Evasive manoeuvres in the Scandinavian and a Catalan booster

12/15/2021 – The new ChessBase Magazine Extra #204 offers a collection top games with top annotations, including analyses by Anish Giri, Peter Heine Nielsen and Romain Edouard. Christian Bauer and Mihail Marin provide the two opening videos in this issue. The Scandinavian expert from France presents various ways of avoiding an extremely critical variation with Black in the system with 3…Qa5. Mihail Marin's video claims that "The Catalan is still alive!", which he illustrates with the game Daniel Deac - Lucas van Foreest from the 2021 European Championship. Watch an excerpt from both videos!
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No more World Championship matches for Carlsen?

12/15/2021 – After Magnus Carlsen convincingly won the World Championship match 7.5-3.5 against challenger Ian Nepomniachtchi, the old and new World Champion seems to be tired of defending his title. In a Norwegian podcast interview with his friend Magnus Barstad, Carlsen indicated that he lacked the motivation to defend his title again. Unless the next challenger would be Alireza Firouzja. | Photo: FIDE | Niki Riga

The Endgame Magic Christmas Calendar - Door 15

12/15/2021 – Were you able to force "Stamma's" mate with the knight yesterday? It only works if the king goes to the square f3. The rest should be easy. Now it's getting more difficult again! Today, it looks like you can give up immediately. But the riddle will end in a draw if the right move is found for Black.
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So beats Nihal to reach Speed Chess Championship final

12/15/2021 – The 2021 Speed Chess Championship, organized by chess.com, is coming to an end. During this week, the two semifinals decide who gets to play in Sunday’s final match, in which the contenders will be fighting for a prize fund of $20,000. In the first semi, played on Monday, Wesley So edged Nihal Sarin, who came from knocking out Alexander Grischuk and Richard Rapport.

Jan Timman celebrates 70th birthday

12/14/2021 – From the 1970s to the 1990s Jan Timman, born in Amsterdam on 14 December 1951, was one of the world's best players. He qualified several times for the candidates and in 1993 he became FIDE Vice World Champion. Timman is also a renowned study composer and a prolific and excellent writer. Today, the Dutch Grandmaster celebrates his 70th birthday.

The Weekly Show

12/14/2021 – In his "Weekly Show" IM Lawrence Trent briefly talks about the World Championships but concentrates on the English Rapidplay Championship 2021 - where Lawrence played himself. | Lawrence’s show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here

Carlsen's coach Peter Heine Nielsen talks about the Carlsen vs Nepomniachtchi match

12/14/2021 – Peter Heine Nielsen has been Magnus Carlsen's head coach and second since 2013, and in an in-depth interview with IM Sagar Shah the Danish grandmaster and ChessBase author has now revealed some background on Carlsen's World Championship match against Ian Nepomniachtchi: Nielsen reviews the critical moments of all eleven games, discusses what makes a good coach and talks about the upcoming World Championship cycle and Alireza Firouzja's chances in it. | Photo: Hartmut Metz | Archiv

Dubov faces criticism in Russia after working for Carlsen

12/14/2021 – Soon after defending the World Championship title in Dubai, Magnus Carlsen revealed the team of seconds that helped him keep his crown. Among them was Daniil Dubov, a member of the Russian team. A controversy erupted, with some of Dubov’s compatriots criticizing his decision to work for Ian Nepomniachtchi’s opponent. | Photo: Niki Riga

The Endgame Magic Christmas Calendar - Door 14

12/14/2021 – Fortunately, most of you knew that the correct solution for door 13 was "A". Far fewer, however, were aware that the green squares are called "key squares". Another lesson learned. In the video, there is more information about the squares, and the task for today. We checkmate the opponent's king with nothing more than a knight!
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Fritz & Chesster online in eight languages!

12/14/2021 – The award-winning program "Fritz & Chesster" (Vol. 1) that has helped hundreds of thousands of children all over the world to learn and to enjoy chess is now available in eight languages! English, Spanish, French, Polish, Swedish, Dutch, Slovakian and German. The online version of the program runs on practically all systems without the need to install software. All graphics have been redrawn and enlarged! | Photo: lemi-consulting.com

Retreat to advance

12/14/2021 – Endings with opposite coloured bishops often have drawish tendencies. But things are rarely that simple. In the diagram position material is equal but Black's king and Black's bishop are far more active than their counterparts. How should Black proceed to exploit these advantages?

The world champion is crowned, again!

