12/30/2022 – Magnus Carlsen and Bibisara Assaubayeva won the World Blitz Championships in Almaty. Carlsen thus grabbed the triple crown, as he is currently the classical, rapid and blitz world champion. The 18-year-old Assaubayeva, on her part, defended the title she had won in 2021. | Find here the standings and all available games. A full pictorial report will be published shortly. | Photo: FIDE / Lennart Ootes
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.!
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No draws for the champ
Magnus Carlsen kicked off the second day of the World Blitz Championship in Almaty a full point behind sole leader Hikaru Nakamura. After scoring 7/9 points in Friday’s rounds, the Norwegian grabbed a second world title in three days at the Kazakh metropolis. Since he is still the classical world champion, Carlsen once again managed to get the ‘triple crown’, a feat he has achieved, incredibly, for a third time in his career.
Despite not having a great final day, Nakamura ended the tournament in second place. Much like Carlsen, the US grandmaster lost twice on Friday, but he also drew four times — unlike the eventual champion, who won all seven of his remaining games, ending the day with no draws to his name. Referring to Nakamura, a much respected colleague of his, Carlsen noted:
While he is used to winning tournaments, he’s never won this one. When he started a bit shaky, then I knew I had a chance.
Third place went to Haik Martirosyan from Armenia, who scored as many points as Nakamura but had an inferior tiebreak score. Remarkably, the 22-year-old defeated Alexey Sarana and Fabiano Caruana in the final two rounds of the event!
Bibisara Assaubayeva had shocked the world last year by winning the Women’s World Blitz Championship at 17. Now, with an astounding final sprint of five consecutive wins, the girl from Taraz successfully defended her title on home soil. The youngster confessed:
I am very delighted that I won in my home country. I felt I had a lot of responsibility on my shoulders. Unfortunately, I got sick after the first day of the rapid, so I wanted to show all my strength in the blitz.
Going into the final round, Assaubayeva was sharing first place with Tan Zhongyi. While the eventual winner of the event managed to beat Harika Dronavalli with black, Tan was defeated by Humpy Koneru, giving Assaubayeva outright victory without a need for tiebreaks. Koneru finished in sole second place, a mere half point behind the champion.
Polina Shuvalova took home the bronze. The Russian star had been leading the standings until round 15 (the women’s event lasted 17 rounds), but a loss to Humpy and a draw with Olga Badelka prevented her from getting a higher spot on the podium.
The World Blitz Championship are Swiss opens (21 rounds in the open and 17 rounds in the women’s) with a time control of 3 minutes for the entire game, plus a 2-second increment starting from move one. A tie for first place will be decided by two 3+2 blitz games. If still tied, more 3+2 games will be played until finding a winner.
Schedule
December 29: Rounds 1-12 (open); Rounds 1-9 (women’s)
December 30: Rounds 13-21 (open): Rounds 10-17 (women’s)
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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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