5/19/2022 – Munich will host the third leg of the FIDE Women’s Grand Prix 2022-23, to be held from February 1-14, 2023. The venues, dates, and details for the other three legs in the WGP Series will be announced at the end of May. | Photos: FIDE

4/4/2022 – At the beginning of April, the FIDE published its new ranking list. With a rating of 2864 Magnus Carlsen continues to lead the Top 100 by a wide margin - he is exactly 60 points ahead of Alireza Firouzja, who has a rating of 2804 and is officially the world's number two. Richard Rapport climbed to seventh place and now has a rating of 2776. Hou Yifan leads the women's ranking list, Firouzja is the best junior and Zhu Jiner is number one on the girl's list.

3/5/2022 – With the start of the 2022 Reykjavik Open just over a month away, it’s time to take a little stock and remind chess players about the upcoming event. Perhaps some people are hesitant to make a decision on participating in a chess tournament due to the current Covid situation. We can however give you some fantastic news. Since last Friday, there are no, i.e. ZERO, Covid restrictions in Iceland. Everything is open “as normal” and there are no longer any restrictions on the border. Press release of the Kvika Reykjavik Open 2022 – Icelandic Chess Federation

3/2/2022 – FIDE published its new World Ranking List. World Champion Magnus Carlsen remains the clear number one but did not make any significant progress towards the 2900 mark - Carlsen gained points by winning in Wijk but lost these points again in one game in the Norwegian league. The winner of the Challengers in Wijk, Arjun Erigaisi, is now among the top 100, and Hikaru Nakamura is back in the top 20.

2/4/2022 – In his Power Play Show, GM Daniel King looks at two Tata Steel classics, played seven years apart, but in the same opening. It's interesting and worth comparing the strategies of the two victors, Magnus Carlsen and Arjun Erigaisi. | Power Play is on air most Fridays. Watch it on-demand with a ChessBase Premium account. All the usual puzzles, games and instruction will be on offer.

2/2/2022 – FIDE has published the new world ranking list. Since hardly any tournaments were played in January and the Tata Steel tournament was not taken into account for the February list, there are virtually no changes at the top. Magnus Carlsen continues to be the world's number one with a huge margin, Alireza Firouzja is in second place and the only other player with a rating of +2800.

1/20/2022 – The Kvika Reykjavik Open will return to its normal setting in the Harpa music and conference center in 2022 – which has been billed as the best playing venue for an open tournament ever! The dates are from the 6th of April until the 12th of April, with nine rounds in seven days! Many world class players have taken part in then tournament in recent years. The total prize-fund in the 2022 edition will be €15.000, including many special prizes for various age and rating categories, in addition to the traditional top women’s prize.

1/14/2022 – At the end of 2013, a match facing chess legends from the 20th century against young female talented players was organized in Podebrady, the Czech Republic. A 20-year-old Alina Kashlinskaya was the top scorer in the winning team of the Snowdrops, while Boris Gulko and Iossif Dorfman were the strongest for the Oldhands.

1/5/2022 – The new ChessBase Magazine #205 offers a wealth of ideas and recommendations for your repertoire. The topics of the eleven opening articles in the new issue range from the Benko Gambit (4.cxb5 a6 5.b6 e6), the French Tarrasch (8.0-0 g5!), the Ruy Lopez (5.Qe2) to recipes against the King's Indian (after 6.Be2). Sergey Grigoriants looks at a topic that will interest many chess fans: He presents an active repertoire against the London System! However, you have to be ready to sacrifice a pawn with 6...e5! and to continue playing "precisely and powerfully" afterwards. But that shouldn't be difficult for you after reading Grigoriant's article!

1/3/2022 – At the beginning of the new year FIDE published its new World Ranking List. Magnus Carlsen gained nine rating points in the World Championship match against Ian Nepomniachtchi, and with a rating of 2865 he is now 35 points away from 2900 but 61 points ahead of Alireza Firouzja, the youngest world's number two of all time, who also leads the junior's list. Hou Yifan (2658) is the women's world number one, followed by Aleksandra Goryachkina with 2610. Zhu Jiner (2478) from China leads the "Girls" list.

1/2/2022 – In his ChessBase Magazine column "Topical opening traps", GM Rainer Knaak regularly examines examples from current tournament practice. He also presents three of them in the video analysis in each CBM. Especially for club players, his contributions offer exciting suggestions. Thanks to the range of topics, you should be able to find something for your own repertoire in every issue! In addition, the trap expert often shows variations that are rarely seen in top-level chess but must be on one's mind as a club chess player. We offer you an excerpt from Rainer Knaak's collection from ChessBase #205 here, including a video on the Budapest Gambit.

12/26/2021 – It was just a few weeks ago that Markus Ragger published a complete repertoire on two FritzTrainers for his favourite opening against 1.d4: the Gruenfeld Defence. In the new ChessBase Magazine #205 he provides an update on the variation with 5.Bd2, since the new idea of 5...c5 has recently proved very attractive at the highest level. Among others, it was used by Carlsen, Giri and Dubov. While Markus Ragger in his FritzTrainer still recommends the common and still fully valid continuation 5...Bg7, his appeal in ChessBase Magazine is clear: "Let's make 5...c5 the main line against 5.Bd2!" You can watch an excerpt from his video analysis here!

