Impressions from Weissenhaus

2/12/2025 – Impressions from the semi-finals of the Weissenhaus Freestyle event: Vincent Keymer won against Magnus Carlsen. Anna Cramling vs. Alexandra Botez was the Freestyle evening event. Gukesh reunites with Frederic Friedel and the World Champion receives an unexpected gift. And finally, we see the perhaps most famous chess button in the world!

Tata Steel Chess - Pragg takes the title in thrilling tiebreaker

2/2/2025 – Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu won the 2025 Tata Steel Masters after beating world champion Gukesh Dommaraju in a blitz tiebreaker. The two Indian stars entered the final round tied for first place and, notably, both lost their classical games on Sunday. Pragg then won the blitz tiebreaker by a 2-1 score after Gukesh misplayed a knight endgame in the third encounter. Meanwhile, Czech GM Thai Dai Van Nguyen won the Challengers, as he had a better tiebreak score than Aydin Suleymanli, who finished tied for first in the single round-robin. | Replay all the games with computer-assisted analysis. Full report to follow shortly.

60m The Two Knights

This entry into the 60 minutes series concentrates on the Modern variation of the Italian game where White opens the centre early : 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bc4 Nf6 4 d4 exd4 5 e5!. This line can be reached by various move orders, most frequently from the Scotch 3 d4 exd4 4 Bc4. It's a sharp variation and Grandmasters such as Evgeny Sveshnikov have used it frequently,with very good results. It's a perfect line for club players to adopt which is relatively easy to learn and which contains many traps. All the main responses are covered here, including 5...d5, 5...Ng4 and 5...Ne4 and the conclusion is that is is difficult for Black to equalize in a straightforward way. Problems are being posed, which over the board might prove tough to solve.