12/7/2022 – ChessBase Magazine offers a window to the world of professional chess. Issue #210 contains 7578 recent games, (45 annotated) 12 opening surveys, 9 demo lectures and several exercises for training. Annotators include Anish Giri, Ajun Erigaisi, Gabriel Sargissian, Ivan Sokolov, Luke McShane, Pentala Harikrishna, Pragganandhaa, Maria Muzychuk and Wesley So among others. The icing on the cake is a feature on Ding Liren who will play the world championship match with Ian Nepomniachtchi now that Carlsen has announced that he will not defend the title. Prof. Nagesh Havanur took a closer look.
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.!
Winning starts with what you know The new version 18 offers completely new possibilities for chess training and analysis: playing style analysis, search for strategic themes, access to 6 billion Lichess games, player preparation by matching Lichess games, download Chess.com games with built-in API, built-in cloud engine and much more.
Top trainers strongly recommend regular study of well-explained classical games to improve your understanding of chess in the long term. 33 modern classics are explained in details on this video course.
€39.90
ChessBase Magazine 210: A Review by Nagesh Havanur
Even as I write these lines, the World Team Championship has drawn to a close, with China edging out Uzbekistan, Spain and India. A salutary reminder of the strength of Chinese chess players. It’s a pity that two of the best chess teams in the world, China and Russia could not compete in the recent Chess Olympiad. As is known, China did not field its players on account of Covid restrictions and Russia could not participate on account of the FIDE ban with the invasion of Ukraine.
With the absence of Russia and China the main battle was between other contenders, the USA, India, Armenia and Uzbekistan. As it happened, the experienced USA and Armenia Teams received setbacks in their matches with young Indian and Uzbek Teams. Thus the scene was set for the decisive encounter between India and Uzbekistan.
India being the host had fielded two teams, "India I" and "India II". Uzbekistan had only drawn the match with "India I" Team. While Vakhidov had prevailed over Sasikiran and Abdusattorov had lost to Harikrishna:
In this issue Harikrishna himself annotates the game:
Abdusattorov-Harikrishna, Chess Olympiad 2022
It’s to the credit of the Uzbek Team that it remained in the race for the first place till it faced "India II" Team in the penultimate round. Here unfortunately, Sindarov lost to Praggnandhaa and games on other boards were drawn. So only the first board encounter, Abdusattorov-Gukesh remained and it was watched with bated breath by spectators all over the world. Before this round Gukesh rode at wave with (+7,- 0, =1)) vanquishing Shirov, Caruana and Sargissian among others. But anything could happen in a game and coaches, R.B. Ramesh and Ivan Sokolov were understandably anxious.
R.B. Ramesh (front) and Ivan Sokolov during the match Uzbekistan vs India II | Photo: Lennart Ootes
Ivan Sokolov, the coach of the Uzbek Team recaptures the final phase of the game:
Gukesh-Abdusattorov, Chess Olympiad 2022
Now let me draw attention of the readers to a video that they have all seen before:
Gukesh was devastated by this loss, holding himself responsible for India’s descent down the Olympiad Cross-table. In a subsequent interview he was to narrate how Anand spent time with him after this disaster, sharing his own experience of loss and defeat, bringing him back to his senses.
To return to the Olympiad, I have one reservation. The host nation is allowed to field two teams, a courtesy and privilege conferred by rules. This system gives unfair advantage to the host nation. In the circumstances it’s a wonder that Uzbekistan survived its matches with Indian I and India II and went on to win Gold.
Anyway, the Ukraine Team won the Women’s Olympiad. Readers may recall that in the previous issue, CBM 209 ran a Special on Anna and Mariya Muzychuk from Ukraine. The sisters did their beleaguered nation proud by leading their team to victory. Both have annotated a game each.
As Mariya Muzychuk acknowledged, no less a role was played by their team mates, especially, Anna Ushenina, 14th Women’s World Champion who scored 7.5 out of 9 points.
Anna Ushenina | Photo/Lennart Ootes/FIIDE
This issue also gives games from Sinquefield Cup including the well-known encounter, Carlsen –Niemann that led to the world champion’s exit from the tournament and the controversy that followed. Now that the matter is in court, let the law take its own course. One unfortunate outcome of the unsavoury development was that the rest of the tournament lost public interest. Not fair to the players, though.
Ding Liren : A star in waiting
This issue also carries a special feature on Ding Liren with 18 annotated games, commentary on his play in middlegame and endgame. The opponents include such illustrious names as, Aronian, Caruana,Duda, Mamedyarov and Nepomniachtchi.
Ding Liren | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour
Here we have room for just one game:
Ding Liren-Caruana, Sinquefield Cup 2019
Opening videos and surveys
There are 3 opening videos in this issue. The first offers an introduction to a new gambit in the English Opening by Daniel King.
