Parallel to the Rapid and Blitz World Championships in Warsaw, FIDE held its annual congress. Delegates participated mostly online. On its website, FIDE recently published the “results and decisions” of the congress. Despite the Corona pandemic, FIDE is solidly financed, now largely from sponsorship, donations and broadcasting rights, less so from membership fees. The World […]
Monthly Archives: January 2022
The MegaBase 2022 is Chess History in Action: It offers 9.210.512 games, the earliest played in 1475 and the most recent played October 2021, many of them annotated. Here our columnist, offers an introduction to three epic matches from the MegaBase with six annotated games. There is a lot more to discover in this treasure […]
In the second week of December Nigel Short caught Corona though he was vaccinated twice. Short’s infection was so severe that he had to go hospital, but it did not stop the English Grandmaster from playing at the 6th Vergani Cup in Cattolica, Italy, at the beginning of the year. However, he needed some help […]
“One of the most difficult games I have ever played.” That is how Mikhail Botvinnik described his encounter with Wolfgang Unzicker from Germany at the Chess Olympiad 1954 in Amsterdam. Botvinnik wound up in a difficult rook ending in which he was a pawn down. However, he managed to save the endgame, once again proving […]
Svitlana is back, and in her first episode of 2022, she shows us a couple of beautiful, and memorable games of 2021. Players like Firouzja, Caruana, and Kosteniuk had some magnificent games, and it always delightful to check them out again. What was your favourite game with the smartest moves of 2021?
In the 2021 World Championship match between challenger Ian Nepomniachtchi and defending champion Magnus Carlsen, Nepomniachtchi blundered in a couple of games. He is in good company. In his Power Play Chess show on YouTube Daniel King takes a look at blunders that happened in previous World Championship matches and found a number of amazing, […]
The World Championship match between Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi was the chess highlight of the year 2021, and chess fans all over the world followed the games and the match avidly. Carlsen won 7.5-3.5 and defended his title. Shortly after the match, Oliver Roeder and Simran Parwani took a look at some statistics of […]
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 […]
In 1967 the city of Sousse (Tunisia) organised one of the most talked about Interzonal Tournaments in the history of chess. After 10 rounds Bobby Fischer led with 8½/10 but after quarrels with the organisers, the eccentric American decided to withdraw from the tournament and to wait for three more years before making his final […]
On Christmas Day, the James Webb Telescope began its long journey into space, as it is expected to provide new insights into the early history of the universe. The infinite expanses have inspired many artists. Music, the stars and chess are magically connected — says Jason Kouchak. | Photo: “Starlight” by Julian Paix