Following the success of the inaugural World Rapid Team Championship held in Düsseldorf in August 2023, FIDE decided to organize a second edition, which will also include a World Blitz Team competition. The tournament will be held in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, between August 1 and 6, and is expected to bring together a number of top world professionals and chess enthusiasts. Magnus Carlsen has already confirmed that he will be playing for the defending champions, WR Team.
ChessBase Magazine offers a window to the world of professional chess. The latest issue, CBM 217, is out. Our columnist Nagesh Havanur takes a look. 1582 games (35 annotated), with decisive encounters from the FIDE Grand Swiss deeply annotated. 12 opening surveys, 3 opening videos, 6 demo lectures and several exercises for training. Annotators include Anish Giri, Nordibek Abdusattorov, Ruslan Ponomariov, Vidit Gujrathi and Praggnanandhaa, among others. | Photo: FIDE / Anna Shtourman
Ding Liren won the World Chess Championship 2023 and became the 17th World Champion. It's been 200 days since the last game of chess that he has played publicly. So where is Ding Liren, what is he up to? During his period of being away from the world of chess, IM Sagar Shah managed to get in touch with him and asked him about key position in the match. Ding also speaks about life after match and more. | Photo: Anna Shtourman
Vaishali Rameshbabu became the third Indian woman player (after Humpy Koneru and Harika Dronavalli) to earn the grandmaster title. Vaishali obtained the title by scoring a win against FM Tamer Tarik Selbes at the 2023 El Llobregat Open. Since her brother Pragganandhaa is also a grandmaster, Vaishali and Pragg became the world’s first-ever brother-sister grandmaster duo! | Photo: ChessBase India
The FIDE Candidates tournament will be held in April 2024 in Canada. Leading up to this all-important event, one that will determine the World Championship challenger, the All India Chess Federation has announced a financial assistance to Vidit Gujrathi, R. Praggnanandhaa and R.Vaishali to the tune of Rs.20,000,000 (US$240,459). This amount will be used for their training, travel, building a team and much more. It is truly a fantastic move by the National federation to support the Candidates of India!