US Juniors: The youngest on top

7/19/2023 – At the US Junior Championships in Saint Louis, some of the youngest players in the fields (open and girls’) are showing remarkable performances. Alice Lee (photo), aged 13, took the lead in the girls’ tournament, while Abhimnyu Mishra, aged 14, dethroned former leader Andrew Hong in the open. | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Saint Louis Chess Club
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Chess (the musical): 1990 versus 2023

7/19/2023 – I bought an airplane ticket for the same July 13th flight that my husband Doug took to St. Louis for the 2023 U.S. Senior Championship. But I didn’t join Doug on that flight. ‘Chess’ (the musical) was in St. Louis and my son William wanted to see it. | Photo: Municipal Theatre Association of St. Louis
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The Italian for insiders

7/19/2023 – The Italian Game has become popular again in top chess in recent years, not least because it often leads to interesting positions rich in content. In ChessBase Magazine #214 Sergey Grigoriants uses games by Nakamura, Carlsen, Kasimdzhanov and others to show a concept that promises Black "relatively easy play": with 10...Re8 Black prepares the exchange of the light-squared bishops on e6.
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ChessBase in Minutes! Learn how grandmasters use Chessbase to study endgames! (video)

7/19/2023 – In just five minutes, learn how grandmasters use ChessBase 17 to quickly get similar endgames so they can study deeper and learn from others. Whether an amateur or one of the world elite, these easy but powerful tools can help you raise your game and do wonders for your rating! Don't miss this lightning video lesson!

Biel: Navara the first sole leader

7/19/2023 – David Navara won his first classical game at the Biel Chess Festival to grab the early sole lead in the GM Triathlon. The Czech star defeated Bassem Amin, while Vincent Keymer, who entered the round as co-leader after the rapid, only managed a draw against Jules Moussard. The longest game of the day saw Arjun Erigaisi holding a draw with black against Yu Yangyi. | Photos: Official website
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Women’s World Championship: A tense draw, three games to go

7/18/2023 – In the ninth game of the Women’s World Chess Championships, Lei Tingjie and Ju Wenjun showed a remarkable level of understanding both in the middlegame emerging from a Sicilian Defence and in the ensuing rook ending. The game ended in a draw after 59 moves. | Photos: Stev Bonhage / FIDE
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Studies with Stephenson

7/18/2023 – There were three competitions in the British Chess Solving Championship. Chess problemist Brian Stephenson, who for twenty-five years directed the Championship, and has directed several World Chess Solving Championships, shows us three of the competition studies. It is your opportunity to join the competition and test your own solving skills. Or at least enjoy some very clever chess compositions.
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Beautiful breakthroughs

7/18/2023 – Pawn majorities can be used to organize a breakthrough. In the diagram position it is Black to move and win. What should he do?

Endgame Magic #245: Highlights from the SuperUnited event in Croatia

7/17/2023 – In this week's show, Karsten Müller looks at endgame highlights from the SuperUnited Rapid & Blitz tournament in Croatia, mostly taken from games by wunderkind Alireza Firouzja! | You can watch the Endgame Magic Show on-demand with a ChessBase Premium account.

Pragnanandhaa: Five wins and a miscalculation

7/17/2023 – Four games, four wins — that was Praggnanandhaa’s tally at the start of Geza Hetenyi Memorial in Budapest. Pragg thus became the eighth Indian to break the 2700-elamark. However, the Indian speed train was stopped in the fifth round when he lost to Amin Tabatabaei. The prodigy returned to his winning ways the very next round, as he defeated Peter Prohazka with black on Sunday. | Photo: Zoltan Fülöp
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The Winning Academy 20: Simple means safe

7/17/2023 – "KISS", which stands for "Keep it simple, stupid!", is a design principle first formulated by the US Navy in 1960, but which quickly caught on. KISS suggests that simplicity is preferable to complexity in most systems. Chess is no exception - Jan Markos knows more. | Photo: Jimee, Jackie, Tom & Asha on Flickr.
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Women’s World Championship: Ju levels the score

7/17/2023 – In the eighth game of the FIDE Women’s World Championship on Sunday, Ju Wenjun finally managed to score a win against challenger Lei Tingjie. A day earlier, the defending champion had failed to make the most of a big advantage in game 7. With four more games to go, the score is now tied. | Photo: Stev Bonhage / FIDE

