12/24/2020 – The European Women’s Club Cup was played online on December 19-22. The favourites from Cercle d’Echecs de Monte-Carlo won the event despite losing their direct encounter against the tail-enders from SK Schwäbisch Hall. Two Russian teams, UGRA and Gambit Volgograd, completed the podium.

12/24/2020 – You still have time to get it! This special ends on Dec 25 at 23:59. Get your brand-new 60-minute video by none other than the Ginger GM himself, Simon Williams. These gambits aren’t sound and there are ways for your opponents to get an advantage. Still the gambits are growing in popularity especially in online blitz.

12/24/2020 – This year we are launching our "Christmas Fritztrainer Calendar". For the next 24 days, you can open one of our Fritztrainer doors daily, and guess: Which Fritztrainer is this? If you send us the correct answer by email, you are participating in a raffle to win plenty of prizes, including our big Christmas surprise packages!

12/24/2020 – Elena Burmistrova has presented the CFR Chess Museum with a unique art gift for the New Year. It comes from a limited edition of handmade chess sets titled “Indian”, manufactured at the porcelain enterprise “Delta-X” of Kislovodsk in the 1990s. To design the chessmen, A. Lyubkin resorted to ancient legends and tales’ motives. Pieces of gilt and overglaze painting join the combat on a chessboard of marble and serpentine stone.

12/23/2020 – In his Game of the Week show, Merijn van Delft celebrates the fact that one of his students, Eline Roebers, has won the Girls U14 World Rapid Championship! He analyses a tense game from Roebers’ final match against Zsoka Gaal. | 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. | Photo: Harry Gielen

12/23/2020 – We started this series with two articles describing the situation of a young man with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and his interest in chess. After first email encounters we sent Simon some ChessBase software to play around with. His reaction was, to put it mildly, pure delight. In this final article he describes how ChessBase 15 opened new dimensions for him, and how he found a new approach to improve his understanding of the game he loved.

12/23/2020 – This year we are launching our "Christmas Fritztrainer Calendar". For the next 24 days, you can open one of our Fritztrainer doors daily, and guess: Which Fritztrainer is this? If you send us the correct answer by email, you are participating in a raffle to win plenty of prizes, including our big Christmas surprise packages!

12/23/2020 – Just a quick reminder! Today GM Elshan Moradiabadi will participate in our video blitz tournament at 15:00 CET. The good news is that we still have two open seats available! If you apply, you will be raffled and might take part in our little tournament.

12/22/2020 – Vishy Anand has ruled the number one spot in Indian chess for over three decades now. The five-time World Champion is now 51 years old and is still very much one of the best in the world. But Anand also wants to ensure that there are youngsters in India who rise quickly to the top of the world rankings in the years to come. It is with this objective in mind that the Westbridge Anand Chess Academy has been created. Nihal Sarin, Praggnanandhaa, Raunak Sadhwani, Gukesh and Vaishali are the five youngsters who received a fellowship and will be personally mentored by Vishy Anand.

12/22/2020 – In his “Weekly Show” IM Lawrence Trent looks at a couple of games from the over-the-board tournament taking place in Sitges, paying special attention to the remarkable victory obtained by 17-year-old Hans Niemann over Matthieu Cornette in round 6. | Lawrence's show is available at 17:00 UTC (18:00 CET, 12:00 ET) on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

12/22/2020 – The second event of the Champions Chess Tour — an online series of tournaments organized by the Play Magnus Group — will kick off on December 26. Unlike the Skilling Open, which was a ‘Regular’ event and included 16 players, the Airthings Masters will have 12 players in its lineup, as it is the first ‘Major’ in the schedule. The tournament will run until January 3.

12/22/2020 – Remember what it was like to find new ideas and opening novelties in the past. First you had to go through a pile of books, making notes on lines of interest. When ChessBase was launched (over 30 years ago) you could do it on a computer – but it still took hours and days to find a powerful weapon for your next tournament. Now ChessBase 16 has reduced the search to a few clicks of the mouse. Let Sagar Shah tell you how to use this powerful feature to dramatically improve your results in the next tournament.