1/11/2022 – Sometimes it would be nice to have another queen on the board, especially if things went wrong in the first part of the game. In a YouTube video on optical illusions, Matt Pritchard reveals how you can suddenly conjure up a queen on the board by using means of disguise that have a long tradition in chess but are rather unusual in modern tournament play.

1/11/2022 – Pawn races often have a flavour of their own and taking pawns is not always the most important. In the diagram position it is Black to move and win. What would you do?

1/10/2022 – Four years after his epic match against Fritz in Bahrain, which ended in a hard-fought 4-4 draw, World Champion Vladimir Kramnik, who had in the meantime twice defended his title, once again took up the gauntlet to face his computer opponent. In a two-part pictorial article, Frederic Friedel describes the intense million-dollar battle that was fought between them in 2006 in Bonn, Germany. Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück called it a cultural battle between outstanding representatives of human and technical intelligence.

1/10/2022 – On Tuesday, January 11, 2022, the first auction of the Chess World Champion NFTs (Wilhelm Steinitz) will end at 12:00 CET. The other auctions will follow roughly every hour. So let's summarize what makes this series unique. In one sentence: It will remain the first of its kind for all times! Also: What is the deeper meaning of NFTs? And a short but hefty guide to the technical side of the auction.

1/10/2022 – In the Endgame Magic Show #177, Karsten Müller and Arne Kähler look at a fascinating position played at the 2021 FIDE World Cup in Sochi. Sometimes you need to calculate what will happen in the fourth phase of the game, when newly promoted queens appear on the board, and every single check is crucial! | You can watch the Endgame Magic Show on-demand with a ChessBase Premium account.

1/10/2022 – The Indian Grandmaster Lalith Babu won the "Vergani Cup" in the Italian Adriatic resort of Cattolica which finished on Sunday. With 7.0/9 Lalith shared first place with Hans Moke Niemann (USA), Vitaliy Bernadskiy (Ukraine) and Nurgyul Salimova (Bulgaria), but he had the best tiebreak and therefore won the tournament and the first prize of €2,500. | Photos: Rupali Mullick

1/6/2022 – In the second week of December Nigel Short caught Corona though he was vaccinated twice. Short's infection was so severe that he had to go hospital, but it did not stop the English Grandmaster from playing at the 6th Vergani Cup in Cattolica, Italy, at the beginning of the year. However, he needed some help from chess goddess Caissa when the tournament began. But Short did not forget his duties as a chess ambassador. | Photos: Circolo Scacchistico Forlivese, Rupali Mullick

1/6/2022 – "One of the most difficult games I have ever played." That is how Mikhail Botvinnik described his encounter with Wolfgang Unzicker from Germany at the Chess Olympiad 1954 in Amsterdam. Botvinnik wound up in a difficult rook ending in which he was a pawn down. However, he managed to save the endgame, once again proving his analytical abilities and his endgame skills. But was the endgame really drawn? Or did Unzicker miss a win? Karsten Müller invites you to take a look at this fascinating endgame. | Photo: Botvinnik at the Chess Olympiad 1960 in Leipzig

1/6/2022 – Svitlana is back, and in her first episode of 2022, she shows us a couple of beautiful, and memorable games of 2021. Players like Firouzja, Caruana, and Kosteniuk had some magnificent games, and it always delightful to check them out again. What was your favourite game with the smartest moves of 2021?

1/5/2022 – In this first "Game of the Week" show of the new year Merijn van Delft takes a final look at the World Rapid Championship. Magnus Carlsen pushed a little too hard and lost against 17-year old Nodirbek Abdusattorov, and in the end Abusattorov qualified for his third tournament playoff in a row (earlier in December twice in Spain) and again he won to become the youngest Rapid World Champion ever. In the final game of the playoff he impressively beat Ian Nepomniachtchi, which is Merijn's Game of the Week. | Merijn's show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

1/5/2022 – In the 2021 World Championship match between challenger Ian Nepomniachtchi and defending champion Magnus Carlsen, Nepomniachtchi blundered in a couple of games. He is in good company. In his Power Play Chess show on YouTube Daniel King takes a look at blunders that happened in previous World Championship matches and found a number of amazing, amusing and entertaining mistakes made by the best players in the history of chess.

1/5/2022 – The World Championship match between Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi was the chess highlight of the year 2021, and chess fans all over the world followed the games and the match avidly. Carlsen won 7.5-3.5 and defended his title. Shortly after the match, Oliver Roeder and Simran Parwani took a look at some statistics of the match and presented their findings on www.538.com, a statistics-oriented website that focuses on American politics and sports. | Image: FIDE