Predrag Nikolic News Today

Today, 3 June 2023, Nils Grandelius celebrates his 30th birthday. Grandelius is known as his country's long-time leading player, an important member of the Swedish team, and has won several major international tournaments in his career to date. Grandelius worked as Magnus Carlsen's second for the World Chess Championship matches in 2016 and 2018, and is also a well-known author and teacher. | Nils Grandelius at the TePe Sigeman & Co. tournament in 2023 | Photo: David Llada

After the moves 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 c5 4.cxd5 Black usually chooses the classical Tarrasch Defence with 4...exd5. 4...cxd4, on the other hand, leads to the Schara von Hennig Gambit. Still quite popular in the 90s, this gambit went out of fashion in the meantime. But recently a series of online games at the highest level (above all thanks to Alexander Grischuk) generated new interest. Robert Ris presents the latest developments in his opening video for the ChessBase Magazine Extra #206. Watch a...

At the end of last year, the Uzbek Grandmaster Nodirbek Abdusattorov won the World Rapid Championship in Warsaw at the age of 17, becoming the youngest World Rapid Champion of all time. In the course of the event he defeated Fabiano Caruana, Levon Aronian, Ian Nepomniachtchi – and Magnus Carlsen! "What a fight!" writes Anish Giri about Abdusattorov's encounter with the World Champion in his analysis for ChessBase Magazine Extra #206. It's "The brilliancy" of the new...

Opening videos: Robert Ris shows the latest trends in the Hennig-Schara Gambit. Mihail Marin presents a Fianchetto setup against the Gruenfeld and King's Indian. Total playing time of the videos: just under one hour. "Lucky bag" with over 80 analyses by Anish Giri, Nijat Abasov, Romain Edouard, Marie Sebag and many others. In "The brilliancy" between the new rapid chess champion Nodirbek Abdusattorov and world champion Magnus Carlsen - commented by Anish Giri! - with 1.c4...

€29.90 Volcanic energy [Note that Jon Speelman also looks at the content of the article in video format, here embedded at the end of the article.] A fortnight ago, I activated my “mirror”, a potent if imaginary artefact intended to reflect the best chess players ever. It has more work to do today, and first I must thank readers for a very lively and interesting discussion in the comments afterwards. As I mentioned in those comments, I didn’t have a very strong opinion m...

Looking at the games from the recent Russian Team Championship, played in Sochi, prompted Jon Speelman to reminisce on a tournament he played nearly four decades ago in the same Russian city near the Black Sea. “In those distant Soviet times, the seven foreigners were put up in the Zhemchuzhina (Pearl) Hotel while the nine Soviets were dispersed among other lesser establishments”. | Photo: John Saunders / John Nunn 60th Birthday Blitz Chess Tournament