Greek gift declined

2/8/2019 – The diagram position saw the continuation 18...Nxc3 19.Qh5 whereupon White threatens discovered check and mate. Now, what Black player would be so foolhardy to allow such a seemingly deadly constellation... You!?

KCF promotes USA scholastic events

2/8/2019 – The 53rd Annual Greater New York Scholastic Team and Individual Chess Championships and a similar event in Chicago were held recently, and the Greater Mid-Atlantic Scholastic Championships is coming up in a just over a week. All are in cooperation with the Kasparov Chess Foundation. | Pictured: (Seated) Michael Khodarkovsky and Garry Kasparov (standing) scholastic coach Michael Ellenbogen and New York scholastic players | Photo: Kasparov Chess Foundation

Fast and Furious: Sharp and fun to play

2/7/2019 – Today's topic: The Steinitz Variation of the French Defence. Every two weeks on Thursday's at 18:00 UTC (19:00 CET, 1 pm EST), IM Robert Ris shows sharp and double edged opening lines. If you fancy sacrificing or playing gambits, this show is a must see. Not only will you profit from specific opening ideas but you'll learn a lot of interesting general opening concepts too. 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.

Cairns Cup starts with four wins

2/7/2019 – Over the past decade, the Saint Louis Chess Club has expanded its roster of events from US-centric tournaments for top players, to the international elite, junior tournaments, norm tournament, and now, with the Cairns Cup, a new initiative to support women and girls. The instigators, Rex Sinquefield and Dr Jeanne Cairns Sinquefield welcomed ten of the world's best women chess players to the "chess capital of the USA". | Photo: Austin Fuller / Saint Louis Chess Club

Savchenko and Bodnaruk win Moscow Open

2/7/2019 – Boris Savchenko won the Moscow Open at the RSS University January 26th to February 3rd. In the separate open tournament for women, Anastasia Bodnaruk was the top scorer. In addition to FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich, his predecessor, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, visited the tournament and was evidently enchanted by the magic show at the opening ceremony. | Photos: Tournament page

NEW: Lawrence Trent: The Bombastic Bird's

2/7/2019 – An energetic and exciting repertoire after 1.f4. IM Lawrence Trent uncovers "a number of groundbreaking theoretical novelties and new ideas that will soon have scorners of this romantic system regretting they ever doubted its soundness." Even World Champion Magnus Carlsen has taken a shine to the opening, joining a whole host of top grandmasters.

Problem chess with Pal Benko

2/7/2019 – Our Christmas Day problem article really made the rounds. First eminent mathematician and problemist Noam Elkies sent rapid feedback, and then one of truly great problem composers (and GM, and World Championship candidate) sent us his comments. It is none other then Pal Benko who helped convert Frederic Friedel's amateur composition into an "Excelsior", and tried himself to construct a full Excelsior (where the pawn starts with a single step). It's a lesson in problem composition.

Gibraltar: Loving life on the Rock

2/6/2019 – One more look back at the Gibraltar Chess Festival with one of the players, GM JAN WERLE, who takes a tour of the highlights from this year's tournament, including a selection of games from the winners — Vladislav Artemiev, Karthikeyan Murali and Tan Zhongyi — plus the best game prize-winner: Gawain Jones vs Alejandro Ramirez. You'll also find video from GM Simon Williams and IM Lawrence Trent and interviews with Vassily Ivanchuk, Levon Aronian and D. Gukesh — one of the young stars of the festival. | Photo: Niki Riga

Game of the Week: Artemiev vs Navara

2/6/2019 – 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: Artemiev vs Navara from the Gibraltar Chess Festival. 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.

All ChessBase 15 tutorials at a glance

2/6/2019 – Vishy Anand was delighted: "ChessBase 15 – awesome!". In recent weeks we have presented the new features and tools of ChessBase 15 in a number of tutorials: the replay training that helps you to improve, the fast reference search that makes opening study easy, the new search mask or the raytracing technique, and other features. Here are all these tutorials at one glance. Read them and see what Vishy Anand means!
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1st Prague International Chess Festival 2019

2/5/2019 – A new tournament is launching in Prague next month from March 5th to 16th by the organisers behind the Czech Novy Bor Chess Club. Similar to the Tata Steel Chess model, the 1st Prague International Chess Festival 2019 will feature a Masters tournament, and a Challengers tournament, plus multiple open events for players of various rating classes. The full roster of players in the Masters was announced today.

The Weekly Show: Gibraltar

2/5/2019 – 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 looks at games from the Gibraltar Chess Festival. Free to watch on-demand for a limited time with a ChessBase Basic Account. You can register a free 90-day account to watch.

