The two "heroines" of ChessBase Magazine #209 were already decided before the Chennai Olympiad had even started. And then the Ukrainian sisters Anna and Mariya Muzychuk actually led their team to gold! One more reason to pay tribute to the two top players in CBM. In the new issue, a selection of 21 games with detailed commentary awaits you, as well as Mihail Marin's strategy article "The Muzychuk sisters" and an endgame Special by Karsten Mueller (both including videos). Krisztian Szabo has chosen the encounter Mariya Muzychuk - Alexander Bagrationi (2018) for his analysis - certainly also because of the "great finish". Take a look!
There was no stopping Alireza Firouzja at the Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz tournament, as the 19-year-old won the event with four rounds to spare! In his first-ever participation at a tournament in Saint Louis, Firouzja finished with an astonishing 26/36 score, five points ahead of second-placed Hikaru Nakamura. The youngster gained over a hundred rating points in blitz (he now sits at a stratospheric 2902.6), which prompted him to climb to second place in the live ratings list, only six points behind Nakamura. | Photo: Grand Chess Tour / Crystal Fuller
Eight years ago, in ChessBase Magazine #160, Dorian Rogozenco started his video series "The Classic". With his contribution in the new issue CBM #209 on the game Pillsbury-Lasker (St. Petersburg 1896), the round number of 50 selected top games from the time up to 1945 has been reached. A nice anniversary, for which we present Rogozenco's video in full length. Enjoy!
Ivan Sokolov has celebrated numerous successes in his career as a player. His greatest coup as a coach came only recently at the Chess Olympiad 2022 in Chennai, when he led the team from Uzbekistan to gold. In his video contribution to the current ChessBase Magazine Extra #208 he presents an idea on how to surprise your opponent in the Sicilian Four Knights Variation: The move 6.g3 may not look particularly aggressive - but when a player like Nodirbek Abdusattorov (Uzbekistan's number one and reigning rapid chess world champion) is on a loss with Black a few moves later, that can easily happen to your opponent too! You can see an excerpt from Sokolov's analysis here.