Herman Grooten is an International Master, a renowned trainer and the author of several highly acclaimed books about chess training and chess strategy. In the 122nd instalment of his ChessBase show "Understanding before Moving", Herman continues his series "Chess history in a nutshell". | Photo: Pascal Simon
188 years ago, from June to October 1834, Louis-Charles Mahé de La Bourdonnais of France and Alexander McDonnell of Ireland played a series of five matches to determine who was the world's best player of their time. La Bourdonnais won with an overall score of 45 wins, 27 losses and 13 draws. Today, this series of matches is considered to be the first inofficial World Championship match. It helped enormously to popularize chess and led to a number of remarkable games. Eugene Manlapao has the details.
The MegaBase 2022 is Chess History in Action: It offers 9.210.512 games, the earliest played in 1475 and the most recent played October 2021, many of them annotated. Here our columnist, offers an introduction to three epic matches from the MegaBase with six annotated games. There is a lot more to discover in this treasure trove, grand battles, opening novelties and exemplary endgames.
The patter of tiny feet chessbase.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from chessbase.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.