7/16/2024 – In his new Fast & Furious episode, Robert Ris analyses the game Vidit-Aronian from the SuperUnited event in Croatia, a game featuring the Advance Variation against the French. Aronian came up with a spectacular innovation to accelerate Black's counterplay in the centre by sacrificing two pawns. | Fast & Furious is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

7/16/2024 – In an endgame the king should be activated. In the diagram position it is Black to move - and he can win! How?

7/16/2024 – Here are some chess puzzles of a different kind. Some of you might find them very easy, some quite hard. They are at least most entertaining and should bring smiles to your face. Tell us which ones you could master. Next week we will give you the solutions – and show you a video of a strong chess player solving the problems live.

7/16/2024 – Running from July 17 to July 24, the highly anticipated third event of the 2024 Champions Chess Tour will feature the world's top chess players competing for a $300,000 prize pool and a coveted spot in the CCT Finals. Fans can count on the presence of last year's Tour champion GM Magnus Carlsen, chess.com Classic winner Alireza Firouzja and elite GMs Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Jan-Krzysztof Duda and Wesley So.

7/15/2024 – The Maroczy structure - named after Hungarian star Geza Maroczy (pictured) - is one of the most popular setups against the Sicilian: White has pawns on e4 and c4 which guarantee a space advantage. Black, on the other hand, has a solid position and good counter-chances, often based on breaking through with ...b5 or ...d5. Jan Markos takes a closer look at this structure, focusing on the role of the "inconspicuous hero" of these positions. | Photo: Cuba News

7/15/2024 – The 57th Biel Chess Festival kicked off the past weekend, this year extended with a Challengers Tournament. Chess960 and rapid chess were the first events. In the Masters, Armenian GM Haik Martirosyan was the top scorer in the rapid section, while German GM Alexander Donchenko prevailed in the Challengers. | Photo: Biel Chess Festival

7/15/2024 – In the Endgame Magic Show #275 Karsten Müller and ChessBase author and streamer Svitlana Demchenko look at three interesting endgames from Svitlana's practice. | You can watch the Endgame Magic Show on-demand with a ChessBase Premium account.

7/15/2024 – In chess literature, there is one topic - and a very attractive one - that has surprisingly never been dealt with systematically: Fortresses! Dorian Rogozenco sets out to fill this gap with his new column in ChessBase Magazine. In each issue, Rogozenco will introduce you to a fortress in a video. "There are fortresses that are important to know. In my new column, I will start with the simplest ones," says the former coach of the German national team. The presentation of the fortress is followed by a series of interactive videos to help you memorise the motif in a fun way. Do you know the fortress with knight and bishop against queen? Take a look at our first sample of the new ChessBase Magazine #220! Simply load it with your web browser in the ChessBase Books format. Have fun!

7/15/2024 – Fabiano Caruana was simply unstoppable at the SuperUnited Rapid & Blitz Tournament in Croatia. The US star claimed his second consecutive victory in a Grand Chess Tour event with five rounds to spare, after entering the final day of action with a 4½-point lead and scoring 3½ points in the first four rounds played on Sunday. In a close battle for second place, Wesley So, Alireza Firouzja and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave ended up tied with 23 points each. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

7/14/2024 – In our previous section on how playing chess may affect your life, we asked our readers to guess whether chess players could expect to live longer or shorter lives, on average, than the rest of the non-chess people surrounding them. Today in the final section of the series, Frederic Friedel and Christian Hesse present some statistical results on this question.

7/14/2024 – Herman Grooten is an International Master, a renowned trainer and the author of several highly acclaimed books on chess training and strategy. In the 186th episode of his ChessBase show "Understanding before moving" Herman continues his series "Chess history in a nutshell" and continues to look at the life and games of Garry Kasparov who many consider to be the best player of all time. | Photo: Pascal Simon

7/14/2024 – The third event of the 2024 Grand Chess Tour is the SuperUnited Rapid & Blitz Croatia, the second of three speed chess events. The tournament is taking place on July 10-14 in Zagreb. The event starts with 9 rounds of rapid action, followed by 18 rounds of blitz. Included in the field are the next World Championship challenger, Dommaraju Gukesh, and the recent winner of the Superbet Chess Classic, Fabiano Caruana. | Follow the games live with expert commentary starting at 15.00 CEST (9.00 ET, 18.30 IST)