Skilling Open: Coincidences

11/28/2020 – The semifinals of the Skilling Open kicked off on Friday. Magnus Carlsen beat Ian Nepomniachtchi in their first mini-match after collecting three draws and a win. Wesley So and Hikaru Nakamura followed a similar pattern, with So getting ahead in the matchup after getting a single win. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

Daniel King's Power Play Show: Giri vs Carlsen

11/27/2020 – In this Power Play Show, GM Daniel King takes a look at a game from the Skilling Open, in which Magnus Carlsen defeated his old rival Anish Giri in a positional masterpiece. | Power Play is on air most Fridays at 17:00 UTC (18:00 CET, 13:00 ET). All the usual puzzles, games and instruction will be on offer. | Photo: Champions Chess Tour | Archive

Everything you need to know

11/27/2020 – The latest version of our database program, ChessBase 16, is creating waves in the chess world. But do you know everything that is under the hood of this remarkable training tool for chess players? How it will find new interesting lines for you to play, and look after your repertoire, keep it fully up-to-date? Today IM Sagar Shah discussed the new features live with the head of the programming team. Watch the video recording for a unique tutorial on how to use the new program. That will repay you with additional rating points – for sure!

Mega cool: The games update of Mega Database 2021

11/27/2020 – What distinguishes the Mega Database from other databases? For one, it does not become obsolete and remains "up to date" with just a few clicks! Because the delivery of the Mega Database 2021 includes not only more than 8 million games but also the weekly mega update service. Every week we provide you with a database of around 5,000 new games. At the same time the search booster of the reference database is updated, which allows you to continue your work immediately and without losing time. With a few clicks in ChessBase 16, your Mega Database will always be up to date. A "mega help" for every tournament player. Here's how...

Attacking with a calm mind

11/27/2020 – In the diagram position, White had just played 32.Qd4+, after which Black decided to take the pawn on g6 and played 32...Kxg6??. However, that was a mistake which allowed White to unleash a powerful mating attack. How did White continue after 32...Kxg6?? - and can you calculate the lines in your head?

Skilling Open: Comebacks

11/27/2020 – Three out of the four players that qualified to the semifinals of the Skilling Open did it by coming back from behind in their quarterfinal matchups. The only player to move on without needing tiebreaks was Magnus Carlsen, while Ian Nepomniachtchi, Wesley So and Hikaru Nakamura reached the semis despite having lost on Wednesday. Carlsen v Nepomniachtchi and So v Nakamura are the semifinal pairings. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

Anton Korobov wins Ukrainian Championship

11/27/2020 – With an Elo-rating of 2683 Anton Korobov was top seed and favourite at the Open Ukrainian Championship 2020. Korobov lived up to this role and with a score of 7.0/9 he finished clear first to become Ukrainian Champion 2020. It was his fourth title. | Photo: Lennart Ootes (Archive)

Robert Ris' Fast and Furious: Queen's Indian Defence: Petrosian Variation

11/26/2020 – In this week's show, well-known Dutch trainer Robert Ris takes a look at an old favourit of Garry Kasparov: the Petrosian Variation of the Queen's Indian Defense. | "Fast and Furious" is available from 18:00 UTC (19:00 CET / 16:00 EDT) on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here. | Photo: Frederic Friedel

Skilling Open: “Ugly” wins

11/26/2020 – The quarterfinals of the Skilling Open kicked off on Wednesday. Magnus Carlsen, Levon Aronian, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Teimour Radjabov won their first mini-matches to go into day two of the confrontations only needing a draw in order to move on to the semis. Carlsen was not all that satisfied with his performance, as his opponent, Anish Giri, missed opportunities from better positions more than once. | Photo: Alina l'Ami

Solution of the endgame riddle: Was Fischer's 22.Nxd7 winning?

11/26/2020 – In 1971 Bobby Fischer played against Tigran Petrosian in the Candidates Final, and in the crucial 7th game of this match Fischer made one of the most famous and surprising moves of his career: 22.Nxd7+, exchanging a "good" knight against a "bad" bishop, and this stunning exchange led to a seemingly smooth win, which practically decided the match. Since then 22.Nxd7+ has been praised in countless books and articles as a stroke of genius. But new analyses of Karsten Müller, Charles Sullivan, Zoran Petronijevic, and the ChessBase readers indicate that this famous move might actually have been a mistake!

