12/29/2010 – The President of Turkish Chess Federation, Ali Nihat Yazici, has just published an open letter, announcing that the Turkish Chess Federation will no longer be organizing the 2011 European Individual Women Chess Championship in Gaziantep (which was scheduled for March 20 to 31). A great pity, since for the first time the prize fund would have matched that of the men. Open letter.

12/28/2010 – The Editor of Chess Notes has contributed over 80 articles to ChessBase, firstly Unsolved Chess Mysteries and then Chess Explorations. A handy A to Z has now been prepared, for ease of reference and as a reminder of the plethora of games, positions, exposés, quips, enigmas, photographs, quotes, compositions and quizzes presented in the two series.

12/28/2010 – Every year in the week before Christmas the ChessBase staff and business partners gather together for a company dinner. This year there was a very special event – which will be shown to you in part two of this report. In part one we present our new office quarters and many of the people who run the company. Pictorial report by Nadja Wittmann.

12/28/2010 – The European Rapid championship took place in Warsaw, Poland, with a field of over 700 players, allowing the casual club player to meet some of the world elite, such as Ivanchuk, Shirov, and Judit Polgar heads-on in competition. Zoltan Almasi prevailed after a 6-way tie was decided in a blitz playoff. The European Blitz Championship saw Vachier-Lagrave take the laurels. Report and miniatures.

12/27/2010 – All the deepest plans or endgame technique are useless if you fall victim to a shot that leaves you in a lost position or you miss the window of opportunity to finish the game, a chance that may only appear once. The positions here are all from recent master and grandmaster practice, representing shots both played and missed. Try your hand at these Master Moves.

12/27/2010 – Even a simple looking pawn ending can turn out to be a hard nut to crack, and sometimes a single, tiny tempo is the margin between a win and a draw. In this example from the European Rapid Chess Championship Black (to move) is in possession of a trump card - the distant passed pawn. The only question is whether  to play it straight away with 40...b3 or whether it is cleverer to hold back with it. Over the board, Black was obliged to take a quick decision. Fortunately for you, you can spend a bit more time on the analysis. As always, you will find the analysis of our endgame expert Dr. Karsten Müller in ChessBase Magazine Online.

12/20/2010 – The bullfighter is revealed as Larry Christiansen. In giving the answers to the picture quiz the Editor of Chess Notes adds further illustrations on the theme of chessplayers and animals, including several shots of Alekhine’s Siamese cats and, alarmingly, a kibitzing circus lion. The quiz prizes are DVDs signed by masters at the London Chess Classic, and the three winners are now announced.

12/20/2010 – Works that teach tactics, whether books or DVDs, tend always to teach using the same tried and true method: a basic exposition followed by oodles of exercises to solve. However, for many this alone has not led to that next leap so desired. Here we are taught not only how to spot them but how to think them and prepare the groundwork to ambush the opponent. Here is Albert Silver's review.

12/19/2010 – Lubomir Kavalek wrote in the Huffington Post that in the annals of chess history the final result of the 2010 Chess Classic would show Magnus Carlsen as the co-winner, together with Anand and McShane. But according to the official "Bilbao" scoring system Magnus was two points ahead and sole winner. This led to vigorous discussion in the chess forums and blogs, and we too received a lot of feedback.

12/19/2010 – It contains 4.8 million carefully edited games, 65,000 of which have been annotated by top players. For openings classification it has 100,000 positions, it can identify 257,000 players and has 32,000 pictures of the best-known of them. AND: it updates itself automatically for a full year, keeping it permanently up-to-date through the whole of 2011. An essential tool for the ambitious player.

12/18/2010 – On the final day of the Chess Classic a snowstorm hit Scotland – and hurricane Garry Kasparov descended on London. Both were similarly titanic events, the latter involving CNN taking over part of the venue. It was interesting to see a network news program made – and to talk to the former World Champion, who had an interesting comment on the scoring system in London. Pictorial and video.

12/18/2010 – It was a titanic semifinal with both top-rated Hou and Humpy in one match, and the surprise Zhao and Ruan in the other. Yifan beat Koneru who played a Berlin for the first time, and ended up in a rotten endgame. Their second game was a draw. Zhao and Ruan went into a tiebreak, and for the fifth straight time, Ruan prevailed and is now a finalist despite losing Elo. Report, pics, games.