, Anish Giri and Vidit won their games to join Vishy Anand and Ding Liren in the chasing pack half a point behind sole leader Ian Nepomniachtchi. In the Challengers, Vladislav Kovalev beat Lucas van Foreest to seize his spot in the leading group. The action of the day was analysed by GM DANNY KING. | Photos: Alina l'Ami / Official site

Gukesh becomes second youngest GM in history

1/15/2019 – 12 years, 7 months and 17 days — that's the age of the new second youngest ever, GM-elect D. Gukesh. He's also the 60th grandmaster from India! How did this youngster achieve it? On the surface, it looks like an extremely smooth journey where Gukesh achieved one milestone after another. "But when you delve deeper", writes SAGAR SHAH, "you see tremendous amount of sacrifices, grit, determination and much more from not just the youngster and his entire family". | Photo: David Llada

NIC: Sadler on books and AlphaZero

1/15/2019 – Courtesy our friends At New in Chess: GM MATTHEW SADLER on books looks at two of Simon Williams' recent video series. Plus, what would AlphaZero think about the World Championship match that was held at a stone’s throw from DeepMind’s headquarters in London? Sadler and NATASHA REGAN, authors of Game Changer: AlphaZero’s Groundbreaking Chess Strategies and the Promise of AI, provide a glimpse.

No-go squares

1/15/2019 – Pawn endings, more so than other endgames, lead to a decisive result. They require precise play and good theoretical knowledge.

Tata Steel Chess: Nepomniachtchi grabs the lead

1/14/2019 – Ian Nepomniachtchi is now the sole leader at the 81st edition of the Tata Steel Masters after knocking down Vladimir Kramnik's Berlin wall in the third round of the competition. Ding Liren beat Jorden van Foreest with the black pieces and now shares second place with Vishy Anand. In the Challengers, Andrey Esipenko and Parham Maghsoodloo won in round three to join the pack of co-leaders on 2/3. Expert analysis by DANIEL FERNANDEZ and DANNY KING. | Photos: Alina l'Ami / Official site

Inside an Italian prison — first FIDE-rated classical tournament

1/14/2019 – Two years ago we came across an interesting and heartwarming tale about a chess expert who accepted a very challenging job to teach the game of chess to prisoners in Italy. He shared at length about his experience at the maximum-security prison of Spoleto and how it changed his perspective about life. The best part of it was the testimonies of prisoners on how the game brought a change in their lives. In this follow-up article, MIRKO TRASCIATTI is back to share an update on the story. | Photo: Inmates playing chess from their prison cells at Attica Correctional Facility, NY, 1972 | Cornell Capa