4/18/2024 – Three games ended decisively in round 11 of the Women’s Candidates Tournament, with Tan Zhongyi beating Kateryna Lagno in a key matchup, Vaishali R taking down Aleksandra Goryachkina, and Humpy Koneru defeating Nurgyul Salimova. These results left Tan atop the standings, with a half-point advantage over Lei Tingjie. Goryachkina’s loss left her a whole two points behind Tan with only three rounds to go in Toronto. | Photo: FIDE / Michal Walusza

4/17/2024 – Lei Tingjie scored a fourth win in five rounds to join Tan Zhongyi in the lead of the Women’s Candidates Tournament in Toronto. Lei defeated direct contender Aleksandra Goryachkina with the black pieces. With four rounds to go, the Chinese leading duo stands a full point ahead of Goryachkina and Kateryna Lagno. Meanwhile, one more game ended decisively on Monday, with Vaishali R first surviving a losing position and then managing to beat Nurgyul Salimova. | Photo: FIDE / Michal Walusza

4/14/2024 – Lei Tingjie scored a third consecutive win in round 8 of the Women’s Candidates Tournament. Importantly, Lei defeated former long-standing sole leader Tan Zhongyi, which resulted in three players sharing first place at the end of the round — Lei, Tan and Aleksandra Goryachkina are now sharing the lead with 5 points each. One more game ended decisively on Saturday, as Humpy Koneru got the better of Vaishali R with the white pieces. | Photo: FIDE / Michal Walusza

4/12/2024 – The frontrunners in the Women’s Candidates Tournament faced each other in round 7, with Tan Zhongyi keeping the lead after holding Aleksandra Goryachkina to a 40-move draw with the black pieces. The one decisive game of the day saw Lei Tingjie beating Vaishali R. This was Lei’s second win in a row, which leaves her tied for third place with 4/7 points. | Photo: FIDE / Michal Walusza

4/12/2024 – Arne recently played in a chess tournament, and one of his opponents played the unusual 1.f4, which was quite a surprise. Sadly, he didn't film this Smart Moves episode before the tournament, to get to know the surprising answer Nh6!? The so called - Horsefly Defence in the Bird Opening. Even the engines think that this counter is absolutely legit, and the Mega Database shows excellent results as well. Svitlana shows, why it is a powerful move!

4/11/2024 – All four games ended decisively in round 6 of the Women’s Candidates, with Tan Zhongyi, Aleksandra Goryachkina, Kateryna Lagno and Lei Tingjie all collecting full points. Tan remains as the sole leader after obtaining a magnificent, attacking victory over Anna Muzychuk. | Photo: FIDE / Michal Walusza

4/10/2024 – Tan Zhongyi remains as the sole leader at the Women’s Candidates after all four games ended drawn in Tuesday’s fifth round. None of the games lasted fewer than 44 moves, though, as a number of chances were missed in hard-fought struggles. Tan has a half-point lead over Aleksandra Goryachkina, while Vaishali R, Nurgyul Salimova and Kateryna Lagno (pictured) stand a half point further back. | Photo: FIDE / Michal Walusza

4/8/2024 – Despite fighting chess being the norm in round 4 of the Women’s Candidates, only one game finished decisively, with underdog Nurgyul Salimova (pictured) beating third seed Humpy Koneru. Tan Zhongyi survived a clearly inferior position against Kateryna Lagno, while Anna Muzychuk missed great winning chances for a second day in a row. | Photo: FIDE / Michal Walusza

4/7/2024 – Much like in the open section, the Women’s Candidates had one decisive game in Saturday’s third round. Vaishali R made it 2 out of 2 for the brother-sister duo in Toronto (Pragg defeated Vidit in the open) by beating Nurgyul Salimova with the white pieces. Vaishali thus bounced back from her round-2 loss against Tan Zhongyi. Tan held Humpy Koneru to a draw with the black pieces to remain as the sole leader. | Photo: FIDE / Michal Walusza

4/6/2024 – Tan Zhongyi scored two wins in as many games to become the early leader at the Women’s Candidates Tournament in Toronto. After beating Lei Tingjie in the first round, Tan got the better of Vaishali R on Friday to keep her perfect score. Now in sole second place stands Aleksandra Goryachkina, who defeated Anna Muzychuk with the white pieces. | Photo: FIDE / Michal Walusza

4/3/2024 – Together with Arne Kähler, Canadian WIM Svitlana Demchenko (photo) regularly entertains and trains readers of our website on the Svitlana’s Smart Moves show. The 20-year-old from Ukraine also made smart moves at the Canadian Women’s Zonal tournament in Toronto, which ended at the beginning of April. She started as number 5 in the seeding list and ended up in a tie for first place with 7½/9 points. She finished second on tiebreaks behind rating favourite Maili-Jade Ouellet. | Photo: ChessCanada Facebook page

4/2/2024 – Svitlana dug deep to find some outstanding, beautiful tactics, by all the men's and women's candidates, who will compete in Toronto soon. Arne is trying hard to solve all the puzzles, and get 8 out of 8 in both videos. Will he succeed? And how will you do, dear viewer? These two videos are the perfect start to get into the mood for the candidates tournament!

