12/18/2022 – By beating former co-leader Karthikeyan Murali, Kirill Alekseenko became the first sole leader at the main event of the Sunway Chess Festival in Sitges. After six rounds, the Russian grandmaster still has a perfect score. Standing in sole second place is Karen Grigoryan, who defeated Anton Demchenko on Saturday. Nine players stand a half point further back, including top seeds Yu Yangyi and Hans Niemann. | Photo: Biel Chess Festival

12/18/2022 – The 1972 World Championship match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spasski is regarded as one of the most critical moments in the history of chess, occurring 50 years ago. To present you with this year's Christmas calendar in the proper setting, Arne swiftly constructed a time machine, and went back 50 years. Of course, the 1972 World Cup is the main calendar focus this time! You have the opportunity to guess, count, and conduct research every day for a chance to win one of 90 ChessBase prizes. Your chances of winning one of the major prizes increases, the more questions you can correctly guess. | Photo: Original by World Chess Hall of Fame

12/17/2022 – The Dragon grandmaster is back with an interesting game for all you Sicilian lovers. Two U16 talents battled it out in the last European Youth Chess Championship 2022. But before this game is thoroughly presented by Chris Ward, first, we take a closer look at a recent game between Arjun Erigaisi and Fabiano Caruana. Nonetheless, in the second game, the Topalov Variation is on the board, and the British GM shows us some very interesting lines, plans, and ideas with this system. | Photo: John Upham

12/17/2022 – Clear activity advantages for White in the diagram position - please find White's best continuation!

12/17/2022 – The 1972 World Championship match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spasski is regarded as one of the most critical moments in the history of chess, occurring 50 years ago. To present you with this year's Christmas calendar in the proper setting, Arne swiftly constructed a time machine, and went back 50 years. Of course, the 1972 World Cup is the main calendar focus this time! You have the opportunity to guess, count, and conduct research every day for a chance to win one of 90 ChessBase prizes. Your chances of winning one of the major prizes increases, the more questions you can correctly guess. | Photo: Original by World Chess Hall of Fame

12/17/2022 – This week, Daniel King examines games from the Sitges Open, featuring some nice tactics. Then, in more detail, two games that feature the Rossolimo. For the unwary, this is a dangerous opening! | Power Play is on air most Fridays. Watch it on-demand with a ChessBase Premium account. All the usual puzzles, games and instruction will be on offer.

12/14/2022 – The recently released ChessBase 17 offers a wealth of new and interesting functions. In the last weeks IM Sagar Shah from ChessBase India took a closer look at the program to understand the features deeper. To share his insights he made a video that covers most of the new features of ChessBase 17 and explains how these features can be used. He concludes: "I think ChessBase 17 is amazing."

12/14/2022 – The result of the eagerly awaited rematch of the 2018 World Championship match between Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana in the quarterfinals of the chess.com Speedchess Championship was one-sided. Caruana didn't take his chances, Carlsen took them all and demonstrated world championship level chess in 5+1 blitz, in 3+1 blitz and in bullet. He even managed to satisfy his harshest critic. | Graphics: Chess.com

12/14/2022 – No fewer than 54 players have won both their first encounters at the main event of the Sunway Festival in Sitges. However, round 2 saw five 2600+ rated players draw against much lower-rated opponents. Russian rising star Andrey Esipenko was held to a draw by French FM Mathieu Phileas, who in fact could have won the game had he made the most of his chances in a queen and rook endgame. | Pictured: The first blitz tournament of the festival took place on Tuesday night

12/14/2022 – The 1972 World Championship match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spasski is regarded as one of the most critical moments in the history of chess, occurring 50 years ago. To present you with this year's Christmas calendar in the proper setting, Arne swiftly constructed a time machine, and went back 50 years. Of course, the 1972 World Cup is the main calendar focus this time! You have the opportunity to guess, count, and conduct research every day for a chance to win one of 90 ChessBase prizes. Your chances of winning one of the major prizes increases, the more questions you can correctly guess. | Photo: Original by World Chess Hall of Fame

12/14/2022 – In the Julius Baer Challenge Championship match between Pranav Venkatesh and Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa the favourite Praggnanandhaa clearly dominated. After winning the two best-of-three rapid matches 2,5-0,5 and 2-0 Pragg lost the first game of the first blitz match but then won the next two blitz games and with that the entire match.

12/14/2022 – The history of the U.S. Women's Chess Championships contains a wealth of information about chess in America and countless fascinating stories about champions from all walks of life. A groundbreaking work about the U.S. Women's Chess Championships and the 29 women who won the title between 1937 and 2020 has been published by McFarland. Johannes Fischer wanted to know more and interviewed Alexey Root, the author of the book.