12/21/2018 – The Lidums Australian Young Masters tournament in Adelaide gives Australian talents an opportunity to gain experience against strong international players. This year the tournament took place from December 8 to December 14 but the international players proved to be too strong. Russian GM Vasily Papin won the GM tournament and GM Arvola Benjamin Notkevich won the IM tournament. | Photo Vasily Papin | Photo: Sabrina Koetsier

12/21/2018 – Each season the Saint Louis Chess Club organises two ten-player strong round robins that include players from all around the globe mixed with young American talents. This year's winter edition was won by Cuban Yuniesky Quesada and Armenian Zaven Andriasian. The mix of ambitious players and excellent playing conditions generated many interesting battles over the board. GM EUGENE PERELSHTEYN participated in the B group and sent us a report with highlights and analyses. | Photos: Austin Fuller / Saint Louis Chess Club

12/20/2018 – With top players such as Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura or Wesley So the national of the USA is one of the strongest in the world. But now it gets even stronger. In a press release the US Chess Federation announced that Cuban Grandmaster Leinier Dominguez will from now on play for the US. | Photo: Leinier Dominguez | Photo Lennart Ootes

12/20/2018 – To celebrate the festival we are offering you a €10 ChessBase voucher for the ChessBase online shop. It is valid for all product groups. One is of particular topical interest: the London System. We have started a new product series: Powerbase. It gives you high-quality edited games, many annotated — perfect for getting to know an opening system and the ideas behind it thoroughly. Take a look and get yourself the Christmas gift best suited to your needs. You have 48 hours to retrieve the voucher!

12/19/2018 – The Asian Continental Championship remained wide open until the very end. At the conclusion of the final round, all of the top three finishers — Wei Yi, Amin Tabatabaei and Le Quang Liem — were tied for first and it wasn't until the application of the tiebreaks that Wei Yi was declared the winner. In the women's group, too, Padmini Rout was caught in the lead after the final round by Gong Qianyun but clinched the title nonetheless as she had won the direct encounter against Gong in round 6. Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son and Surya Shekhar Ganguly took the fourth and the fifth spots respectively to book their berth into the 2019 FIDE World Cup. | Photo: Peter Long

12/19/2018 – Ideas and strategies in Grandmaster games can be quite instructive. IM Merijn van Delft presents games like these every Wednesday at 20:00 CEST (19:00 UT, 2 pm EDT). On this week's show: Pawn structures. The live show is free to watch, and available on-demand for ChessBase Premium account holders. To chat, please visit videos.chessbase.com/live or login via Playchess for Windows.

12/17/2018 – The final matches of the Grand Chess Tour and the British Knockout Championship continued in London's Olympia Conference Centre on Sunday. The second classical games of the GCT resulted in two more draws, which leave the scores tied before the decisive rapid and blitz rounds. In the British KO Championship, meanwhile, Gawain Jones took a six-point lead over Luke McShane in the match for first place. | Photos: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour

12/16/2018 – In this week's Agony/Ecstasy column, GM JON SPEELMAN analyses a pair of online games from American tournament veteran Ted Jewell, one an English Opening and the other a King's Indian Defence. 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!

12/16/2018 – Recovering from their early upsets, Wang Hao, Vidit Gujrathi and Le Quang Liem made their way back to the top of the leaderboard at the 17th Asian Continental Championship in Manila, Philippines. Surya Ganguly and M. Amin Tabatabei are tied for first with 5½ after seven rounds. Six grandmasters including Vidit Gujrathi, Wei Yi and Le Quang Liem are a half point behind at 5/7. With two rounds to go, it's still wide open.

12/16/2018 – The final match of the Grand Chess Tour kicked off on Saturday. Hikaru Nakamura held Maxime Vachier-Lagrave to a draw from the white side of a Grünfeld Defence, after the Frenchman won a pawn but could not convert it in the endgame. In the battle for third place, Levon Aronian achieved a slight edge against Fabiano Caruana but was not able to get the full point. The first classical round of the British Knockout Championship also ended with two draws. | Photos: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour

12/16/2018 – Fan favourite super-GM Vassily Ivanchuk lost to 12-year-old Sreeshwan Maralakshikari from India. The powerful youth are likely to remain one of the chief storylines in Sitges, a town just down the Mediterranean coast from Barcelona. In attendance are the top players in the world ages 11-14 — all from India — plus the European number one under-15 IM Vincent Keymer from Germany. | Pictured: The playing hall on the eve of battle | Photo: Sunway Sitges International Chess Festival

12/15/2018 – Usually, chess websites are better if the reader can play through games or use interactive diagrams or has the choice to follow tournaments live or practise some tactics, etc. ChessBase offers a number of attractive tools which you can embed on your website to let your readers enjoy chess even more. The tools are all free! And here's how to get them running yourself! | Drawing: ChessBase