6/10/2022 – As promised last episode, we wanted to display the beautiful queen sacrifice by Lawrence Trent from the HSK Gm Invitational open. But the main part of today, is the legendary GM Alexander Kotov, which Arne didn't even know about before. The "Kotov Syndrome" is named after the Soviet Grandmaster, and it describes a situation, where you think about an important position for too long, not finding the winning move, and with little time left, make a blunder instead. Probably all of us have been there.

6/10/2022 – Shakhriyar Mamedyarov defeated Vishy Anand to climb to sole second place with a round to go at the Norway Chess Tournament. The Indian star, who was having a great run in Stavanger, made a one-move blunder and immediately resigned the game on move 22. Meanwhile, Magnus Carlsen beat Maxime Vachier-Lagrave in Armageddon to keep the sole lead — the world champion goes into Friday’s final round a half point ahead of Mamedyarov. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

6/9/2022 – Defending champion Sam Shankland bounced back from his first-round loss against Le Quang Liem by beating Saleh Salem with the white pieces in the Masters section of the Prague Chess Festival. This was the only decisive game of the day. A more eventful second round in the Challengers saw four players scoring wins with white — one of the winners was Vincent Keymer, who grabbed the sole lead as the only participant who scored back-to-back victories in the first two rounds. | Photos: Petr Vrabec

6/9/2022 – This week Robert Ris looks at a fine victory by Alexei Shirov, who recently defeated Jorden van Foreest in a 4-game mini match that took place in Limburg. Fire on board! | "Fast and Furious" is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

6/9/2022 – Are you an 'Activist', a 'Theorist', a 'Reflector' or a 'Pragmatist’, the four types of players identified by Karsten Müller and Luis Engel in their ChessBase course about player types? It might help to know, and in a review in the "New in Chess Magazine" English Grandmaster Matthew Sadler talks about the pros and cons of such a model and argues that it is useful to identify your strengths and weaknesses if you want to improve your game.

6/9/2022 – A number of remarkable endgames from the Norway Chess tournament have caught the eye of GM Karsten Müller. In the four games included in this article, our in-house specialist shows examples of active defence with a pair of rooks, the strength of a bishop pair in an open position and the advantage of having outside passed pawns in an endgame. | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Norway Chess

6/9/2022 – In his “Game of the Week” show #518, Merijn van Delft analyses Magnus Carlsen’s win over Shakhriyar Mamedyarov from the sixth round of the Norway Chess Tournament — a trademark victory by the world champion. | Merijn’s show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

6/9/2022 – An extremely entertaining first round in the Masters section of the Prague Chess Festival saw Le Quang Liem, David Navara and Pentala Harikrishna scoring the first victories of the event to grab an early lead. Coincidentally, three players also won their first games in the Challengers. All six full points were collected by the player marshalling the white pieces. | Photo: Petr Vrabec

6/8/2022 – Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov won their round-7 classical encounters to climb to shared third place at the Norway Chess Tournament. Magnus Carlsen lost in Armageddon against Aryan Tari, but is still leading the standings table, albeit only by a half point — second-placed Vishy Anand won the sudden-death decider against Teimour Radjabov on Tuesday. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

6/7/2022 – Alexander Nikitin passed away on June 5, at the age of 87. A strong International Master himself, Nikitin was one of the most distinguished chess coaches in history. Among others, he trained Dmitry Jakovenko, Etienne Bacrot and 13th world champion Garry Kasparov. GM Emil Sutovsky wrote an obituary.

6/7/2022 – What is he up to these days? He is difficult to reach – his almost daily appearance on international news report, meetings with influential figures, his copious writing in the media, those are the explanation. We share with you his latest newsletter, which links to the different activities, mainly connected with the war on Ukraine. And describing developments that can lead to President Putin's fall. In addition: you may want to visit his Kasparov Chess platform, where you can learn, play, watch and read about chess.

6/7/2022 – German WGM Jana Schneider is conducting an experiment on cognitive perception for her bachelor’s thesis at the University of Würzburg. The question is whether one can process chess positions faster in 2D or 3D. If you would like to take part, you can find out more here! | Photo: Frank Hoppe