6/8/2015 – In May Grandmaster Bassem Amin, with an Elo of 2634 Egypt's number one, won the African Individual Chess Championships for the third time. Priyadarshan Banyan used the opportunity to ask the new African Champion who currently is doing military service in the Egyptian army to comment on his career, chess in Africa, and chess in Egypt.
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.
The ChessBase Mega Database 2025 is the premiere chess database with over 11 million games from
1475 to 2024
€229.90
An Interview with GM Bassem Amin
Bassem Amin (black) on his way to became African Champion
Priyadarshan Banjan: How do you feel about winning the African Chess Championships?
Bassem Amin: Of course, I feel happy to have become the African chess champion for the third time (2009, 2013, 2015). The African Individuals Championship is the strongest tournament on the continent and by winning it I qualified for World Cup.
PB: When did you learn chess?
Bassem: I started to play chess when I was five years old. My father taught me how to move the pieces, and when he saw my great interest in the game, he started to bring professional coaches. That was the start of a wonderful chess journey that brought many pleasant memories and a number of titles. Most notably, I became Arab Men’s Champion three times (2005, 2006, 2013), African Champion three times, and Mediterranean Chess champion in 2014. In the World Youth Championship U18 in 2006 I won the bronze medal, and two years later, I won bronze again at the World Juniors.
Bassem Amin at the Chess Olympiad 2014 in Tromso
PB: What are your plans now?
Bassem: I am currently in the Egyptian army doing one year of military service. I joined the army on 28th January, 2015. It's a new experience and during the first two months it was quite hard. Then I joined the sport center in the army and was able to get back to chess: in April I took part in the World Team Championship, then I played the African individuals. These were my first tournaments since last November!
PB: Could you share some of your thoughts on chess culture in Egypt with us…
Bassem: Chess is getting more popular in Egypt, however, the government could support it more. We have no coach for the National team, and the players in the national team get no fees for team events like the Olympiad or the World Team Championship.
PB: What would you recommend to promote young talents in your country and in Africa?
Bassem: I think the best way to get new young talents is to introducing chess in schools programs. I think this should be a top priority for the Egyptian Chess Federation and all African federations willing to make chess more popular.
Impressions from the African Individual Championship
The African Individual Chess Championship 2015 took place from 2nd to 12th May in Cairo. It was a nine round swiss event with a time limit of 90 minutes for 40 moves followed by 30 minutes to finish the game with an increment of 30 seconds per move from move one. The Egyptian Chess Federation organized the event on behalf of the African Chess Confederation and FIDE. 30 players started in the open, 22 in the Women's tournament, among them almost all top players from the continent. The winner of the open section qualified for the World Cup 2015.
An Egyptian painting depicting the ancient game ‘Senet’.
Unfortunately, due to FIDE sanctions against South Africa the defending champion GM Kenny Solomon from South Africa could not make the trip to Cairo. But he congratulated the winner: “Definitely, despite the sanctions there is hope. The people working on chess are good at heart! I think the problem is related to the system within rather than people. All chess players who would like to represent SA and play internationally are affected and are troubled by this. I am very positive that I will get another chance someday. I am happy that GM Bassem Amin won the event. He is a great champion and Africa’s best!"
Second seed GM Ahmed Adly (right, playing black) from Egypt finished second for
the second year in a row. In round six he lost a crucial game against Algerian
GM Mohamed Haddoucche. In the end Adly shared first place with 7.0/9 but was second on tie-break.
The Algerian IM Adlane Arab (left, playing with White) remained undefeated and finished third with 6.5/9.
Third seed GM Mohamed Haddouche (right, playing black) scored 6.0/9 and became fourth.
Priyadarshan BanjanPriyadarshan Banjan is a 23-year-old club player from India. He works as an editor for ChessBase News and ChessBase India. He is a chess fanatic and an avid fan of Vishy Anand. He also maintains a blog on a variety of topics.
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.
€19.90
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.
