3/8/2022 – All pools at the preliminaries of the FIDE Grand Prix in Belgrade had a clear winner after Monday’s sixth and final round. Dmitry Andreikin, Anish Giri, Richard Rapport and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave moved on to the semifinals, and will get a rest day before the knockout stage, as no tiebreaks were needed in the qualifiers. | Photos: Mark Livshitz

3/8/2022 – ChessBase Magazine #206 once again offers a wealth of ideas and recommendations for your repertoire. Besides the three opening videos by Jan Werle, Daniel King and Mihail Marin as well as Rainer Knaak's collection of "Topical opening traps", the new issue contains eleven opening articles covering a broad spectrum: Reti, Caro-Kann, Sicilian Nimzowitsch and Taimanov Variation, Petroff, Ruy Lopez, London System, Slav, Gruenfeld and King's Indian - everywhere there are exciting ideas to get to know. In his article Evgeny Postny examines the queen sortie 5...Qb6 in the London System. In the highly topical variation, White sacrifices a pawn after 6.dxc5 Qxb2 7.Rb1 Qc3 8.Bb5. So it's straight to the point! The variation is "absolutely okay" from Black's point of view, according to Postny, but you shouldn't get involved without prior knowledge! Otherwise the danger is too great that you will lose the queen already in the opening. Take a look!

3/8/2022 – Last week the European Chess Union strongly condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the involvement of Belarus and expressed its solidarity and support for the Ukrainian people. With immediate effect, and acting within its constitutional powers, the ECU suspended the Russian and Belarusian Chess Federations. They also appealed for wide-spread support for their efforts. Now they are pleased to announce the first very kind offers (reaching them) of support and solidarity to Ukrainian Chess friends.

3/8/2022 – It was Aron Nimzowitsch (pictured) who coined the paradoxical expression "The threat is stronger than its execution." This phrase sounds catchy and smart but if you think about it, you start to wonder how a threat can actually ever be stronger than its execution. Jan Markos has a number of good answers. (Foto: L'Echiquier 1931)

3/8/2022 – The acronym "LPDO" was probably coined by the English player Mike Cook, who used it to explain the majority of his losses in a 100-game blitz match against John Nunn. But it was Nunn who made the term popular by talking about this blitz match in his book "Secrets of Practical Chess". Keeping "LPDO" in mind might help to reduce blundering pieces, even in the endgame. In the diagrammed position Black's rook and bishop are both "loose". How did White manage to let them "drop off"?

3/7/2022 – In the Endgame Magic Show #184 Karsten Müller presents endgame highlights from the FIDE Grand Prix in Berlin, which was won by Hikaru Nakamura. | You can watch the Endgame Magic Show on-demand with a ChessBase Premium account.

3/7/2022 – Under the motto "Chess4Peace" and in solidarity with the people in Ukraine, the Emanuel Lasker Society has issued an appeal for donations. If you want to help, you can donate to an account set up by the Emanuel Lasker Society.

3/7/2022 – For those who haven’t recently done any calculation training, there is the Calculation Training Booster. After all, every chess brain needs regular stimulation, as you don’t want to become a lazy player - avoiding calculating critical variations or simply failing to calculate properly.

3/7/2022 – Richard Rapport and Anish Giri will enter the last round of the preliminaries at the Belgrade Grand Prix with 1-point leads in their respective pools. Rapport scored a crucial win on Sunday, as he got the better of Vidit Gujrathi with the black pieces. In the same group, Alexei Shirov obtained his first win of the series by beating Vladimir Fedoseev in a sharp encounter. | Photos: Mark Livshitz

3/6/2022 – In the opening rounds of the Belgrade Grand Prix there were two splendid instances of defensive queen sacrifices. These remarkable efforts set Jon Speelman thinking about defence in general. He thus turned to one of his favourite books, The Middlegame by Max Euwe and Hans Kramer, and cherry-picked a couple of games from the chapters on Steinitz and Lasker. | Pictured: Emanuel Lasker / Collection of the World Chess Hall of Fame

3/6/2022 – Rating favourite Arjun Erigaisi won the MPL 58th National Senior Chess Championship 2022, which took place from February 25 to March 3 in the city of Kanpur. Arjun edged past D Gukesh and Iniyan P on tiebreaks. All three of them scored 8½/11 points. Only four players younger than Arjun have won the National Senior title in Indian chess history. | Photo: Aditya Sur Roy

3/6/2022 – 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 69th instalment of his ChessBase show "Understanding before Moving", Herman continues to show ideas in the King's Indian. | Photo: Pascal Simon