2/20/2026 – Who is your favourite chess player – we asked you recently. Whose games do you enjoy the most? We got a lot of feedback, and will show you the choices that human chess players make – and compare them with what a chess AI chooses, after it has played through and evaluated millions of games.
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.!
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. FRITZ is more than just a chess engine – it’s a training revolution! 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 course, Grandmaster Elisabeth Pähtz presents the London System, a structured and ambitious approach based on the immediate Bf4, leading to rich and dynamic positions.
€59.90
The question we asked our readers was: Who are the most intersting chess players in history, focusing on style, rather than just strength? Who do you count as your favourites? We listed a number of candidates: Paul Morphy, Wilhelm Steinitz, Emanuel Lasker, José Raúl Capablanca, Alexander Alekhine, Mikhail Botvinnik, Mikhail Tal, Bobby Fischer, Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov, Vladimir Kramnik, Viswanathan Anand, Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura, Fabiano Caruana, Gukesh Dommaraju, R Praggnanandhaa, Arjun Erigaisi, Alireza Firouzja.
This is the list we got from the feedback of our readers:
Ed Schröder, the Dutch software developer, used his program Best of Chess, which we described in an earlier report, to extract the most spectacular games from chess history, evaluating them by three features:
King Attack
Material Sacrifice
Length of the game (the smaller the number of moves in a game the higher the bonus).
Ed ran his algorithms on the many million of high-quality games contained in Mega Database, and it identified the players it considered most attractive. This is the top 50 list generated by Best of Chess:
Here's a page that lists the results with all the individual factors that contributed to the final evaluation. Here's an explanation on how Best of Chess conducts its evaluation. And here you can directly compare the rankings of both groups:
Humans
AI
01. Fischer
02. Carlsen
03. Kasparov
04. Aljechine
05. Karpov
06. Tal
07. Capablanca
08. Keres
09. Spassky
10. Polgar
11. Smyslov
12. Rubinstein
13. Petrosian
14. Morphy
15. Lasker
16. Kramnik
17. Korchnoi
18. Botvinnik
19. Topalov
20. Shirov
21. Anderssen
22. Anand
23. Steinitz
24. Bronstein
25. Timman
26. Nezhmetdinov
27. Ivanchuk
28. Zukertort
29. Vachier-Lagrave
30. Tartakower
31. Svidler
32. Rapport
33. Planinc
34. Niemann
35. Miles
36. Lasker
37. Hou Yifan
38. Geller
39. Firouzja
40. Euwe
41. Chigorin
42. Boleslavsky
43. Bohatirchuk
01. Morphy
02. Nimzowitsch
03. Anderssen
04. Reti
05. Zukertort
06. Steinitz
07. Chigorin
08. Lasker
09. Alekhine
10. Euwe
11. Tarrasch
12. Rubinstein
13. Tal
14. Fischer
15. Shirov
16. Spassky
17. Polgar
18. Capablanca
19. Kasparov
20. Wei
21. Bronstein
22. Geller
23. Anand
24. Botvinnik
25. Van Foreest
26. Keres
27. Erigaisi
28. Reshevsky
29. Kramnik
30. Petrosian
31. Aronian
32. Ding
33. Gukesh
34. Keymer
35. Carlsen
36. Kortschnoj
37. Svidler
38. Topalov
39. Niemann
40. Adams
41. Praggnanandhaa
42. Giri
43. Firouzja
Ed created a page with games of four top scorers. The values for each of the three criteria are quoted in the games, which you can replay it on the page. "BTW, the first Morphy game is hilarious, I did not know it," Ed writes.
Finally, here's an animation of a list, based solely on their ratings, that was independantly generated by Chess.com five years ago:
Frederic FriedelEditor-in-Chief emeritus of the ChessBase News page. Studied Philosophy and Linguistics at the University of Hamburg and Oxford, graduating with a thesis on speech act theory and moral language. He started a university career but switched to science journalism, producing documentaries for German TV. In 1986 he co-founded ChessBase.
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.
This compact course is designed specifically for practical play. Instead of overwhelming you with endless theory, it focuses on the critical lines, typical plans, and recurring tactical ideas.
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.
€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.
