Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival: winners stumble

1/25/2013 – Early rounds of big opens rarely produce major surprises, as the top half of the draw tends to murder the bottom half in cold blood. But in this year’s Gibraltar Masters a number of top players were served reminders on how careful you must be against weaker opposition. Ask Vassily Ivanchuk, Gata Kamsky or Nigel Short. After three rounds 15 players have perfect scores. John Saunders reports.

Duma deputies: Karpov should be investigated

1/25/2013 – Occasionally some very surprising news lands on our table. The Moscow Times is reporting that members of the Russian Parliament have accused former world chess champion Anatoly Karpov of being a foreign agent, lobbying on behalf of a tobacco company. The attack is seen as part of a smouldering conflict between lobbyists, as anti-smoking legislation is pending in the State Duma. MT report.

Wijk on the free day: Group C tournament

1/25/2013 – In our reports on Tata Steel we sadly neglected the groups B and C, usually only giving the results, games and standings. We caught up yesterday by presenting you with portraits of the B Section players, and today, with the help of photographer Frans Peeters, we introduce you the to C-Group players and young talents. And show you a few interesting tactical moments from their games.

Wijk aan B

1/25/2013 – The weakness of the dark squares around the black king catches the eye, but there still is the diagonal a6-f1 ...
The sequence 28.Rxd3 cxd3 29.Qh6 lead to victory for ...

A) White
B) Black

ChessBase Magazine, larger diagram and solution.

Tata R11: Leko, Karjakin, Aronian, Giri win

1/25/2013 – Four decisive games, just three draws – quite typical of this hard-fought event. Levon Aronian's win over Hikaru Nakamura pushed the Armenian into second place. The Chinese GM Wang Hao held Magnus Carlsen to a 31-move draw, while the 18-year-old Chinese GM Hou Yifan survived all winning attempts by World Champion Vishy Anand in a knight and pawn ending. Round eleven report.

Wijk on the free day: visit to Tata, B Group players

1/24/2013 – In our reports on the Tata Steel Tournament we have sadly neglected the groups B and C, usually giving only the results, games and standings. You have seen dozens of pictures of Magnus, Vishy, Levon and Yifan, but practically none of the 28 stars and talents in the lower sections. With the help of the photographer Frans Peeters we make it up to you – and to them – with a portrait of each.

Tata R10: Five decisive game, Carlsen leads by 1½ points

1/23/2013 – This round saw a wide variety of interesting games, with sharp unsound sacrifices and deep positional play. Hou Yifan beat Harikrishna, 100 points her senior, with black, Levon Aronian outplayed Wang Hao. Magnus Carlsen stretched his lead even further over his rivals by beating Erwin L'Ami. It won’t be long before the media start screaming the number ‘2900’! Full report with postgame analysis.

Carlsen's Counterattack, Sokolov's Sorrow, Hou's Hammerblow

1/23/2013 – These are the themes of the latest endgame training session, provided by our ChessBase Magazine columnist GM Karsten Müller, who has been following the games at Tata Steel in Wijk aan Zee very attentively. He has picked Carlsen and Sokolov against Nakamura, and Hou Yifan vs Anish Giri, to explain some valuable techniques that you can use in practical tournament play. Learn and enjoy.

How to become a tactics monster!

1/22/2013 – Tactics are the heart of chess. In his DVD series Valeri Lilov uses spectacular masterpieces to teach you pattern recognition, the assessment of positions, calculation techniques, combinational themes and ideas, over-extended pawns, X-ray, piece overloading, and much more. Once you learn how to sense critical moments, combinations will suddenly appear on the board. It's that easy!

Tata R09: Carlsen beats Hou, takes full point lead

1/22/2013 – The top seed Magnus Carlsen booked yet another win – his fifth in this tournament – this time with black against the bottom seed, Chinese GM Hou Yifan, who now has five losses and one win. Magnus is a full point ahead of the World Champion Vishy Anand, who drew his game against Peter Leko. Loek van Wely beat Ivan Sokolov with black. Full report with video interviews and GM analysis.

Kavalek in Huffington: Amazing chess brilliancy of Vishy Anand

1/22/2013 – Anand's recent victory over Levon Aronian reminds HuffPo chess columnist GM Lubomir Kavalek that the ghosts of the glorious chess past are still alive. After the game, the Indian grandmaster said that it looked incredibly close to the classic duel between Gersz Rotlewi and Akiba Rubinstein, a marvelous tactical masterpiece played more than a century ago. Kavalek looks at both games.

Edward Winter's Chess Explorations (95)

1/21/2013 – Patriotism, nationalism, jingoism and racism in the chess world have generated many literary horrors, some of which might be comical if they were not so alarming. The Editor of Chess Notes shows a range of little-known cases where the public record has been mutilated through, in particular, the expurgation of masters’ names for political reasons. A look back to some dark days.

