10/9/2022 – Welcome to our new series with Lilit Mkrtchian - "How does a chess pro prepare for a tournament?". Very recently, the Armenian IM played quite superb tournaments at the Olympiad, and the European Women's Championship. We wanted to ask a professional chess player, how they prepare for a tournament, so you at home can get some ideas, tricks, and inspiration for your next tournament. We start off with one of the keys for a good prep - building an opening repertoire. Perhaps not as ChessBase intended it, but it seems to work wonderfully for Lilit!
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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.
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How does a chess pro prepare for a tournament?
with Lilit Mkrtchian
So, how does one prepare for a tournament with ChessBase, Fritz, and the Megagdatabase?
We also wanted to know the answer to this question, and asked a professional chess player. In our six-part series, Lilit Mkrtchian guides us through the tournament preparation, by showing us how to build an opening repertoire, sharpen your skills with tactics training, and gives us many other tips, tricks, ideas, and inspirations.
In this walkthrough, we glimpse over Lilit's shoulder, and spot her repertoire, opponent preps, and we will certainly analyse some of her played games in depth.
Of course, we also tackle the moment, when you know about your next opponent, and how to trap them with your specific preparation. The Armenian IM will show us some examples of how this worked nicely.
A beautiful guide on how your next tournament can be more successful.
1:55 - When does a professional chess player decide to play in a tournament?
3:10 - Team tournament and single tournament are very different, correct?
4:00 - Lilit prepares for a tournament in general.
6:09 - How long before the tournament begins are you starting to prepare?
7:28 - You work on your openings all the time. Can you show us what your ChessBase folders look like?
8:35 - Lilit has over 750 Gigabyte of opening files.
10:25 - How are you preparing your opening repertoire with ChessBase and the Megadatabase?
14:27 - One of the most important features in ChessBase? - The "Reference" option
16:34 - The Megagdatabase lets me find all the newest variations for my opening.
18:30 - Save the variation (Perhaps not as ChessBase intended it, but it doesn't matter)
21:54 - Browsing the Megadatabase for new openings, seems like a nice hobby!
23:01 - Lilit tries many openings, to not get bored. That's why she is collecting so much.
23:51 - Preparing every day is like preparing for any tournament for all your life.
Lilit Mkrtchian is an International Master from Armenia, and received the IM title in 2003.
She was one of the best female players in the world in the 2010s and represented her national team in the Olympiads since 1996.
In 2003, she won the gold medal with her Armenian team in the European Women's Championship in Bulgaria, Plovdiv.
Furthermore, Mkrtchian won the Armenian women's chess champion four times.
In 2015, the IM won the individual gold medal on the second board, at the Women's World Team Chess Championship in China, Chengdu.
She still remains one of Armenia's strongest female chess players, is coaching several students, and is an active player in chess leagues, and tournaments.
Arne KaehlerArne Kaehler, a creative mind who is passionate about board games in general, was born in Hamburg and learned to play chess at a young age. By teaching chess to youth teams and creating chess-related videos on YouTube, Arne was able to expand this passion and has even created an online course for anyone who wants to learn how to play chess. Arne writes for the English and German news sites, but focuses mainly on content for the ChessBase media channels.
London System Powerbase 2026 is a database and contains in all 11 285 games from Mega 2026 and the Correspondence Database 2026, of which 282 are annotated.
The London System Powerbook 2026 is based on more than 410 000 games or game fragments from different opening moves and ECO codes; what they all have in common is that White plays d4 and Bf4 but does not play c4.
In this course, Grandmaster Elisabeth Pähtz presents the London System, a structured and ambitious approach based on the immediate Bf4, leading to rich and dynamic positions.
Opening videos: Open Spanish (Sipke Ernst) and Classical Sicilian (Nico Zwirs). Endgame Special by Igor Stohl: ‘Short or long side’ – where should the defending king be placed in rook endgames? ‘Lucky bag’ with 35 master analyses.
YOUR EASY ACCESS TO OPENING THEORY: Whether you want to build up a reliable and powerful opening repertoire or find new opening ideas for your existing repertoire, the Opening Encyclopaedia covers the entire opening theory on one product.
The Queen’s Gambit Declined Exchange Variation with 5.Bf4 has a great balance between positional play and sharp pawn pushes; and will be a surprise for your opponents while being easy to learn for you, as the key patterns are familiar.
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Lilit Mkrtchian is an International Master from Armenia, and received the IM title in 2003.