12/13/2021 – On Sunday, December 12, Magnus Carlsen of Norway lifted the trophy for the World Championship aloft for the fifth time in a row. The closing ceremony was broadcast live on a range of media and culminated with the champion, a gold medal around his neck, trophy raised, in a long, breezy shower of gold confetti. | Photo: Niki Riga

Karsten Müller’s Endgame Magic Show #175: With Robert Ris

12/13/2021 – Robert Ris is Karsten Müller's guest in the Endgame Magic Show #175. Robert and Karsten will look at games 6-10 of the World Championship match between Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi, which Carlsen won convincingly 7.5-3.5. Karsten and Robert will focus on the endgames that occured in these games, but they will also take a brief look at the openings played in the match. | You can watch the Endgame Magic Show on-demand with a ChessBase Premium account.

Women’s chess: ‘It is not biology’

12/13/2021 – When Beth Harmon defeated a series of top male grandmasters, and then went on to wrest the title from Russian world champion Vasily Borgov, it was not real life. It happened in the Queen’s Gambit, a Netflix series that did more for chess than anything else in 2020. In reality, today there is not a single active female player in the top 100. But FIDE wants to change that, as the Guardian reports.

Gawain Jones wins English Rapidplay Championship 2021

12/13/2021 – Ten players took part in the English Rapidplay Championship 2021, which was part of the London Chess Classic 2021. After nine rounds Gawain Jones (pictured) and Luke McShane shared first with 7.0/9, but Gawain Jones won the play-off with a clear 2-0 to become English Rapid Champion 2021. | Photo: London Chess Classic

The Endgame Magic Christmas Calendar - Door 13

12/13/2021 – The bishop was hanging, and yet it was not allowed to be taken! But almost everyone knew that, and took the knight instead. Today there is a correct move again, and if you like, a correct designation of the green marked squares.
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Understanding before Moving 57: The Elephant!

12/12/2021 – 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 57th instalment of his ChessBase show "Understanding before Moving", Herman talks about "The Elephant", an animal that particularly likes the jungle of Nimzo-Indian variations. | Photo: Tommy Grooten

London Chess Classic: Rest of the World beats England

12/12/2021 – This year, the main event of the London Chess Classic was the match between England and the Rest of the World, with each team consisting of three players. Before the final round, the squads were tied at 7½ points each. In a very hard-fought final round, the Rest of the World won the match. Boris Gelfand and Nikita Vitiugov provided the winning points.

The Champions in the Blockchain

12/12/2021 – Today the first authorized NFT series of world chess champions has been minted! World chess champions, NFT and blockchain? What is that supposed to mean? You may have heard that NFTs can establish ownership of digital art: In March 2021, an NFT by digital artist Beeple fetched the auction value of $69 million at Christie's. However the NFTs of the world chess champions are not about crazy auctions, but about honoring outstanding chess achievement. In a series that currently consists of 14 entries, the classic world champions are now immortalized with selected games. The unique thing about this series is that many players participate through their authorization. This makes it the first of its kind in history.

The Endgame Magic Christmas Calendar - Door 12

12/12/2021 – You only had to find the correct move Bd3 yesterday, but a huge amount of participants also knew about "Rauser's drawing zone". I congratulate you, for your endgame knowledge. Today, your task is to find a rather beautiful way to win, and as always, only one move is the right one!
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World Championship: Game 11 annotated by Rustam Kasimdzhanov

12/11/2021 – “The second half of the match wasn’t the fight we all wanted to see, with most of the games being blundered away (b5,c5,g3 and others). Still, the World Champion barely made a mistake in 11 games, and never gave a chance once in control. Hopefully Nepo can recover from what must be an absolute nightmare of a match”, writes GM Rustam Kasimdzhanov in his analysis of the match’s eleventh and final game. | Photo: Austin Fuller

The Endgame Magic Christmas Calendar - Door 11

12/11/2021 – Vladimir Kramnik thought he was already completely lost in yesterday's task a few moves earlier anyway. The readers knew almost without exception that Sb1 with sacrifice was enough to win. In today's exercise it's all about 30 green squares!
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Make your bet!

12/11/2021 – The razor-sharp diagram position saw Black losing after 26...Kxh6?, while after 26...Kg7! things easily might have gone the other way round. Stunners galore - enjoy!

Strength in Large Numbers

12/11/2021 – ChessBase has minted a series of NFTs on world chess champions. The success of NFTs is closely linked to the current rise of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Here, we take a look at this fast-growing world of virtual assets. At their current stage, cryptocurrencies are still viewed with a great deal of controversy. For many, they are breakthrough technology, growth market and a sharp sword to protect civil rights. Others see them as a speculative bubble that diminishes the capability for monetary policy of central banks because they can no longer be controlled by central authorities.