Fabulous fighting chess at the Australian Open

1/21/2013 – The 2nd of January of each year is when the Australian Chess Open begins – in alternate years it’s the closed championship. This year the title was won by the ninth seed FM Bobby Cheng and is starting to be known as the Cheng Express. But it was an amazing last-round win by WGM Sukandar Irine Kharisma over the top seed GM Igor Khenkin that caught our eye.

Computer Chess – the movie

1/21/2013 – In 1980 there was a famous computer chess world championship in Linz, Austria. Thirty years later the American film director Andrew Bujalski has made a film on the subject and captured the atmosphere of the pioneering days of AI with eerily realistic shots. "This film is intelligent to its core, testing its limitations with brave camera work and meta-narrative," writes one reviewer. Take a look.

Tata R08: Carlsen beats Karjakin, forges ahead

1/20/2013 – In a marathon 92-move game against Sergey Karjakin, Magnus Carlsen (as so often) managed to "squeeze blood out of a stone", as a GM colleague put it, and win an essentially drawn position. This put the Norwegian number one in the world back in the sole lead in Tata Steel. Caruana and Aronian also scored, against L'Ami and Hou Yifan respectively. Full report with videos and GM commentary.

Kasparov: How I Became World Champion Vol.1 (1973-1985)

1/19/2013 – Garry Kasparov has been by far the most productive world champion in history, and it does not hurt that he is also regarded by many as the greatest. After covering the careers of other world champions, he turns his analytic eye on himself, publishing the first volume of an autobiographical trilogy in print and now as a ChessBase DVD. Here is a comparative review of the book and DVD.

Tata R07: Anand wins again, leads with Carlsen

1/19/2013 – Recently Vishy Anand announced that 2013 would be a come-back year, and in his first tournament of the year he is fulfilling his promise. With a third victory in this tournament the reigning World Champion climbed to the top of the score table, after Magnus Carlsen and Sergey Karjakin drew their games. Nakamura beat Wang Hao with black and is now in third place. Full round seven report.

Tata Steel Tournament: Impressions from Wijk aan Zee

1/18/2013 – Our Spanish language news editor Nadja Wittmann, who lives in Den Haag, Holland, took the train to Wijk aan Zee – in spite of ten inches of snow. Alina L'Ami is in Wijk for the entire event, assisting her husband Erwin. Both have sent us pictorial impressions. In addition we bring you some tactical highlights from the B and C section, while Andrew Martin attempts to explain why Carlsen wins.

Tata R06: Carlsen in the lead with 2923 performance

1/18/2013 – A lot of terrific games today: Magnus Carlsen crushed Ivan Sokolov to put half a point between himself and his pursuers – and five more points on his Elo rating; Levon Aronian wrung a point out of Peter Leko in 59 moves; Loek van Wely did likewise against Wang Hao in 41; the Chinese GM Hou Yifan used a Dragon to defeat Anish Giri in 85 moves. Full report with pictures and videos.

CBM training from Wijk: Karjakin's cars, a deadly 'zwischenschach'

1/17/2013 – The latter is a German expression for in-between-check, also used by chess players in English. In the first round game Harikrishna vs Giri at the Tata Steel tournament in Wijk aan Zee game following rook ending the motif plays a major role. Our ChessBase Magazine columnist GM Karsten Müller, uses this and a round 3 game between Sergey Karjakin and Wang Hao for today's endgame lesson.

Cheating scandal – Borislav Ivanov speaks out

1/17/2013 – Recently a 25-year-old untitled Bulgarian player scored 6.0/9 points in a strong GM tournament, with a 2697 performance. His opponents complained, he was searched, and no electronic equipment was found. Still, the case put chess on the front pages of the mainstream media, and led to intense discussions on the Internet. Now Ivanov has given the Russian news portal WhyChess an exclusive interview.

Tata R05: five decisive games, trio still lead

1/17/2013 – The trio – Carlsen, Anand and Karjakin, all drew their games and stayed on top of the cross table. The decisive games came from Harikrishna, Aronian, Leko, Nakamura and Wang Hao, who defeated van Wely, Sokolov, Caruana (!), Hou Yifan and L'Ami respectively. Especially impressive was Harikrishna-Van Wely. Here are games, statements by the players and analysis in our round five report.

The King and I – playing against a World Champion

1/17/2013 – Have you ever done that yourself? What is it like to face a chess opponent who is unfathomably stronger than you are. Jaideep Unudurti, a freelance journalist, challenged reigning World Champion Viswanathan Anand to a two-game blitz match, and describes the experience in vivid detail for the Economic Times in India. Here's his wonderful two-part article.

106 years ago ...

1/16/2013 – At the sight of Black's bishop pair firing at the white king position in the splendid game Aronian-Anand in Wijk aan Zee yesterday many kibitzers kept quoting the classic Rotlewi-Rubinstein, so here is a little reminiscence. A move of which piece quickly led to victory for the second player?
A) Rc8
B) Rd8
C) Ng4
ChessBase Magazine, larger diagram and solution.