1/30/2024 – Queen and knight can form an impressive attacking duo. How did White use the attacking power of knight and queen in the diagram position?

1/30/2024 – The 2024 Chessable Masters is the first of four Champions Chess Tour events and determines one of the players who’ll make it to the in-person CCT Finals. The event starts on January 31 at 11:00 ET/17:00 CET. Magnus Carlsen, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Vladimir Fedoseev already earned spots in the Chessable Masters Division I based on their performance in last year’s AI Cup.

1/29/2024 – Leon Luke Mendonca was the surprise winner of the Tata Steel Challenger tournament in Wijk aan Zee. He started with 3 out of 6 points, and was lost in the lower part of the table, until he recovered with 6.5 points out of his last 7 games, to reach first place! The Indian Grandmaster and ChessBase Host, Arne Kaehler, started a video series in 2023, on how a typical day in a life of a professional chess player looks like. The insights of young Leon (turning 18 in March) are tremendous, and you can learn a lot in this first video. | Photo: Lennart Ootes/Tata Steel Chess Tournament 2024

1/29/2024 – Hans-Joachim Hecht, a Grandmaster since 1973, was a member of the successful German national team in the 1960s and 1970s, became German team champion eight times with his clubs SG Solingen and Bayern Munich and won the European Cup once. Today he celebrates his 85th birthday. Congratulations to him! | Photos: German Chess Federation, Münchener Schachakademie

1/29/2024 – Wouldn’t it be great to convert all your chess pieces into better pieces on every move? Markus Reinhardt’s Variaschach is actually based on this principle. But, of course, it’s not really that simple. Reinhardt himself presents his variation and plays a blitz game against GM Elisabeth Paehtz.

1/29/2024 – What role do traps play in chess? And what is important for successful trapping? In the current ChessBase Magazine #217, Jan Markos deals with the topic of "traps" in his series "Practical Tips for the Tournament Player" and works out four rules that you should definitely observe in your own games. We invite you: this week you can download Jan Markos' article - consisting of a video and a small collection of exercises - as a free sample. Directly via your web browser in the new ChessBase Books format. This is because CBM #217 is the first issue to also include full mobile access. So you can read it directly via your web browser on your iPad, tablet or Mac. Have fun!

1/26/2024 – In his new Fast & Furious episode Robert Ris takes a close look at the Spanish encounter between Ian Nepomniachtchi and Ding Liren, who continued to discued topics they had discussed in their World Championship Match 2023. | Fast & Furious is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

1/26/2024 – From the 1960s to the 1980s, Klaus Darga and Hajo Hecht, together with Wolfgang Unzicker, Lothar Schmid, Robert Hübner and Helmut Pfleger, formed the backbone of the German national team. Hajo Hecht and Klaus Darga will soon be celebrating their 85th and 90th birthdays, respectively. Helmut Pfleger recalled their long-standing friendship in his latest column for "Die Zeit", one of the most influential and renowned weekly magazines in Germany. | Photo: Karin Darga

1/26/2024 – How you play chess reflects your actual personality. If you play chess with more timidity and reservation, you're likely a passive person who resorts to a diplomatic approach in the face of conflict. While a person who attacks like Mikhail Tal is likely to confront conflict head-on and rather impulsively. So, to what category do you belong?

1/25/2024 – Game 3 of the 1972 match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky has been analysed countless times. But there are still many open questions and new discoveries to be made. Karsten Müller invites you to help him solve the riddles emerging from this fascinating, historic encounter.

1/25/2024 – Gukesh D. and Nodirbek Abdusattorov scored full points on Wednesday to go into the second rest day of the Tata Steel Masters sharing the lead with 6½/10 points. Sharing third place at a half-point distance are Praggnanandhaa R. and Anish Giri, while Ian Nepomniachtchi is one of four players standing a half point further back — Nepo joined this group thanks to a victory over world champion Ding Liren. In the Challengers, Marc’Andria Maurizzi won again and now has a full-point lead over Leon Luke Mendonca. | Photo: Tata Steel Chess Tournament / Lennart Ootes

1/25/2024 – The FIDE Trainers’ Online Seminar will be held on February 2-4, 2024. The seminar is being organized by the Asian Chess Federation in cooperation with the FIDE Commission for Women in Chess under the supervision of the FIDE Trainers’ Commission. Artur Yusupov, Hou Yifan and Antoaneta Stefanova will be among the lecturers.