Meet the Fritztrainer - Chris Ward

11/26/2020 – We have hundreds of different Fritztrainers in our shop. A lot of them are made by top grandmasters, and perhaps you sometimes wonder what the authors of these Fritztrainers do besides teaching us to play better chess. "Meet the Fritztrainer" is the very first part of a new series that tells us more about the private life of your favourite chess coach. We start with joyful GM Chris Ward, who shares anecdotes about Kasparov, talks about the time when he played in the Bundesliga, and reveals how he thinks chess should be taught. | Photos: Chris Ward

Game of the Week: Nepomniachtchi vs Anton

11/25/2020 – In his "Game of the Week" show, Merijn van Delft takes a look at a game from the Skilling Open: David Anton's fine win with Black against Ian Nepomniachtchi, a model game against 1.b3. | Merijn's show is available at 16.00 UTC (17:00 CET, 12:00 EDT) and on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

Jonathan Rowson on "The Queen’s Gambit"

11/25/2020 – In November 2019, three-time British champion Jonathan Rowson published The Moves that Matter: A Chess Grandmaster on the Game of Life (Bloomsbury Publishing), a wonderful book, abounding with thoughtful reflections about the game and its place in our world. A year later, after watching the Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit, Rowson posted a 35-minute YouTube video in which he highlighted how some of the major themes in his book connect with this successful Netflix series. In an interview with Olimpiu G. Urcan, he elaborates further. | Photo: Netflix

Autumn Series on Playchess - play and win attractive prizes

11/25/2020 – 90 minutes online training with Grandmaster Nicholas Pert, ChessBase author and renowned coach. This is the first prize in the 5th tournament of the Autumn Series on Playchess, a nine round Swiss blitz tournament that will start on Wednesday, November 25, 20.00 CET (19:00 UTC, 14:00 ET). As in all tournaments of the Autumn Series, the games will be played under real names.

John D. Rockefeller V Donates $3 Million to US Chess Federation

11/25/2020 – The US Chess Federation can look forward to a real windfall. The Rockefeller Foundation donates the sum of 3 million US dollars to the Federation and to US chess. This is the largest single donation the US Federation has ever received.

Skilling Open: A thrilling qualifier

11/25/2020 – The knockout stage of the Skilling Open is about to begin after eight participants qualified from a 16-player single round robin preliminary stage. Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura topped the standings on 9 out of 15; Wesley So, Ian Nepomniachtchi and Levon Aronian finished a half point behind; while five players tied on 8 points, with Teimour Radjabov, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Anish Giri advancing to the quarterfinals. | Photo: Levon Aronian

"Glory to the Queen": A Tribute to the Georgian Queens of Chess

11/25/2020 – The movie "Glory to the Queen" is a tribute to the four Georgian Grandmasters who once dominated womens' chess. At the Slobodna Zone movie festival in Belgrade, the Austrian-Georgian-Serbian co-production has now been awarded the audience prize. Over the course of the project, Stefan Löffler remained in touch with documentary filmmaker Tatia Shkirtladze. | Images: Berghammer Film

The Weekly Show: Highlights from the Skilling Open

11/24/2020 – In his "Weekly Show" IM Lawrence Trent presents highlights from the Skilling Open and takes a close look how Maxime Vachier-Lagrave won against Le Quang Liem in round 7. | Lawrence's show is available at 18:00 UTC (19:00 CET, 14:00 ET) on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here. | Photo: Ray Morris-Hill

Let's talk about chess ... with Allan Scott

11/24/2020 – In the latest episode of his "Let's talk about chess" podcast Eric Reem talked with Allan Scott, one of the creators of the Netflix series "The Queen's Gambit". Allan Scott is co-producer of the show and wrote the script together with Scott Frank. In the podcast he talks about the series and gives a lot of interesting insights. | Photo: Netflix

Outdoor Chess: Uruguay

11/24/2020 – In Montevideo, Uruguay, chess is part of the city’s cultural heritage. 18 de Julio Avenue, the city’s most significant street, was the site of its most famous outdoor chess game. Gonzalo Muniz, a FIDE-rated chess player from Uruguay, and WIM Alexey Root tell about chess in Uruguay’s capital. | Photo: Gonzalo Taborda

When a retreat is the best way to advance

11/24/2020 – Some endings are simple: you have a passed pawn that wants to push ahead and therefore your king also pushes ahead to support the pawn or enter the enemy's camp. But things are rarely that easy. In the diagram position White's pawn wants to push ahead and White's king can also push ahead to support his own pawn or to attack the black pawns on the queenside. But is that really the way to save the draw?

Skilling Open: Giri still on top

11/24/2020 – Day 2 of the preliminaries at the Skilling Open saw Anish Giri keeping the sole lead by scoring five draws in a row. Three players stand close behind, while the race to reach the knockout is fierce, with some big names — e.g. Levon Aronian and Sergey Karjakin — currently not in the top half of the standings table. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

Kasparov and the start of ChessBase

11/23/2020 – How did ChessBase begin? It's been nearly 35 years now! When co-founder of ChessBase Frederic Friedel was in India, IM Sagar Shah decided to record the story of how it all began. In this article Frederic speaks about the humble beginnings of the big chess technology company and how the 13th World Champion Garry Kasparov played a big role in its success!

Skilling Open: Mouse slips

11/23/2020 – For Magnus Carlsen, the Skilling Open began with a setback. In a winning position, his queen was placed on the wrong square due to a mouse slip and was captured by his opponent. The world champion had a good first day nonetheless. However, it was Anish Giri who finished as the sole leader after five rounds. | Photo: Lennart Ootes