1.c4 e5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.Nf3 e4 4.Ng5 c6!?
Currently it has no proper name. As it was introduced by the Indian GM, Adhiban, it makes sense to call the line after him. Note that the game, Vakhidov-Adhiban, Chess Olympiad 2022 with the same line is also analysed by Ivan Sokolov, the coach of the Uzbekistan team. However, his analysis begins only after White is a healthy pawn up on the 23rd move. No matter, Black was still able to draw with some dangerous counterplay. The second presents an analysis of a line in the Modern Benoni by Mihail Marin. The third is a lecture on the Classical Variation of the Nimzo- Indian by Jan Werle. Take your pick.
There are as many as 12 opening surveys ranging from the Sicilian to the semi Slav. Among them, I would single out two articles, one on the Dilworth Variation by Robert Ris and the other on the Botvinnik System by Evgeny Postny. Vernon Dilworth (1916-2004) a great chess amateur has not always received his due for his remarkable line in the Ruy Lopez. By way of historical interest here is the game in which it made its debut in correspondence chess. I have also provided an over view of the Open Spanish for readers not familiar with current theory.
David Weir - Vernon Dilworth, 1941
The other article on the Botvinnik System offers analysis of a rare move 12.h4!? It’s a dangerous move as the pawn threatens to roll forward to h8. However, Black has to take strong measures to create counterplay. Here is an illustration hidden in Evgeny Postny’s annotations:
Povilas Pakenas- Heri Darmanto
An old classic remembered
One more feature deserves mention. It’s the commentary on the game, Fischer – Petrosian Candidates’ 1971 (7) by Dorian Rogozenco. It may be recalled that this game was also discussed in a recent article on the news page.
Besides opening surveys, this issue has standard features on tactics, strategy and the endgame. A new feature continued from CBM 208 is a video lecture on time management by Jan Markos. A practical lesson for serious tournament players.
Summing up
The main database of the issue has 7578 recent games of which 45 are deeply annotated. There is much else in this DVD that deserves to be explored. Apart from the GMs I have already mentioned, the commentators include Anish Giri, Ajun Erigaisi, Gabriel Sargissian, Luke McShane, Pragganandhaa, and Wesley So among others. A major contribution is made by Ivan Sokolov who has made a commentary on the decisive phase in 8 games. It may be noted that there are more annotated games in the sections on opening theory and training.
Nagesh HavanurProf. Nagesh Havanur (otherwise known as "chessbibliophile") is a senior academic and research scholar. He taught English in Mumbai for three decades and has now settled in Bangalore, India. His interests include chess history, biography and opening theory. He has been writing on the Royal Game for more than three decades. His articles and reviews have appeared on several web sites and magazines.
Rossolimo-Moscow Powerbase 2025 is a database and contains a total of 10950 games from Mega 2025 and the Correspondence Database 2024, of which 612 are annotated.
The greater part of the material on which the Rossolimo/Moscow Powerbook 2025 is based comes from the engine room of playchess.com: 263.000 games. This imposing amount is supplemented by some 50 000 games from Mega and from Correspondence Chess.
Focus on the Sicilian: Opening videos on the Najdorf Variation with 6.h3 e5 7.Nb3 (Luis Engel) and the Taimanov Variation with 7.Qf3 (Nico Zwirs). ‘Lucky bag’ with 38 analyses by Anish Giri, Surya Ganguly, Abhijeet Gupta, Yannick Pelletier and many more.
Throughout the video course, Sasikran shows various examples from his career to explain sacrifices for initiative, an attack, a better pawn structure and much more.
In this insightful video course, Grandmaster David Navara shares practical advice on when to calculate deeply in a position — and just as importantly, when not to.
The Trompowsky is especially suited for faster time controls as you don‘t have to memorise endless lines of theory, and you push your opponent out of their comfort zone after your second move.
€49.90
We use cookies and comparable technologies to provide certain functions, to improve the user experience and to offer interest-oriented content. Depending on their intended use, analysis cookies and marketing cookies may be used in addition to technically required cookies. Here you can make detailed settings or revoke your consent (if necessary partially) with effect for the future. Further information can be found in our data protection declaration.
Pop-up for detailed settings
We use cookies and comparable technologies to provide certain functions, to improve the user experience and to offer interest-oriented content. Depending on their intended use, cookies may be used in addition to technically required cookies, analysis cookies and marketing cookies. You can decide which cookies to use by selecting the appropriate options below. Please note that your selection may affect the functionality of the service. Further information can be found in our privacy policy.
Technically required cookies
Technically required cookies: so that you can navigate and use the basic functions and store preferences.
Analysis Cookies
To help us determine how visitors interact with our website to improve the user experience.
Marketing-Cookies
To help us offer and evaluate relevant content and interesting and appropriate advertisement.