Mega Database News Today

If you want to make progress in chess, sooner or later you will have to deal with your opening repertoire. It is better to approach this complex subject systematically than to get lost in a mass of videos, books and clever tips. To help with this, the Opening Encyclopaedia 2024 informs about the latest opening developments and provides basic knowledge.

It is quite difficult to find the right trainer for a chess player. More so when there are so many lucrative options available. While some prefer to work on their own, others need a chess coach to guide and help them improve their game. Peter Long shares his experiences and thoughts as a trainer. Instead of focusing on gaining more knowledge, attending camps and playing tournaments incessantly, creating a structure will help students to fix their gaps and become stronger players.

With over 10 million games the Mega Database 2024 is the indispensable chess database for every chess player, for preparation or chess training in all conceivable facets - now available in the updated 2024 edition, also as Big Database without annotated games and update service. Also new: the Corr Database 2024 Correspondence Chess Database with 80,000 tournaments and 2.3 million correspondence games - for players who want to know even more.

The new Mega Database now contains over 10 million games and over 700,000 new games. With 112,000 annotated games, the Mega Database is also the largest annotated game collection in the world. The Mega Player Encyclopaedia contains 60,000 player names with over 40,000 player photos. Wow! All this is constantly being edited and expanded, e.g. with the automatic Mega Update!

The Women's World Championship match between challenger Lei Tingjie and reigning champion Ju Wenjun started with four draws, but in game 5 Lei Tingjie scored the first win of the match. She defeated Wu Wenjun with a convincing positional game. | Photos: Stev Bonhage (FIDE)

Don't miss it! Today we are offering you a 25% price reduction on everything. That includes software, training DVDs, services, the ChessBase Account. There are some very interesting new products: like the brand new Opening Encyclopaedia 2023, which is a huge fund of ideas and high-quality analysis! And so many other products that will improve your understanding of chess, your skill in the game – not to forget the rating points they will earn you.

The current ChessBase Magazine #212 offers three opening videos: Rustam Kasimdzhanov examines the Ruy Lopez with 8.a4 b4 9.a5, which was played twice in the Tata Steel Masters 2023 (So-Keymer and Caruana-Carlsen). Nico Zwirs checks Magnus Carlsen's idea 7...Bg4 in the Queen's Gambit Exchange Variation. And Mihail Marin puts the Evans Gambit from the game Beerdsen-Pechac from the Challengers to the test. You can watch an excerpt from Kasimdzhanov's video analysis here. Have fun!

The name Erich Eliskases is familiar to only a few chess enthusiasts today. However, the Austrian was one of the best players in the world in the late 1930s. In 1941 he was supposed to play for the World Championship with Alexander Alekhine. But things turned out differently. 15 February 2023 is the 110th birthday of Eliskases, who was born in Innsbruck, Austria, and died in Cordoba, Argentina.

In the latest version of ChessBase, there are some huge changes to the software, modifications which add significant improvements to the software! The two main programmers, Matthias Wüllenweber and Mathias Feist, have implemented a completely new file format, added beauty filters and medals, a fast interactive search, and much more! IM Sagar Shah takes you through all the new features of ChessBase 17 along with relevant screenshots and video instructi...

The photo shows the tournament hall of the Hoogovens tournament 60 years ago, at that time still in Beverwijk. 18 players took part in the A-tournament and Jan Hein Donner won. One of the participants at that time was Tan Hiong Liong. He was the first IM of Asia - a bright star that soon burnt out for tragic reasons. A journey through time... | Photos: Dutch National Archive (if not otherwise stated)