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The Friedel Chronicles Part I - Tales of the nonpareil chess raconteur

28/03/2020 -

There are very few individuals in the chess world who have met and known the many legends of the royal game as closely as the ChessBase co-founder Frederic Friedel. For years, Frederic traveled to chess tournaments, covering events after events and running the ChessBase newspage. In this process he rubbed shoulders with greats like Kasparov and Karpov, became friend and mentor to talents like Anand and Short. Well, one can only imagine the experiences that he accumulated over the years interacting with all these super-talents. The wonderful raconteur that Frederic is, he always makes sure to treat IM Sagar Shah with a story or two every time they meet. The Knowing the Chess Greats series is an effort to bring some of these much cherished conversations to the general chess audience! 

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Guseinov, Aravindh and Pragg star in strong 2nd Saturday Blitz Tournament 2020

27/03/2020 -

We are back again with the 2nd Saturday Online Blitz 2020 after a super strong first edition. To give you a clue of the lineup, we have 18 GMs, 31 IMs, 2 WGMs and 4 WIMs taking part in the second edition. Players from India, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Colombia, England, France, Singapore and USA have already confirmed their participation. The entry fee to the tournament is *FREE, however you need an active ChessBase Premium subscription. There are prizes worth ₹10000 to be won for the top three finishers. That's not all, the circuit winner at the conclusion of five Saturday Blitz event will win an additional ₹10000. Currently Praggnanandhaa is leading the table after winning the first edition. Photo: Various sources

BREAKING: FIDE stops Candidates 2020

26/03/2020 -

The Postponement of the Candidates 2020 was hanging on the heads of the players, organizers, and spectators like a damocles sword throughout the last ten days. Finally it has happened. The Russian Government announced that starting from 27th of March 2020, Russia will interrupt air traffics with other countries without indicating any time frames. This could mean that the players could be stuck in Russia for months together. As a result FIDE has stopped the tournament and the FIDE President Arkadij Dvorkovich has published a press release on the FIDE website. What's interesting is that the tournament has only been postponed and not cancelled. It will resume from round 8 onwards after the Covid19 pandemic situation cools down.

Candidates R07: The French Defense against French no.1 wasn't a good idea!

26/03/2020 -

The way Nepo was playing at the event made him look untouchable. But MVL, his seventh round opponent had different plans. Nepo's French Defense was punished by the Frenchman with great precision. With this victory MVL caught up with Nepo at the top and both of them lead the event with a score of 4.5/7, one point more than the rest of the field. The remaining three games ended in draws. We bring you the detailed analysis of the decisive game, pictures, videos and more.  

Live Games and Updates of FIDE Candidates 2020

25/03/2020 -

The Candidates 2020 will take place in the city of Yekaterinburg, Russia from the 17th of March to the 3rd of April 2020. Eight players - Fabiano Caruana, Ding Liren, Alexander Grischuk, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Anish Giri, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Wang Hao and Kirill Alekseenko will fight it out to win the tournament and earn the right to challenge Magnus Carlsen. On this page you will find the Live games, commentary as well as real time updates by the ChessBase India team. Games begin each day at 4.30 p.m. Indian time. We hope you will enjoy our coverage of this mega event.

"Right Mood = Right Move" says GM Avetik Grigoryan, founder of ChessMood

25/03/2020 -

Avetik Grigoryan was rated 2600+. He is a strong GM and was also the former national champion of Armenia. However, a couple of years ago, he made an important decision in life. He decided to give up playing chess, and develop a community called ChessMood. What started as just a Facebook Group, is now a full blown website with over 100 hours of training from some of the best grandmasters of Armenia. How did Avetik manage to create something so valuable as the ChessMood? What is the secret of inimitable enthusiasm and energy? We find out in this interview! ChessMood has opened up its website for 7 days due to the Corona virus outbreak and all of the premium content is now freely viewable until the 29th of March 2020. 

Out Preparing the Candidates with Fat Fritz Part 2

25/03/2020 -

What is the one thing that is common among the Grunfeld, the Slav and the Najdorf? Well, apart from being the elite's most common choice of openings, they are lines where it is very difficult for both sides to find radical improvements! Why is this so? Well when you take any one of these venerated defenses, the amount of time and effort poured into analyzing each and every variation over the years has resulted in a mass of theory that has established clear guidelines, and before the advent of NN engines it seemed impossible to find new ideas. Today however, this is not the case. Tanmay Srinath in this article analyzes openings of the Candidates in these very lines with Fat Fritz and suggests improvements which players of all levels can use in their games.

Candidates 2020 R06: If you spot ...Re5, you should be disqualified!

