8/29/2020 – A few months ago we reported about Nakamura making a cameo in the award-winning and critically acclaimed series Billions. He did not stop there, he kept growing the game by involving more mainstream stars in chess. He even taught chess to World Strongest Man 2018, Hafþór J. Björnsson a.k.a. ‘The Mountain’ of Game of Thrones. Moreover, a few days before his impressive performance at the Magnus Carlsen Chess Tour Finals, Nakamura crossed 500K followers on Twitch. With that rapidly-gaining momentum, the esports teams TSM tweeted about their signing with Nakamura. This is only going to be good for chess in every aspect one can fathom. | Photo: Amruta Mokal
new: ChessBase Magazine 225
Chess Festival Prague 2025 with analyses by Aravindh, Giri, Gurel, Navara and others. ‘Special’: 27 highly entertaining miniatures. Opening videos by Werle, King and Ris. 10 opening articles with new repertoire ideas and much more. ChessBase Magazine offers first-class training material for club players and professionals! World-class players analyse their brilliant games and explain the ideas behind the moves. Opening specialists present the latest trends in opening theory and exciting ideas for your repertoire. Master trainers in tactics, strategy and endgames show you the tricks and techniques you need to be a successful tournament player! Available as a direct download (incl. booklet as pdf file) or booklet with download key by post. Included in delivery: ChessBase Magazine #225 as “ChessBase Book” for iPad, tablet, Mac etc.!
YOUR PERSONAL CHESS COACH - Whether you’re taking your first steps into the world of club chess, or already playing at a tournament level: with FRITZ, you can train more efficiently, intelligently and with a more personalised approach than ever before. FRITZ is more than just a chess engine – it’s a training revolution! Whether you’re taking your first steps into the world of club chess, or already playing at a tournament level: with FRITZ, you can train more efficiently, intelligently and with a more personalised approach than ever before.
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Nakamura continues to expand his horizon
A couple of days ago, Messi leaving Barcelona shocked Barça fans all over the world. When Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Cristiano Ronaldo or a cricketer switches teams/franchises, a lot of emotions are involved among the fans. Some get happy about the player’s wish and some feel sad that they have to make a difficult decision — either stick with their favourite team or support the new team where his/her favourite player is going. It can be both too. Last night when TSM (Team SoloMid) announced the signing of World no.1 in Blitz Hikaru Nakamura, it definitely generated a lot of positive reactions in both the chess and esports universes.
Starting out in chess is difficult, and this DVD aims to reduce that stress. Designed for beginner levels in openings, a brief introduction to the reasons we play some of the most common moves in popular openings like the Spanish and Sicilian is given.
Who is TSM?
Team SoloMid (TSM) is a professional esports organization based in the USA. It was founded in September 2009 by Andy “Reginald” Dinh. TSM currently fields players in League of Legends, Apex Legends, Valorant, Hearthstone, Super Smash Bros., Fortnite, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, PUBG Mobile, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege, Magic: The Gathering Arena and recently included chess. The organization previously had a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive team based in Denmark, which later became Astralis and also briefly owned an Overwatch team. TSM’s League of Legends team has won six of the total fifteen splits of North America’s League of Legends Championship Series (LCS).
TSM is sponsored by Lenovo, GEICO, Logitech, GrubHub and Twitch. Previous partners include Nerf and Dr. Pepper.
What does this signing mean?
Now you must be wondering what is the significance of this signing. Will Hikaru start streaming more Fall Guys, Fortnite or something? Well that's not the case. TSM asked the fans what kind of content they wanted to see.
So it is evident that Hikaru will be doing what he does best — something related to chess. However, it is not limited to chess only. Since TSM is a premier esports team, and they have professional teams in a number of famous games, a crossover from chess to any esports or vice-versa is highly likely.
Now you must be wondering if Hikaru is the first signing to a professional esports team. Well it is certainly one of the biggest acquisition among top chess players in the world, however, a few days ago Nakamura himself tweeted about WGM Qiyu Zhou signing with CLG.
I wanted to take a minute to congratulate the multi-hyphenate, wildly talented [Qiyu Zhou] on her signing with [CLG]. For those who don’t know her, she’s a WGM, a brilliant student, a former child World Champion in chess, and a true gamer. Catch her at http://twitch.tv/akanemsko
With over 2 million followers on Twitter, 2.3 million on YouTube, 3 million on Instagram, TSM is definitely a game changer. We can only hope for more people to start picking up chess, be it as a player, spectator, promoter or as a sponsor.
What’s the easiest way to win a chess game? We all know finding a good tactic in a game can let you win a point immediately. Therefore, Fundamentals of Tactics is an excellent choice for you if you wish to learn how to start finding tactics in your games!
Shahid AhmedShahid Ahmed is the senior coordinator and editor of ChessBase India. He enjoys covering chess tournaments and also likes to play in chess events from time to time.
YOUR PERSONAL CHESS COACH - Whether you’re taking your first steps into the world of club chess, or already playing at a tournament level: with FRITZ, you can train more efficiently, intelligently and with a more personalised approach than ever before.
Slav and Semi-Slav Powerbase 2026 is a database and contains a total of 11 766 games from Mega 2026 or the Correspondence Database 2026, of which 1136 are annotated.
For the Slav and Semi-Slav Powerbook 2026 the ratings average was set again at 2400. 2.24 million games from the engine room of playchess.com met this threshold, to which were added over 130 000 games played by humans.
In this volume, we dive into core aspects of chess technique. Smyslov taught the principle of tactical hierarchy, “checks, double attacks, and unprotected pieces”, and Mikhalchishin demonstrates how this method of calculation is vital.
Videos: Nico Zwirs examines two Petroffs from the 2026 Candidates. Robert Ris has a tip against the Caro-Kann Advance Variation with 3…c5. Fiona Sieber reveals a surprise weapon against the Najdorf. ‘Lucky Bag’ with 40 analyses by Ganguly, L'Ami et al.
YOUR PERSONAL CHESS COACH - Whether you’re taking your first steps into the world of club chess, or already playing at a tournament level: with FRITZ, you can train more efficiently, intelligently and with a more personalised approach than ever before.
In this powerful new course, endgame expert Karsten Müller teams up with rising star Leon Mendonca to deliver what truly matters: 10 essential rules that every player must know.
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