It has been more than a year since Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (MVL) finished second in the Candidates tournament. Ideally, the French Grandmaster should have been playing in this year’s edition too. However, he missed out following disappointing performances in the Fide Grand Prix events. With the 2021 Candidates tournament relatively fresh in mind, Dhananjay Khadilkar spoke […]
Monthly Archives: June 2022
Alireza Firouzja had a brilliant 2021. The youngster reached the second spot in the world ranking and qualified to the Candidates Tournament. Expectations were high after Magnus Carlsen hinted that he would gladly face him in a World Championship match — unlike other opponents. Things have not been going according to plan in Madrid, though. […]
Fighting chess was the rule rather than the exception in round 10 of the Candidates Tournament. All the players — except Ian Nepomniachtchi, naturally — chose fighting lines, attempting to win at all costs, as the event is coming to an end and first place is all that matters. In the end, Ding Liren and […]
When young players ask me, what chess skill should he or she improve to be able to enter the tough arena of professional chess, I usually have a simple answer. My short advice is: “You should learn how to defend. Especially, you should master the art of positional defence.” | Photo: Pixabay
For well over 20 years, ChessBase has provided video courses on just about every chess topic under the sun, but they were also only available to Windows users. Now that is not only no longer true, but you can watch them on just about any system with a modern browser, from Macintosh to Linux… to […]
Thanks to a remarkable final-round victory, Amin Tabatabaei grabbed clear first place at the third edition of the Stepan Avagyan Memorial. The Iranian GM entered the final round sharing first place with Shant Sargsyan. The co-leaders had two players standing a half point back — namely Haik Martirosyan and Alexander Donchenko. The four players were […]
Britain’s first-ever outdoor chess festival, ChessFest, attracted thousands of visitors at London’s Trafalgar Square, and featured a varied programme of fun activities, including live chess games with actors, grandmaster simuls, mass teach-ins and video shows. ChessFest is a fun-filled outdoor event, entirely free, open to all. This year it will be staged in London and […]
Pawn structures shape the position and determine the strategic plans of White and Black. Knowing typical pawn structures and typical plans helps you to play (and score!) better. The renowned Dutch author and trainer Herman Grooten is an expert on pawn structures and he has made a two-part ChessBase course on pawn structures. Today at […]
Round 9 of the Candidates Tournament saw three players scoring their first wins of the event. The one drawn encounter was the showdown between Fabiano Caruana and Ian Nepomniachtchi, in which Caruana tried an offbeat line against his opponent’s Petroff but could not make the most of the small advantage he got in the middlegame. […]
The PlusCity Rapid Open took place in the Austrian municipality of Pasching with a prize fund of 15,000 euros. Czech grandmaster Vojtech Plat won with a 7½/9 score. Plat had the same score as his grandmaster colleagues Anton Demchenko, Milos Jirovsky, Daniel Fridman and Andreas Heimann, but took home the first prize thanks to his […]