24/03/2020 -

The sixth round at the Candidates 2020 was filled with tremendous excitement. Ian Nepomniachtchi scored his third win at the event and is now leading with a score of 4.5/6, a full point ahead of MVL. Although Ian's health is not the best, it didn't stop him from beating Ding Liren with the white pieces. The big news of the round was also Anish Giri getting the better of Kirill Alekseenko to register his first victory ever at the Candidates 2020. Wang Hao missed a certain win against MVL and Caruana could have pressed better in a plus position against Grischuk. We bring you game analysis, videos, pictures and all the drama from Yekaterinburg in Russia. 

Pragg stands on top of “Chessworld”

24/03/2020 -

The response for the first ChessBase India Saturday online blitz was huge! We had 191 participants with 16 GMs, 24 IMs, 3 WGMs and 3 WIMs participating from 12 countries! It was the biggest ever online tournament held at ChessBase India. GM R. Praggnanandhaa won the event taking home not just Rs.5000 but also valuable 10 Grand Prix points. GM Elshan Moradiabadi, who was one of the participants at the event, played from USA and had a great time fighting it out against some of the talented Indian youngsters. He writes this article sharing with you his experience of playing in this blitz event! Mind you, this weekend we have two more blitz events coming up - the second edition of Saturday online blitz on 28th March and the March Masters event on 29th March which has a prize fund of Rs.50,000! 

Candidates R05: Nepo leads; players worried about the global pandemic

23/03/2020 -

The big news of Round 5 at the Candidates 2020 was Ian Nepomaniachtchi winning his game against Wang Hao and taking the sole lead with 3.5/5. It was a game where you can learn a lot about how symmetry doesn't really result into equality every time. Amidst MVL taking the sole second spot and Ding Liren changing his hotels to get fresh air, the most important news is that players are not feeling the most comfortable continuing the event. Grischuk said, "Earlier, I didn't have a clear opinion but now from the last several days I have a strong opinion, I think this tournament should seriously be stopped." Caruana mentioned, "The US State department said that the American citizens have to come back to the US or won't be able to come back later."

Candidates R04: The Pledge, The Turn and The Prestige

22/03/2020 -

When a top player thinks for 53 minutes, you begin to wonder what exactly are they doing? What are they thinking about? Why did they take so much of time to decide on their move! And when you realize that the move they came up with has already been played before, you become all the more bewildered! That's what happened in the fourth round game between MVL and Grischuk. Alexander had one of the worst time management bouts of his career, landed in a lost position but managed to save himself by the skin of his teeth. IM Sagar Shah analyzes this and other three games and also tells you what is the similarity between a Christopher Nolan movie and top level chess!

Guseinov, Pragg, Gukesh and more will fight in 2nd Saturday Online Blitz 2020

22/03/2020 -

Missed out on the opportunity to play against India and the World's strongest on 21st March? No need to repent because we bring you the second edition this Saturday on 28th March 2020. We already have 11 GMs, 23 IMs, a WGM and 2 WIMs taking part in what is shaping up to be another strong line up. Players from India, Algeria, Colombia, England, Sri Lanka, Singapore and USA have already confirmed their participation. The entry fee to the tournament is *FREE, however you need an active ChessBase Premium subscription. There are prizes worth ₹10000 to be won for the top three finishers. That's not all, the circuit winner at the conclusion of five Saturday Blitz event will win an additional ₹10000. Photo: Various sources

Candidates 2020 R03: Hilarious and instructive post game interviews!

21/03/2020 -

The most important game of round three was between Ding Liren and Caruana. On our newspage we covered this game extensively, but the other games were not uninteresting. In fact Alekseenko was quite close to beating Nepomniachtchi and so was Grischuk against Wang Hao. Giri played a solid draw against MVL. We bring you in this article not just the analysis and pictures, but also post-game interviews and most importantly, high class analysis by GM Vidit Gujrathi. Checking them along with the questions posed to you will surely improve your chess understanding.

Out-Preparing the Candidates with Fat Fritz Part 1

21/03/2020 -

As the Candidates headed into the rest day, one thing that is obvious is how each player is fighting unto their very last reserves for that extra half point! We have seen decisive games in all the 3 rounds till now, and with such zest it is impossible to pick a clear favourite. One thing that stands out however, is the high level of opening preparation. Out of the 12 games played, 10 games have witnessed the absolute peak as far as homework is concerned. However, Tanmay Srinath set out to beat the preparation of the Candidates with the help of Fat Fritz and come up with some really deep ideas that can be used by any player in their future games.

Aditya Mittal analyses Fabiano Caruana's dynamic play against the Nimzo-Indian

20/03/2020 -

Aditya Mittal is one of India's finest up-and-coming chess talents. He is just thirteen years old but is already an IM rated 2438. One of the reasons why Aditya is so strong at the game is that he closely follows all the elite level events of the world. The boy's knack for annotating games is really quite special and is certainly something that sets him apart from the rest. In this article he analyses one of Fabiano Caruana's recent games from the ongoing Candidates 2020 in detail. If you haven't gone through Aditya's annotations before then you are in for a treat. The thoroughness of the work the youngster does will absolutely surprise you! 

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