12/28/2021 – Nona Gaprindashvili wrote referring to Milunka Lazarevic: “A literary person by profession, lively and impressionable, Lazarevic is one of the brightest figures in women’s chess of the sixties”. Milunka attracted attention by her exciting, uncompromising style: sacrificing pawns and pieces and despising draws, which made her famous and endeared her to chess audiences! | Pictured: Lazarevic, Tengiz Giorgadze and Gaprindashvili (National Parliamentary Library of Georgia)

12/28/2021 – The 2022 Candidates Tournament, which will produce the challenger for the next world chess championship match, will take place in June 2022 in Madrid, Spain. As the organising sponsor of this prestigious tournament, Chess.com signed an agreement on Monday with governing body FIDE and the Scheinberg family, patrons of the event.

12/28/2021 – After nine rounds, played on Sunday and Monday, Magnus Carlsen is the sole leader at the World Rapid Chess Championship in Warsaw as the only player to have collected 7½ points. On the second day of play, Alireza Firouzja and Jan-Krzysztof Duda were two of the players defeated by the world champion. In the women’s tournament, Alexandra Kosteniuk is in a class of her own.| Foto: FIDE / Anna Shtourman

12/28/2021 – For 24 days, you mastered fierce end-game puzzles. We received over 6800 emails this year! This topped last year's calendar, bravo! From all entries we randomly selected three winners for each day, who can look forward to ChessBase Shop vouchers or two Fritztrainer DVDs signed by Karsten Müller. Those who guessed all 24 doors correctly, entered into our super raffle for one of three grand prizes.

12/28/2021 – Usually, in open positions a bishop is stronger than a knight. But in chess there's no rule without exception! In the diagram position it is White who has the knight, and it is White to move and win. What would you do?

12/27/2021 – In the history of the Chess World Championships Viktor Korchnoi is an extremely successful player, even if he was ultimately denied the title. If you count the 1974 Candidates Final for challenging Fischer, he played three 'World Championship matches'. The era of Korchnoi's participations in the WCh cycle stretches from the Curacao Candidates Tournament in 1962 to the 1991 quarterfinal match against Timman, which he played at the age of 60. The dramatic fight against Anatoly Karpov in Baguio City in 1978 stands out in particular: hypnosis, cheating accusations with blueberry yoghurt, X-ray examinations on chairs, mirror glasses worn at the board, Korchnoi's comeback to 5-5 after trailing 4-1 are a few of the external circumstances involved!

12/24/2021 – "The Queen's Gambit" is one of the most successful Netflix series and will remain one of the best representations of chess in film. The series contains many impressive and powerful scenes, e.g. the depiction of a tournament in fast-forward mode, fittingly accompanied by the famous instrumental musical piece "Classical Gas" by Mason Williams.

12/24/2021 – That's almost it! It's the last day of the calendar, and we want to say a huge thank you for the thousands of entries! Yesterday we had to send the king to c2 because of the virtual opposition. Finally, there is a really nice endgame treat to solve.

12/24/2021 – Fabiano Caruana had a great second day of blitz at the Vugar Gashimov Tournament in Baku. The American even caught up with former leader Richard Rapport in the overall standings table. Caruana then went on to beat his Hungarian colleague in Armageddon to win the event. | Photos: Official tournament site

12/23/2021 – This week, well-known Dutch trainer Robert Ris looks at a sharp and interesting Sicilian that was played in a game of two Indian players at the Sunway Sitges Tournament. | "Fast and Furious" is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

12/23/2021 – Lawrence is busy, but still managed to continue Trent's Tactics from the UK, with an improvised setup. Good enough to conquer a remarkable tactical masterpiece by Vishy Anand against Veselin Topalov, in the World Championship in Sofia from 2010. Lawrence and Arne also try to reach the 2350 Rating in the ChessBase training section, but will they succeed?

12/23/2021 – The King's Gambit continues to pose puzzles. The opening evokes memories of glorious sacrificial games from the romantic era, but at the same time it is regarded as somewhat unsound — as theoretically incorrect. But even today the move 2.f4 after 1.e4 e5 leads again and again to unusual positions rich in content. As the games of King’s Gambit expert Joe Gallagher demonstrate! | Photo source: British Chess News