12/23/2021 – The "Special" in the new ChessBase Magazine #205 is dedicated to Robert Huebner, the best German player since Emanuel Lasker: an exclusive collection of 16 games, with analyses by Michal Krasenkow, Romain Edouard, Viktor Moskalenko, and others. And there's the best of the FIDE Grand Swiss 2021: tournament winner Alireza Firouzja annotates his victory against Nijat Abasov, and Grigoriy Oparin, Yu Yangyi, Alexandr Predke, Samuel Sevian, Nikita Vitiugov, and others annotate their best games. In a video Markus Ragger reveals a brand-new update in the Gruenfeld Defence with 5.Bd2. Plus 11 opening articles ("Surprise in the London System: 6...e5!", "Benko Gambit with open centre: 5.b6 e6!?", "News in the French Tarrasch: 8...g5" ), as well as training columns on tactics, strategy and endgame.

12/20/2021 – A pre-requisite for an organization to become world class is to have competent people working for it in key managerial positions. This is exactly what FIDE has done by roping in Dana Reizniece-Ozola as the managing director. A look at her credentials and you can have no doubts about her competency. Dana is a former Minister of Economics of Latvia as well as its Finance Minister! She has a Masters in Business Administration, has been the head of space programs and her list of achievements is quite huge. To add to all of this, she is also a strong chess player - a WGM with an Elo of 2283. At the World Championship 2021 in Dubai, IM Sagar Shah met with Dana and had a detailed interview about her journey of life, becoming FIDE's managing director, her vision for FIDE and much more.

12/17/2021 – For no fewer than 18 years, the Gibraltar Chess Festival was organized at the Caleta Hotel. Now that the hotel is about to close and a new format will be used in 2022, we look back at a memorable edition of the Masters Tournament. Ten years ago, in 2011, Vasyl Ivanchuk was the rating favourite on the Rock. The Ukrainian lived up to the expectations and won the event with an astounding 9/10 score and a 2968 rating performance.

12/13/2021 – When Beth Harmon defeated a series of top male grandmasters, and then went on to wrest the title from Russian world champion Vasily Borgov, it was not real life. It happened in the Queen’s Gambit, a Netflix series that did more for chess than anything else in 2020. In reality, today there is not a single active female player in the top 100. But FIDE wants to change that, as the Guardian reports.

12/1/2021 – With Alireza Firouzja, the chess world now has a new number two behind Magnus Carlsen. On the new World Ranking from December 2021, which the FIDE just published, the 18-year-old, who was born in Iran but is living in France, is ahead of Ding Liren and Fabiano Caruana.

11/4/2021 – At the end of October, the 139th "Varsity Match" Oxford vs Cambridge was played at the Royal Automobile Club in London. All in all, Cambridge is slightly ahead in matches, but this year Oxford won 5.5-2.5. The match was a real event, with dinner and music by the famous pianist, composer and chess fan Jason Kouchak. | Photo: Jason Kouchak and Victor Vasiesiu, captain of the Oxford team | Photo: John Saunders

11/1/2021 – The FIDE published its new rating list. Magnus Carlsen remains number one and is now the only player with 2800+. Fabiano Caruana lost a couple of points in the US Championship and is now below 2800 and the world's number three, behind Ding Liren. Hou Yifan does not play often but remains the world's best women. Best junior is Alireza Firouzja, best girl Polina Shuvalova.

10/31/2021 – After kicking off the event with three straight wins, Alireza Firouzja drew a game for the first time at the FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss on Sunday. The youngster nonetheless kept the sole lead, as none of his closest chasers got to score a win — Evgeniy Najer almost managed, but failed to find a killer shot. Meanwhile, among the women, Chinese star Lei Tingjie beat Valentina Gunina to climb to sole first place. | Photo: Anna Shtourman

10/20/2021 – Last weekend, Baden-Baden won the German Team Championship, the Bundesliga. Again. In fact, since 2006 the team from Baden-Baden, sponsored by GRENKE Leasing, only failed to win the league in 2016, when Solingen finished first. This year, at the end of a season that due to the pandemic lasted from 2019 to 2021, Baden-Baden was three team points ahead of their closest rivals but securing the title was more difficult than the final result suggests. | Photos: Pascal Simon

10/18/2021 – There was no stopping Praggnanandhaa in the Finals of the Julius Baer Challengers Tour. The 16-year-old from Chennai scored a dominating 3-0 victory in the final match against Christopher Yoo, which means he was a half point away from getting a perfect score in the event — he got 8½/9 points after knocking out Volodar Murzin and Vincent Keymer in the previous rounds.

10/17/2021 – Star columnist Jon Speelman looks at the next generation of chess stars, presenting games from Aleksandra Goryachkina, Andrey Esipenko and Nihal Sarin. Speelman notes that “the interesting thing with young players is not only how well they can play at their peak, but also, and no less important, howe well they can play at their ambient level”. | Pictured: Andrey Esipenko and Zhansaya Abdmualik at this year’s World Cup in Sochi. | Photo: Anastassia Korolkova / FIDE

10/17/2021 – The knockout Finals of the Julius Baer Challengers Chess Tour are taking place on October 14-17. The 8 top qualifiers from the previous “Challenge” events are participating. Each match consists of four rapid games, with 10 minutes per player for each game plus a 5-second increment. | The action kicks off daily at 16.00 CEST (10.00 ET / 19.30 IST)