Carlsen: "You cannot second-guess your intuition"

2/5/2019 – Magnus Carlsen has published a guest post for the website of American business magazine Forbes about his own chess career and the positive effects of learning chess on children and adolescents in general. Chess helps to master other tasks of life, Carlsen is convinced. | Photo: Alina l'Ami

The ram

2/5/2019 – Fortresses are sometimes very solid and difficult to break.

The Adventure of Chess Programming (Part 1)

2/5/2019 – The recent World Championship in London was closely followed by Europe's largest (and most influential) news portal. Der Spiegel had live coverage and game commentary. They also posted a three-part series on the history of chess programming, authored by Frederic Friedel, emeritus editor of this news page. In the early 1980s Frederic was instrumental to bringing computer chess to the attention of the German public, and in 1987 he co-founded ChessBase. Here is part one of his series.

Simon Says — Gibraltar highlights

2/4/2019 – In this Simon Says we take a look at highlights of the recently finished Gibraltar tournament. Simon is live this week at 22:00 CET (21:00 UTC). If you miss the show, you can watch it in the archive with a ChessBase Account. Don't have an account? You can register a free 90-day account to watch!

GM Darryl Johansen Turns 60

2/4/2019 – Darryl Johansen, an Australian Grandmaster who broke barriers for Australian players but retired from the international circuit at 30, celebrates his 60th birthday today, February 4th. He became the second Australian (after Ian Rogers) to earn the Grandmaster title. We take a brief look at his career, including two games annotated by GM Rogers from MegaBase 2019.

Anand on Wijk: "It's a bit like coming home"

2/4/2019 – The Tata Steel has been one of Vishy Anand's very favourite tournaments. He has played there nineteen times thus far and has bagged five tournament titles. This year, he completed 30 years since his maiden appearance there, scoring a solid 7½/13. After his final round game, ADITYA PAI caught up with the Indian ace for a brief interview in the press room at Wijk aan Zee to talk about his journey. | Photo: Alina l'Ami

Women take centre stage at Cairns Cup

2/4/2019 – Ten of the world's top female chess players will soon compete in a new event at the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis: The "Cairns Cup" from February 6th to 16th. The tournament is similar to the Sinquefield Cup, but for women. The top six, including World Champion Ju Wenjun, are not attending, however. All the info, and how to watch...

Resigning a won game

2/3/2019 – True Agony! Columnist GM JON SPEELMAN briefly rifs on AlphaZero and Giri-Shankland before turning his attention to this week's submission from Zimbabwean Class A player, Tapiwa Allister Gora. 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! | Photo: Tapiwa Gora (right) vs Simon Bokamoso at a recent tournament

The strongest chess boom in Iran, ever

2/3/2019 – Prior to 2018, there were few world-class chess tournaments dominated by Iranian players — just the odd youth championship. Now Iran is climbing the list of the top countries in the world — currently at number 25, with the average rating of the top ten players rising by the month. The country's 15 GMs, 23 IMs, and 125 total titled players obscures the fact that among the top ten, only two were born before 1995. SHAHROKH MOJTABAEI takes a look at the recent history. | Pictured: Coach Ivan Sokolov with Masoud Mosadeghpour, Alireza Firouzja, Parham Maghsoodloo, Pouya Idani, Seyed Mohammad Amin Tabatabaei | Photo: Iranian Chess Federation

Anne Haast wins ARVES study solving competition

2/2/2019 – After Magnus Carlsen and Vladislav Kovalev won the Tata Steel Masters and Challengers tournaments, the ARVES Chess Endgame Studies Association organised a study solving competition in Wijk aan Zee for the tenth time. Former woman Dutch champion Anne Haast — the youngest participant — was the surprising winner. YOCHANAN AFEK composed three out of the nine studies that were used in the event and sent a report from the North Sea coastal city. | Photos: Harry Gielen

Team Tal: Epilogue

2/2/2019 – The story of Tal can never be finished and his fans always want more. Only this series has to end for now. In the concluding installment here our columnist offers his final observations on Team Tal, the last testament of Valentin Kirillov. | Photo: chesspro.ru

February 2019 FIDE Ratings

2/1/2019 – February ratings are out with changes resulting mainly from the Tata Steel Chess tournament. Gibraltar ended just past the cutoff time, so this month's update is, to a certain extent, already out of date. Carlsen is, of course, still first on all three lists. He is at his highest point since November 2016. Anish Giri, at 2797, is just one point shy of his career best, and Jan Nepomniachtchi has set a new career peak for himself at 2771. | Photo: Alina l'Ami