6/22/2020 – In this "Simon Says" Simon looks at the latest games from the Chessable Masters. He takes a look at the highlights and lowlights from the first six rounds and throws a glance at a curious case of "Chess Blindness", an illness most chess players know, and for which Dr. Tarrasch even coined a Latin term. | Watch "Simon Says" for free and on-demand (for a limited time, or forever with a ChessBase Premium account). (Normally 16:00 UTC (18:00 CEST / 12 Noon EST). | Photo: Lennart Ootes
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.!
Simon Williams presents the London System, providing the theory you need for your games (7 h 16 min). In addition Williams also introduces into typical tactics and patterns in a seperate product. (53 games, 96 training questions and 3h 14 min)
Dr. Siegbert Tarrasch (5 March 1862 – 17 February 1934) was one of the strongest chess players and most influential chess teachers of the late 19th and early 20th century, but throughout his life he had always been an amateur. He was born in Breslau and after studying medicine in Halle he worked as a medical practitioner in Nuremberg and Munich.
Tarrasch came up with a Latin name for an illness that is peculiar to chess players: "Chess Blindness", or, to use Tarrasch's term: Amaurosis scacchistica. In a way, chess blindness is similar to the common cold: everyone suffers from it occasionally, but nobody knows why, and how you can protect yourself against it.
There is something tragicomic about chess blindness: deep opening preparation, sophisticated maneuvers, bold sacrifices or precise and deep calculation of countless variations all lead to nothing because of the unreliability of the human mind. However, with a relaxed attitude towards perfection and a little bit of schadenfreude you might enjoy chess blindness, particularly if others suffer from it.
In round 2 of the Chessable Masters Pentala Harikrishna and Magnus Carlsen both fell victim to this inexplicable disease.
Pentala Harikrishna - M. Carlsen, Chessable Masters 2020
Position after 30...Ba4
Magnus has just played ...Ba4 which is actually a major blunder. What should Pentala now have played?
(See the full game and the solution below)
This week's show
The show starts at 16:00 UTC (18:00 CEST / 2 PM EDT). You can also watch it in the archive with a ChessBase Account. Don't have an account? You can register a free 90-day account to watch!
On this DVD Grandmaster Daniel King: ● demonstrates typical tactical patterns ● shows how strong players use their tactical awareness ● puts your tactical abilities to the test — but this is a test with a difference. Although the emphasis is on tactics, there are also positions that require a strategic solution. You don’t know what’s coming next...
Simon is on air most Mondays at 16:00 UTC (18:00 CEST / 12 Noon EST)
At the airport, in the hotel or at home on your couch: with the new ChessBase you always have access to the whole ChessBase world: the new ChessBase video library, tactics server, opening training App, the live database with eight million games, Let’s Check and web access to playchess.com
About Simon Says
In early 2015 Simon Williams launched his own show called "Simon says" after producing the first of his ChessBase video series. On a weekly basis (with breaks for tournaments and chess events) Simon entertains the chess world with attacking ideas, play strategies and witty manoeuvres on the chess board.
ChessBase Premium members have permanent access to the videos in the archive. Over 60 shows and counting have been published to date. Their lengths differ but most of them run for about 60 minutes.
Opening with the Chigorin shows your intention to play for a win right from the outset. After 2...Nc6 Black's pieces fly into the game putting pressure on White's position from a very early stage. This opening is ideal for the type of player who strives for an unconvential yet attacking game right from the start.
Over the last couple of years nearly all the world's elite grandmasters have been employing the London System, and on this DVD Simon Williams shows what we can learn from their practice. The "Ginger GM" takes a look at all the latest developments whilst teaching you all the basics that you need to know in order to play this opening with success.
Simon Williams presents the London System, providing the theory you need for your games (7 h 16 min). In addition Williams also introduces into typical tactics and patterns in a seperate product. (53 games, 96 training questions and 3h 14 min)
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".
How do you play the Queen's Gambit Accepted? Does White have promising variations or can Black construct a water-tight repertoire? The Powerbook provides the answers based on 300 000 games, most of them played by engines.
The Queen's Gambit Accepted Powerbase 2025 is a database and contains a total of 11827 games from Mega 2025 and the Correspondence Database 2024, of which 240 are annotated.
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.
€14.90
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