Old and new

7/16/2023 – Simen Agdestein recently won the Norwegian Chess Championship for a ninth time in his career. The 56-year-old outscored the likes of Aryan Tari and Jon Ludvig Hammer, but did not have to beat national hero and former student Magnus Carlsen, who does not participate in his country’s championships. In his column this week, Jon Speelman analyses recent games by both the master and the student! | Photo: VG.no
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Understanding before Moving 134: Chess history in a nutshell (16)

7/16/2023 – Herman Grooten is an International Master, a renowned trainer and the author of several highly acclaimed books about chess training and chess strategy. In the 134th instalment of his ChessBase show "Understanding before Moving", Herman continues his series "Chess history in a nutshell" and looks at the legacy of Dr. Siegbert Tarrasch. | Photo: Pascal Simon

Arjun visits his mega-sponsor

7/16/2023 – What happens after a company sponsors a chess player? How does it find value in the sponsorship? This article puts down the story of Arjun Erigaisi and QuantBox. QuantBox is a High Frequency Trading company, which has made one of the biggest sponsorship deals in the history of Indian chess with Arjun. Recently Arjun met the members of QuantBox at their Bangalore office, and what happened is portrayed in the article below.
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Women’s World Championship: Ju fails to convert big advantage

7/16/2023 – The protagonists of the Women’s World Championship moved to Chongqing to play the second half of the all-Chinese match. Game 7 was played on Saturday. Challenger Lei Tingjie still has a 1-point lead over defending champion Ju Wenjun after the latter could not convert a clear advantage into a win while marshalling the black pieces. Lei had won game 5, the only decisive encounter of the match so far. | Photo: Stev Bonhage / FIDE
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Carlsen twice checkmates So, wins Aimchess Rapid

7/16/2023 – In the Grand Final of the Aimchess Rapid, Magnus Carlsen defeated Wesley So by a 3-1 score on Friday. The 15+3 rapid tournament was the fourth event of the Champions Chess Tour and was played online. In the overall tour standings, Carlsen now has a 95-point lead over his closest chaser, Fabiano Caruana. Denis Lazavik won Division II, while Yu Yangyi prevailed in Division III.
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CBM #214 Special: Boris Spassky

7/15/2023 – Spassky is considered one of the most gifted players ever. A fine attacker and equally strong in the middlegame and endgame, the term universal style was coined for him. For CBM 214 we invited our authors to comment on their favourite Boris Spassky games. The result is a collection of 27 first-class annotated Spassky games from the period 1949 to 1989. You can take a look at two samples here. Enjoy!
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Amazing rook sacrifice in Fritz game at WCCC (video)

7/15/2023 – While engines on powerful hardware are ever closer to chess perfection, draws tend to happen more and more. However, even perfection does not need to be dull, and at the 2023 World Computer Chess Championship, a spectacular game took place between Fritz running on 192 cores (!) and Stoofvlees using massive GPUs. See the video on this tactical slugfest!
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Skilful

7/15/2023 – In the diagram position White found a number of power moves and crushed Black's position. The art of attacking à la Rustam Kasimdzhanov - enjoy!

Fritz wins 2023 World Chess Software Championship

7/14/2023 – The 2023 World Chess Software Championship was just held in Valencia, Spain, and impressively Fritz defended its title by winning it a second year straight. This event saw a very high number of draws, which might lead you to think it was a dull affair, but as you will see in one of them, it was a guns ablazing fight in OK Corral with two rook sacrifices spaced four moves apart no less!
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Petrosian's stunning sacrifice - Honorata's Harmony

7/14/2023 – In today's episode, Honorata shows us one of the most spectacular positional exchange sacrifices, played by Tigran Petrosian. In this famous game against Samuel Reshevsky, "Iron Tigran" made a slight mistake in the middlegame, and White's bishop pair was about to cause havoc. But Petrosian found a spectacular move, which most of you probably know already.
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Ten Trivia about the Biel International Chess Festival

7/14/2023 – The 56th Biel Chess Festival, one of the most traditional and beautiful chess tournaments, begins next Saturday, 15 July 2023. In his review, Eduard Frey presents ten surprising and interesting facts about the history of the tournament. | Photo courtesy of the organiser: Playing Hall, Congress Centre Biel
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Daniel King’s Power Play Show: Essential positional classics

7/14/2023 – In his new Power Play Show, GM Daniel King uses a positional victory by Lei Tingjie in the Women’s World Championship as the starting point to explore essential strategic masterpieces from the past. | 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.