1/4/2025 – The dispute over Magnus Carlsen's trousers in the rapid tournament and the crowning of two world champions in the blitz section, which was not provided for in the rules, dominated the news cycle surrounding the 2024 World Rapid and Blitz Championships 2024 - with one important sporting decision taking a back seat: thanks to his performance in New York, Fabiano Caruna won the FIDE Circuit 2024 and thus qualified for the 2026 Candidates Tournament. | Photo: Lennart Ootes
new: ChessBase 18 - Mega package
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.
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.
The course is designed to provide a deep yet practical repertoire for Black, balancing solid foundations with aggressive counterplay.
€39.90
Caruana's sixth consecutive Candidates Tournament
One way to qualify for the 2026 Candidates Tournament is through the FIDE Circuit, a new competition introduced by FIDE, which comprises a series of tournaments. Depending on the format and strength of each tournament, players earn Circuit points based on their performance, which are tallied at the end of the year. The player with the most points secures a place in the 2026 Candidates Tournament. Two spots are awarded in this manner: one for 2024 and another for 2025.
The last two tournaments where players could earn Circuit points for 2024 were the World Rapid and Blitz Championships. Before these tournaments, Fabiano Caruana was narrowly ahead of Arjun Erigaisi in the Circuit standings. Caruana managed to maintain this lead and secured victory in the 2024 FIDE Circuit.
The Ruy Lopez is one of the oldest openings which continues to enjoy high popularity from club level to the absolute world top. In this video series, American super GM Fabiano Caruana, talking to IM Oliver Reeh, presents a complete repertoire for White.
With this, Caruana has become the first player to qualify for the upcoming Candidates Tournament. Previously, the runner-up of the previous World Championship match was automatically qualified for the Candidates Tournament, but FIDE has abolished this rule. If Ding Liren wishes to make another attempt at the World Championship title, he will need to qualify through other means.
For Caruana, this will be his sixth Candidates Tournament. His first appearance was in Moscow in 2016, where he finished tied for 2nd-3rd place, narrowly behind Sergey Karjakin.
Two years later, in 2018, at the Berlin Candidates Tournament, Caruana performed better and won the event. In the subsequent World Championship match against Magnus Carlsen in London, 2018, Caruana achieved a 6-6 draw in classical games, as all 12 games ended in draws. However, Carlsen convincingly won the rapid tie-break with a score of 3-0.
Caruana also participated in the next three Candidates Tournaments. In 2020-21, he finished tied for 3rd-4th place, while in 2022, he placed 5th, marking his worst performance in an edition of the Candidates Tournament.
At the 2024 Candidates in Toronto, Caruana played against Ian Nepomniachtchi in the final round. With a victory, he could have tied with Dommaraju Gukesh in 1st place, which would have necessitated a tiebreak to determine who would face Ding Liren in the World Championship match in November. The game against Nepomniachtchi was dramatic, as Caruana missed several winning opportunities and ultimately had to settle for a draw after 109 moves, finishing tied for 2nd-4th place.
Glorious sacrifices, unexpected tactics and checkmating attacks. The King's Gambit is one of the oldest and most romantic openings in the game of chess. These DVDs contain all you need to know to play the King's Gambit.
Currently ranked 2nd in the world, Caruana will be among the favourites at the 2026 Candidates if he manages to maintain his form and playing strength over the next two years.
Johannes FischerJohannes Fischer was born in 1963 in Hamburg and studied English and German literature in Frankfurt. He now lives as a writer and translator in Nürnberg. He is a FIDE-Master and regularly writes for KARL, a German chess magazine focusing on the links between culture and chess. On his own blog he regularly publishes notes on "Film, Literature and Chess".
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
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