12/7/2019 – Tournament leader Humpy maintained her lead after surviving quite a few missed opportunities by her opponent Nana Dzagnidze. Anna Muzychuk arguably had the most interesting game of the round against Kateryna Lagno after almost a five-hour long game. Pia Cramling finally managed to convert advantage into a victory after her opponent Elisabeth Paehtz blundered and made a few inaccuracies under time pressure. Valentina Gunina's tough luck at the tournament continues as this time she made a huge error in the opening against Zhao Xue after which she could not recover for the rest of the game. Goryachkina beat Harika, after the latter made a wrong exchange which resulted in an isolated pawn and advanced king for her opponent. Kosteniuk and Mariya Muzychuk made a grandmaster draw in just 23 moves. | Photo: Karol Bartnik / FIDE

12/7/2019 – In the Estonian capital Tallinn, the European Championships in Rapid and Blitz Chess were held from Thursday to Saturday. The new Rapid European Champion with 10½/13 was Armenian Gabriel Sargissian (pictured) ahead of Rauf Mamedov (Azerbaijan) and Alexander Riazantsev (Russia) on tiebreak. The European Blitz Championship went to Igor Lysyj (Russia) with 17.0/22 on tiebreak ahead of the tied Zaven Adriasian (Armenia) and Andrey Esipenko (Russia). | Photos: ECU / Alon Shulman

12/7/2019 – Two long and exciting games kicked off the final stage of the Grand Chess Tour in London. Ding Liren had a large advantage but could not convert it into a win against a resilient Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, while Magnus Carlsen defeated Levon Aronian with the white pieces to get ahead right out of the gate in the match for third place. The duels continue on Saturday, starting two hours earlier than usual. | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour

12/6/2019 – Fritz 17 helps you to learn and memorize your opening repertoire. But first you have to create an opening repertoire that Fritz 17 can help you learn. This is done with the "Move-by-Move" principle and the following short tutorial shows how to enter moves or previous material to create such a repertoire.

12/6/2019 – Power Play plays on! On the show today: How to beat the Petroff. Power Play is live most Fridays at 17:00 UTC (18:00 CET, Noon EST) on playchess.com. You can watch the episode live for free! All the usual puzzles, games and instruction will be on offer. Puzzle and the live video...

12/6/2019 – Anna Muzychuk halted Humpy Koneru's winning streak by holding her to a draw. The most exciting game of the round was between Mariya Muzychuk and Kateryna Lagno. Although Muzychuk won the game with brilliant sharp play, there were moments where Lagno could have salvaged her position. Goryachkina got back to winning ways by beating Zhao Xue, Nana Dzagnidze scored her first win of the tournament and jumped to tied second position, Gunina also made a comeback by staying true to her style and beating Alexandra Kosteniuk, after suffering two losses in the first two rounds. Harika had a tepid draw with Pia Cramling. | Photo: Karol Bartnik / FIDE

12/6/2019 – From the diagram position, White has a remarkable way to bring to bear his g1-rook without even moving it! Can you think of what followed?

12/6/2019 – Welcome to the new Mega Database 2020! Learn from annotated games, enjoy top tournaments or have a look at the opening repertoire of the world’s best! The Mega Database 2020 contains more than 8 million games and with a current ChessBase program and our update service you can regularly update the database with new games – around 5,000 every week! Here’s a short tutorial how to update the database and download new games.

12/6/2019 – The winner of the "Peace Tournament" in the Croatian capital Zagreb was Ukrainian grandmaster Vassily Ivanchuk, who finished with a half-point more than his rivals Marin Bosiocic (Croatia), Etienne Bacrot (France) and Hrant Melkumyan (Armenia) with 7½ points. | Photos: Tournament page

12/5/2019 – Last Saturday the first European Golden Pawn event was held in the super-luxurious Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo, Monaco. The host, the European Chess Union, writes: "The award ceremony will mark the beginning of a new tradition, honoring the best representatives of European chess. The chess world — people for whom chess is not just a sport, but an outstanding, intellectual and royal game — has been waiting for this high-scale event." We are proud to report that ChessBase got the prize for the "Best European Chess Project."

12/5/2019 – Recently the gambit line with 6.♘d5 against the Classical Sicilian has been seen in quite a number of games by some talented Dutch youngsters. IM Robert Ris shows some examples. Tune into the live show at 18:00 UTC (19:00 CET / 1 PM EST) which is free to watch, and available on-demand for ChessBase Premium account holders (but FREE for a limited time!). To chat, please visit videos.chessbase.com/live or login via Playchess for Windows. In the diagram, it's Black to play!

12/5/2019 – Pattern recognition is an important tool in modern chess, as it helps you to better understand the characteristics of a position. Particularly when you have been confronted with a surprise opening system played by your opponent, relying on general principles is an asset. In this video series, IM ROBERT RIS explores ten key elements of opening play. While these themes are found throughout chess literature this time you will get actively involved yourself as well!