Almost immediately after playing a gruelling three-week match, world champion Ding Liren and Ian Nepomniachtchi will play a 9-round single round-robin in Bucharest, the Superbet Chess Classic. The first event of this year’s Grand Chess Tour, it will also see Richard Rapport, Ding’s second in Astana, among the participants. A star-studded field includes the likes of Alireza Firouzja, Fabiano Caruana and defending champion Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. | Photo: FIDE / Stev Bonhage
Chess is not only a sport. Richard Rapport and Wei Yi are two of the most creative players in the circuit, and about six years ago they were also the two highest-rated junior players in the world. In a 4-game match organized in December 2016, Rapport defeated Wei in the Armageddon decider. The games, which took place in Yancheng, were predictably entertaining.
The new ChessBase Magazine #213 offers, among many other things, 48 extensively annotated games, from the WR Masters 2023 as well as the EICC 2023, and in the "Special" our authors present their favourite games of Vishy Anand. From the WR Masters tournament winner Levon Aronian as well as Vincent Keymer and Jan-Krzysztof Duda annotate their best games. In addition, Gukesh and Praggnanandhaa each present one of their games in the video! You can watch Aronian's analysis of his first round game with Praggnanandhaa in abbreviated form here - enjoy!
The new ChessBase Magazine #213 once again delivers a big swing of ideas for your repertoire in eleven opening articles - from Caro-Kann to the King's Indian! Sergey Grigoriants examines a new idea on move four that has become the latest fashion thanks to Magnus Carlsen, among others: 4.h6 in the French Defence! Black offers a pawn sacrifice – after the exchange on f6 the pawn on d5 is simply hanging. Can this be any good? The new engines and Sergey Griogoriants show that Black gets "compensation and great piece activity in all lines". Take a look!
The sixth edition of the Salamanca Chess Festival took place on April 25-29. The Masters Tournament was the main event, with eight players (four men and four women) fighting in a single round-robin event. The time control was 40 minutes plus 5-second increments. Kirill Alekseenko and Jaime Santos were the top scorers with 5½ points. Alekseenko was declared champion based on tiebreak criteria. | Photo: Official site