3/14/2024 – This episode was lost in the depths of 2023, but luckily returned! The Gruenfeld is a very hyper-modern opening, which gives White the centre, while Black has to fight around the flanks. If Black knows the opening well, White has a difficult time gaining some advantage. But with an example game from Vincent Keymer, the move "h4" is a beautiful way to attack the Black pieces. Svitlana shows us how to master this idea.

3/10/2024 – The Carlsbad Pawn structure, or formation, is normally deriving from the Queen's Gambit declined, London System, or the Caro-Kann. A common structure, which actually has some ideas, and plans to accomplish. Svitlana tells us, what the major plans are for White, and Black, by showing us two example games. One of them is Garry Kasparov vs. Nigel Short!

2/24/2024 – The Methodical Attacking Principles within certain pawn structures hold high importance. From the opening to the middlegame, the patterns, plans, and theories derived from our initial pawn moves necessitate different actions. Those who frequently play the Queen's Gambit likely have a better understanding of an isolated pawn compared to aficionados of the Ruy Lopez. Svitlana discusses an excellent game by Jan-Krzysztof Duda, highlighting how he gradually leverages his pawn structure advantage for an unstoppable attack.

2/2/2024 – With the stunning result of 5 out of 5 on board 1, Svitlana participated in the Canadian University Championship! One of her games included the Portuguese Variation in the Scandinavian Opening, which is "Svitlana's Smart Moves" most viewed episodes! She won against an FM, and her opponent was almost without a chance. Maybe, this opening is much better, than everybody thought?

1/26/2024 – This episode is a must-watch for every endgame beginner, and soon to be expert. Svitlana is presenting some essential endgame positions and how to deal with them. May it be rook vs. bishop, queen vs. rook, and other positions, which every chess player had on the board already, at least once in their life. Our advice: Use Fritz 19, and replay the positions from the replayer to actively learn the patterns you saw in this video.

1/19/2024 – No, you haven't missed a game of the Tata Steel 2024. Svitlana decided to travel a year back in time, and analyse one of the most interesting games of the Dutch tournament, 2023. Interestingly, both protagonists - Gukesh D, and Praggnanandhaa - will face each other soon enough, again in Wijk aan Zee! This is a sweet teaser for their upcoming match-up.

12/31/2023 – Once again, a fantastic chess year is coming to an end. As usual, Svitlana gathered some of her absolute favourite tactics, for the viewer and Arne to solve. Happy new year everybody, and see you in 2024!

12/22/2023 – Today's episode is about two Dutch grandmasters playing the French defence. Friso Nijboer is facing Jan Timman, and the position is quickly advancing to a very interesting middle game. A tactical masterpiece is ready to be solved by the viewer!

12/16/2023 – Dr. Karsten Mueller and Luis Engel have generated a lot of interest with their four player type model. Now, with Fritz 19 offering different club player characters as opponents, the question arises whether there is a correlation to the player types. Surprisingly, the answer is quite positive, as Karsten Mueller explains in detail in the video. The German GM has also analysed three of the games against our ChessBase authors and friends Robert Ris, Jan Jettel, and Svitlana Demchenko.

12/16/2023 – Magnus Carlsen faced Levon Aronian several times in his career. The game Svitlana chose to analyse together with us, points out some crucial initiative decisions by Magnus, which made him win the game. Sacrificing one pawn to gain some advantage is a common practice. But sacrificing two pawns is already quite exceptional.

12/4/2023 – For its December list FIDE has not yet rated the tournaments in St. Louis and Zagreb, so Alireza Firouzja's rating loss is still quite moderate. The 30 Elo-points Hans Niemann gained in the Tournament of Peace in Zagreb do not appear in the list either. But Carlsen remains the clear number one.

11/22/2023 – Every now and then, Svitlana talks about a new opening. This time, it is the suspicious Budapest Gambit. To Arne's disappointment - if you play the opening correctly, some variants seem to move to a very calm middle- and endgame, rather than setting the board on fire. It might be interesting to get to know the Gambit a bit better because it is actually quite sound.